Knowing what you want in life gives you an edge on this journey to living a full life.
Renowned author Stephen Covey captured it very well he said; “Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven't paid the price to decide what is really important to them”
Getting the best out of life requires of us to act smart by finding out what is important and what we want in life.
Getting Started
I asked a cousin of mine what she'd like to become later in life, she gave me a
Catalogue of things she will like to do. What caught me was not the list but how unrelated they all are and how it looks almost impossible to do all that in one life time. Growing up has taught us that we cannot do everything thing. While we have a lot of desires, lots of things we will love to do, we just have a limited time on earth. That places on us the responsibility to choose from all the possibilities available to us.
We therefore need to decide which out of numerous possibilities in our lives to pursue.
Clarifying Our Options
Clarity brings direction towards a definite destination. The need to be decided on what we want out of the many possibilities available to us in life creates focus and focus help us get a destination and a direction.
Clarity also helps us because when we still have all these options open to us it can keep us from standing up to act. When we decide on what we want and as it were close up all open options we will have no other reason to remain in our comfort zone of dreaming more and doing nothing.
We move from the dreamer's lane to the highway of bringing dreams to reality.
It also increases our speed, helps us evaluate the process, see our mistakes and correct them and also helps us know when we need to change the direction that we are taking to our destination.
Having said all that, how then do we clarify smart?
The first step is discovering ourselves through self exploration. When we are done with that deciding what we want of the many possibilities becomes easy.
This decision is just a natural out flow of what we discovered during our exploration.
Knowing What Is Important
Like said earlier life presents us with a lot of possibilities but we know very well that we cannot do everything.
The first thing therefore is to know what is important in our lives and the order of importance of these things.
This we will decide in every aspect of our lives to ensure we are balanced in our quest for a full life. This will also help us to make choices that are relevant to our desires daily in our living.
For instance one may find that being spiritually astute is the most important thing in his life, he will now base his choices on that, saying no to any choice that will take him away from that, he will therefore live productively in that area of his life.
We must note also that we have to be clear on the reason for our choices. Why do I want what I want? If that is not clearly spelt out we may end up sabotaging ourselves on the way because we lack the motivation to bring our choices to reality.
Let us go to work, let us look at every area of our lives and discovery what is important.
Personal Relationships:
- Stability and permanence, freedom and flexibility etc
Knowing this and why it is important especially based on our values, purpose and our definition of life help us make choices in our daily living that will enhance this in our lives.
Career:
- Satisfaction, challenges, new experiences etc
We can go ahead and do this in every area of our lives to know the important things and also know their order of importance in our lives.
Knowing Our Motives
It is very imperative to state again that knowing our reason for wanting whatever it is that we want is very important. This will keep us going when the going gets tough on our journey to a full life.
Our reason for our wants should be about adding value to our environment and other people; this is because being self centered will rob us of the joy and make us miserable with our accomplishment defeating our purpose for full live.
I believe that the satisfaction, joy, peace, fame, and others things of a full life are rewards for making choices with the best of others in consideration.
This may not be very popular in our humanistic self-centered society.
Small wonder we have lots of unsatisfied people in spite all the comfort available to us in this times.
