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 highschool student.” It does not
tell you about who Jean is; it only tells you her present
occupation. 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.
Based 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 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. 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 (goals) 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
specialisation 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 be able to adjust accordingly.
For further helpful information, see also the chapter on Goals
and Goal Setting
Further Self Improvement resources are
available from
The Freedom
Seed
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