The process of becoming your best self is a journey towards wholeness. Only when we are whole do we move through life with ease, purpose and success. I believe there are five steps towards wholeness.
1. Accept Responsibility for Your Life.
2. Focus on the Elements. [Another way to say this is "Work through your Barriers"].
3. Complete the Past.
4. Plan for the Future.
5. Live in the Present.
While most of us see the value in working towards wholeness, sometimes we get stuck in accepting, or practicing, an individual step.
As if wholeness was not enough, here are the top 3 reasons to Plan for the Future:
1. If you do not know where you are going, you will not know when you get there. Getting clarity about what you want to create in your life is the first step in achieving it. Even before you deal with the obstacles that get in the way of your manifesting what you want, it is critical that you define what it is you do want. While it is easy to drift through life taking this road and then that one, flowing aimlessly from one destination to another, those pleasurable meanderings are just that: meanderings. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon, but not too helpful for achieving success in life.
2. You can celebrate every “win” along the way. Part of the process for planning for the future is identifying the intermediate milestones along the way. As we break down the steps needed to create the future, we can also see which stages can be classified as mini-wins. These need to be celebrated. The recognition of completed steps and mini-rewards keeps us motivated for the long haul.
3. By paying attention to the journey, you will know when it is time to go back to the drawing board. As we move forward towards our stated goals, we keep getting more information and having more experiences. The information picked up along the way, and our responses to that information gives us valuable clues about the path and journey we are on. It ma confirm that what we want and our action plan to achieve it is right on target. It may also point out that either the goal or our path to the goal needs to be reworked. Either way, we get to go back to the drawing board as often as we like. It is never a bad plan, it is just that we do not always have all the information needed to finish the journey.