What kind of future do you want? What do you want your family to look like? How do you want to spend your career? Designing your life is all about living intentionally. Figuring out what kind of life you want and intentionally living that life can provide you with an exceptional opportunity. By determining what you value most, what describes you best, and what you stand for, you can discover how to best navigate through life’s journey.
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What Kind of Life Do You Want?
Create Your Dream List
When establishing a vision for the life you want, creating a dream list can help you think beyond what you previously thought you could achieve. Do you want to have a big family, own a boat, or run a marathon? Don’t put any parameters around your dream list. Your dream list doesn’t have to be tied to things you want to accomplish; it can also include items that are important for you to have in your dream life.
As you create your dream list, remember that it’s not just about your dreams and aspirations; dreams also have significant implications for the people around you. How long can you make your dream list? Challenge yourself by trying to write down 50, or even 100, things on your dream list.
Test Your Dream
Once you’ve completed your dream list, you can begin narrowing it down by filtering out which dreams are most important to you. You can accomplish this by asking yourself these eight questions for every dream:
- Will reaching this dream make me more secure?
- Will reaching this dream make me happier?
- Will reaching this dream make me healthier?
- Will reaching this dream improve my relationships?
- Will reaching this dream give me peace of mind?
- Will reaching this dream make me more prosperous?
- Will reaching this dream give me a better self-image?
- Will reaching this dream provide me with hope?
When it comes to dreams, we have a terrible tendency to put them off until tomorrow, until next month, or until next year. If we don’t choose what kind of life we want, we will likely sit back and let life happen to us. To live intentionally, you must make an active decision to do things today that will take your life in a specific direction toward your dreams.
Identify Your Core Values
To help you distinguish your values, ask yourself these three specific questions.
- What do you value most? - Time may be your most valuable asset. Many of us feel as though we don’t have enough time. If that describes you, consider how you use your time and how you could be more diligent.
- What describes you best? - What is it that your friends would say about you? For example, would your friends describe you as constantly busy? If so, is that how you would want them to describe you? Or would you hope those closest to you would use words like authentic, genuine, supportive, and loving?
- What do you stand for? - What are you rooted in? When life doesn’t go your way, who are you? Are you a person with character and integrity?
Who Do You Want to Become?
Most of what we are chasing after in life falls into one of these six areas:
- Mental
- Social
- Spiritual/Ethical
- Physical
- Family
- Business/Financial
These three steps can help you on your path of living intentionally:
- Step 1: Write a Statement: Who Do You Want to Become? After identifying your core values, pick one of the six categories of life and write a statement that answers the question, who do you want to become? That statement could be for yourself, your family, or your business. For example, if you chose the financial category, you might write a statement like: Who do you want to become? - A financial steward, a wise investor, a successful business owner, and a generous giver.
- Step 2: Identify Your Goals Work to identify a goal for the category you wrote your statement about . For example, your financial goal may be to amass $5 million and a 4% annual rate of return in 10 years. Be specific about the particular goal you are chasing and the timing of when that will be done.
- Step 3: Write Out Your First Step Your first step is the action you will take to help you reach your goal. For example, for your financial goal, your first step may be to snowball your debt. This also needs to be specific, such as committing to pay off the debt by allocating an extra $500 each month to your smallest loan first, then paying off the next smallest loan until all of your debt is gone.
On the Road to Living Intentionally
To help start living a life aligned with your values, you need to answer a few additional questions.
- What are your potential obstacles? - Plan ahead and identify your potential obstacles so you can also plan how to overcome them. Obstacles may include burnout, lack of discipline, lack of support, or lack of confidence.
- Who will encourage and keep you accountable? - Someone needs to know what it is that you‘re working on. This may be your spouse, best friend, or mentor.
- Who are the dream stealers?- Just like you need someone to keep you accountable, there are people who don’t need to know. They may include cynical friends or relatives.
- What will you feel? -What feelings will you have when you reach this goal? You might feel peace of mind, secure, blissful, or proud that you live by design.
- Where will you post your goal so you’ll see it every day? -Make your goals visible. You might put it on the mirror, on the fridge, or on a post-it-note on the desk
Design Your Life With Neighborly®
You can envision what kind of life you want and what kind of future would leave you feeling fulfilled. Your dream life may include owning a business and leaving a legacy for your loved ones. With so many different franchise options out there, chances are good that there is one that best aligns with your passions, interests, skills, and goals.
Neighborly is here to help people considering the path of business ownership. Neighborly provides aspiring entrepreneurs with valuable information and insights that can help them decide to pursue the dream of business ownership.
Watch our Franchise Readiness webinar series on-demand to learn more about if business ownership is right for you, or talk to one of our franchise developers today.
