In Plan a Passionate Life (Part One), I wrote about letting go of last year by burning away our proud and shameful memories.
Plan a Passionate Life: (Part Two) is about igniting the fires that inspire us by connecting to the most important roles we play in our lives.
I wrote this article (Part Three) to help you connect to your life’s dreams, refine them into good goals for the year, and find the next steps you can take this coming week. I say “good goals” because they actually do a fair amount of work for you. Even if it’s about the future, a good goal helps you focus now. Investing time in setting good goals will pay you back, so our goal now is to make good goals.
Making the Year’s Plan.
By my definition a plan is simply a set of goals. The goals you make in this exercise will be the foundation for your Year’s Plan. Before you start, have ready your list of leading roles as defined in Part Two. This final step is about creating goals for each of those roles. I’ll use real examples from me and my students. Give yourself 30 minutes to do the exercise.
Step 1: Before I Die…
First, let me explain that I’m not obsessed with death, even if I’ve written about it here and here and here and here and here. Contemplating the end of your life helps you connect to your core desires and values. This exercise works best when you do that.
You’ll be writing down our goals, one at a time. I prefer using 3×5 cards, but if you don’t have them, use separate pages in a notebook for each goal you make. Like many exercises, the first pass should be done fairly quickly so you don’t over-think your answers.
At the top of your first card, write “As a [role], before I die, I want to …” and complete the sentence. For example:
As a Father, before I die, I want to travel with my daughter to a distant land and look for a new way of seeing the world.
Now it’s your turn. For each role, write your goal at the top of a card (or page), only one goal per card. Do not make your goals all encompassing. Do not make them vague. Make them as specific as possible, and start each with a verb so they require taking action. Here are some other real examples:
As a Spiritual Guide, before I die, I want to make a living healing people.
As an Entrepreneur, before I die, I want to build a profitable, sustainable food market in my neighborhood.
As The Stoker of my own vitality, before I die, I want to take excellent care of this precious body.
As Lover to my wife, before I die, I want to her to always know I think she’s luscious.
As an Artist, before I die, I want to collaborate with some of my role models.
As a Scientist, before I die, I want to finish my Ph.D so I can set up my own lab.
As a Brother, before I die, I want to know my brother a little better.
This is not a friggin’ bucket list! Bucket lists are for collecting experiences, regardless of their meaning. Each one of these goals should pry open your heart and dig a trench from there down through your groin and into the center of the earth. If you don’t feel passionate about one of them, chuck it! (Or stick it on a friggin’ bucket list.)
With one goal for each role, you probably have between 5 and 15 goals. Feel free to add a few more if some of your roles are begging for it, but don’t bother being too thorough. That’s not the point of this exercise.
Step 2: And This Year I will…
The next step is simple, on the same card add to each goal, “… and this year I will …” Complete that sentence with something you know you will do this year, a smaller goal that moves you closer to your life long goal. Again, don’t make it all encompassing; make it specific. Here’s one of my own:
As a Brother, before I die, I want to know my brother a little better,
and this year I will tell him.
And some more examples:
As a Spiritual Guide, before I die, I want to make a living healing people,
and this year I will make my first buck by charging for a workshop.
As an Entrepreneur, before I die, I want to build a profitable, sustainable food market in my neighborhood,
and this year I will, set aside $25K so I can quit my job.
As The Stoker of my own vitality, before I die, I want to take excellent care of this precious body,
and this year I will join a beginning T’ai Chi class.
How’d it go? If this is all you did this year, would it be a great year? Imagine focusing on each goal, one at a time. Are you painting a picture of a life you totally believe in, at least a year that moves in the right direction?
If most of them feel right, then let’s move on. You can come back. If not, then it’s time to adjust your goals until they feel motivating and will help you focus. Here are some more articles on making good goals.
Step 3. My Next Step…
The next step of the refinement is figuring out your next step— your very next tiny step, so for each goal, flip the card over, or leave a little space and add: “My very next step is to …” By tiny step, I mean tiny, something you could do at your very next opportunity. I like to use my own goal from a couple years ago because it illustrates this idea so well.
As a Brother, before I die, I want to know my brother a little better,
and this year I will tell him.
My brother and I rarely spoke before I set this goal so the opportunity to tell him I’d like to get to know him better was going to have to be deliberate:
My very next step is to find his phone number.
Now, Plan Your Week, Every Week.
That’s it! If you completed this exercise you can honestly say you made your Year’s Plan, a set of goals that connect your actions to what’s most important to you. Use these cards regularly, stack them on your desk and flip through them when you make each Week’s Plan. Refine, revise, just stay connected.
Of course your life’s work is about what you do every week from now on. The Year’s Plan is just one tool to make a life you believe in. If you are ready to change your habits so the steering wheel of your life stays in your hands every day, sign up for the Ten Lessons for Designing a Balanced Life, tools and exercises offered online, live, every week. It’s a great deal, and new classes start soon.
