life Archives - MoSuBlo

What do you want your life to be? What do you want for your future? Do you know what you want? If you don’t know what you want, how can you get it? The way to get what you want from life is to define it.

Do you want wealth? Do you want to be further along in your career? Do you want a spouse and kids? Do you want to eat in luxurious restaurants around the world? It’s your vision; it’s up to you.

You need to have a vision, period. It can be a five-year plan, a ten-year plan, or lifetime plan, or any plan. It can change later. The important thing is that you need to have a plan.

Your Plan Needs a Vision to Focus It

Without a plan, you are in a river without a boat or paddle. Life is the river that doesn’t stop for you, no matter what’s going on in your life. You won’t know it’s path, and it’ll take you wherever it is going, whether you like it or not. You may get twists, turns, rocks, and waterfalls, and you won’t be ready for them.

A plan prepares you for your journey. A plan is your boat, paddle, engine, map, life jacket, and more. With a plan you know where you’re going to enter the river, where you’re going to go, and your journey’s end. The plan helps get you towards your goal, which is defined by your vision.

Your Vision Should Be Exciting

If your vision isn’t something you want, you aren’t going to go for it. It needs to be something that truly excites you. When you think of your vision, you need to really feel it in your heart and your gut. It needs to be meaningful enough to motivate you to get up, get going, and push you through obstacles (because you will face them, guaranteed).

If you choose to share your vision with others, it should excite them too. They are your support system. Your friends and family should be excited for the life you envisioned for yourself, and excited for you when you do achieve it.

Your Vision Should Be Specific

In fictional writing, the more you brainstorm the details of your characters and the world they live in, the more engaging it is to the audience. The more sensory details there are, the more realistic the setting and characters will be. This works similarly to your vision.

The more detailed your vision is, the more thought out it is. The details make it more realistic and viable for you. The more you can envision it, the more likely you will manifest it into reality. It’ll seem more like a nearing goal than a far-fetched fantasy.

Your Vision Should Be Flexible

Your vision may change, and that’s okay. As you go through life, you may adjust as necessary. Your interests may change based on your experiences. Your priorities may change. You may want to focus less on traveling around the world and focus more on monetary goals or vice versa.

It’s okay if your vision changes, as long as you have one. You need your vision to be your goal that guides what you do in your day to day actions.

I had a friend who started adulthood wanting to be a child psychologist. After traveling around the world and experiencing what different cultures had to offer, she changed her vision, and aspired to be a culinary chef. She eventually went to culinary school and became one. Now she is an entrepreneur and runs her own cookie business.

Like the adage says, “if you don’t have a plan, you plan to fail.” You need a defined vision to help you plan where you are going in life.

Roderick Conwi is the author of The Motivation Mindset: Train Your Brain To Get Up and Get Going and the Executive Editor at Nourishment Notes.

Success is complex. There isn’t one single tip that I can give everyone that will guarantee success. It depends on each person, their situation, and their goals. Each person has a unique path to their own version of success. Any successful person can give you many tips of how s/he got there, and those tips may or may not apply to you. One tip for success that is worth exploring is the concept of taking initiative.

Taking Initiative Helps You Be More Productive

Most people know when you have a job, you get paid for the time that you put in. Consider the hours that you put in and all that you do within that time frame. The more you were able to get done the market productive you are. To be more productive, you have to take more initiative.

Being more productive doesn’t happen by accident. It’s an active choice you make every day. When you take initiative, you’re actively making the decision to do more. You’re also making the effort to take on either more responsibilities or more important responsibilities. You are deciding to make better use of your time, which in turn, makes you more productive.

In every job I’ve ever had, I hated being bored. I didn’t want to be busy; I wanted to be productive. Call it my competitive nature, I wanted to accomplish more than everyone else. I wanted to maximize my time. My productivity depended on not just the time I put in, but my effort, which stemmed from taking initiative.

Make Your Vision Known

One thing that you should do is take the initiative to let people know what you want. Talk to your supervisor, friends, colleagues, and family members. Tell them what you want to do in life can you tell him your vision. That way, they can help hold you accountable. Keep in mind, as much as they can help, it’s ultimately up to you to keep yourself accountable.

At work, tell your supervisor what you really want: a raise, promotion, different responsibilities, or a different project. Your supervisors aren’t mind readers. You have to tell them what you want in order for them to know what you want. If you want more responsibility, you have to show them that you not only deserve it, but there is a need for you to do it. Also, you need to make it clear to them that you can handle the responsibility that you want.

Before I worked in professional development, I was an employee who wanted to be a trainer. My supervisors didn’t see me in that light. All the meaningful and high-profile responsibility was given to someone else who was much less experienced than me. Eventually, I told my supervisors that I wanted to get promoted into the professional development department as a trainer. They may not have given me more opportunities to advance, but when I took initiative to participate in professional development related events, they stood out of my way. Eventually, I earned a promotion to trainer.

Take Initiative To Get an Active Advantage

Being proactive gives you an advantage over being reactive. When you are proactive, you are taking the initiative to start something that needs to get done. Instead of waiting for someone to tell you to do something, you are doing it yourself. If everyone else is waiting to be told what to do, you get a head start by being a self-starter.

When I worked in professional development, I created a lot of training protocols. When staff had to be trained on new procedures or using new software, I usually volunteered to create the training. Why did I do that? I knew that I was going to have to do the training, and I wanted it to be good. The best way I knew how to make the training practical, informative, and engaging was creating it myself. I took the initiative to make it happen.

Lasting Thoughts

If there is something that you’ve been meaning to get done, you need to take initiative to get it done. It’s up to you. No one else is going to do it for you. It’s up to you to get started, it’s up to you to put in the time and effort, and it’s up to you to get it done. If you don’t take initiative, it’s never going to get done.