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 Farzana
and I am a 17-year old, intermediate 1st year student.” It does not
tell you about who Farzana 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, Farzana 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 Farzana’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 Farzana’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 travelling 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. Farzana 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 Farzana 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.
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