The Power of PLANNING

Your life does not just happen to you. You don’t just live it as though you’re walking through a forest and you just see what comes. You get to actually PLAN it. You get to look at the map, use the GPS, and decide where you want to go. You get to decide how you’re going to get there, how often you want to stop, and how far you want to go. You get to PLAN all of it.

Some people have no PLANS because they haven’t thought about what they want to create in their life. Some people have very little PLANS because they don’t believe that they can create what they want in their life. Other people have very big PLANS but without a map on how to get there. 

Your first big decision is that you’re going to take charge and PLAN your own life and take responsibility for it. Once you’ve made that first decision you have to make many, many, many little decisions within that big decision to actually do it.

I think sometimes we decide not to make all of those little decisions. When we set goals for ourselves, we do it in an arbitrary way without a PLAN of execution. We tell ourselves we don’t know how to do something or we don’t know when we’ll do it, so all of that desire and all of those dreams go unanswered. We give up on ourselves before we’ve even started. Setting goals for your life yearly and quarterly and monthly and weekly is the recipe for the life you dream about. Ultimately that means you PLAN your week and your days so you end up living the exact life that you have PLANNED. You cannot get the life you dream about if you don’t PLAN how to get there and then go get there. 

I want you to think about just one thing right now that you want in your life. What is your PLAN for getting it? Do you know what your PLAN is?

Now, I can tell you pretty accurately whether you will get it or not based on how specific your PLAN is and if you’ve put it on your calendar. If you have this ambitious dream that you have broken down into quarters and then into months and you have it on your calendar, my guess is nine times out of 10 you’re probably going to get it. Most people won’t go through the work of PLANNING something if they don’t believe it’s possible. 

PLANNING something to the level that you need in order to execute it is a tedious process. You start by writing your desired outcome. You break it down into manageable chunks. Then you write down all the obstacles you anticipate will get in your way. You turn all those obstacles into to-do items. You put all those to-do items in order of execution and then you put them on your calendar and then you do them and then you achieve that thing that you wanted.

You PLAN not only what you’re going to do. You PLAN to succeed and conserve your energy by making quick decisions and then believing in your own decisions and not second-guessing them.

You have so much power over your time, and yet you let the time dictate when you’re going to do something instead of being really careful about PLANNING it.

Where are you PLANNING deliberately and taking really good care of making sure you accomplish that end game? Where are you being reckless with your time by not PLANNING? Do not confuse having no PLAN with being free. It is the opposite. PLANNING your life is what gives you freedom because you do it on purpose. Freedom is something that you give yourself. Freedom doesn’t mean that you don’t have to answer to anyone. Freedom means that you answer to yourself and you really like the answer. Think about the areas in your life where you need to PLAN and then get to work on PLANNING the perfect life that you want for yourself.