|
Manu |
|
|
|
Happy Eyes |
|
 |
|
Selected Ebooks |
|
|
|
Free Articles |
| Life Mapping: A Vision of Success |
Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees.
Planning for
success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life.
Similar to a
map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination,
vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.
Origin: Who you are
A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now.
Most
people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I
am a 17-year old, senior high school student.”
It does not tell you about
who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation.
To gain insights
about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and
principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil
status.
Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you
insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge,
strengths, and weaknesses. Upon introspection, Jean realized that she was
highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but impatient.
Her
inclination was in the biological-medical field.
Furthermore, she believed
that life must serve a purpose, and that wars were destructive to human
dignity.
Destination: A vision of who you want to be
“Who do want to be?” this is your vision.
Now it is important that you
know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be;
and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or
points of view.
If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets
for the future would also be unclear.
Your destination should cover all
the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and
spiritual.
Continuing Jean’s story, after she defined her beliefs, values,
and principles in life, she decided that she wanted to have a life
dedicated in serving her fellowmen.
Vehicle: Your Mission
A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be
analogized to your mission or vocation in life.
To a great extent, your
mission would depend on what you know about yourself.
Bases on Jean’s
self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and
that she wanted to become one.
Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor.
Describing her vision-mission fully: it was to live a life dedicated to
serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.
Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude
Food, drinks, medicines, and other traveling necessities are contained in
a bag.
Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you
certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
These determine your competence
and help you in attaining your vision.
Given such, there is a need for you
to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and
what you need to gain along the way.
This two-fold assessment will give
you insights on your landmarks or measures of success.
Jean realized that
she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine so that
she could become a doctor.
She knew that she was a bit impatient with
people so she realized that this was something she wanted to change.
Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives
Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines
the travel time.
Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have
landmarks and a route.
These landmarks are your measures of success.
These
measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time
bound.
Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s
degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the
minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years.
Going
back to Jean as an example, she identified the following landmarks in her
life map: completing a bachelor’s degree in biology by the age of 21;
completing medicine by the age of 27; earning her specialization in
infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public
hospitals of their town by the age of 32; and serving as doctor in
war-torn areas by the age of 35.
Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes
The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment
decisions that can make you lose your way.
But oftentimes our plans are
modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other
situations beyond our control.
Like in any path, there are turns, detours,
and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.
|
|
