Welcome to the final article in this two-part series.
If you landed on this page first and are a bit confused, read the first article of this series before continuing:
No plans for the future? — Try these 7 steps to find your purpose (Part 1/2).
Let’s jump right into the following steps to create future plans when you have no idea what to do.
Plans About the Future
Taking time to formulate plans will help you become successful in the future.
These plans should be detailed and specific, and it should be written down for easy reference. The plans should outline what you intend to do in order to meet your goals. Take into account any obstacles you anticipate confronting along the way and how you plan on overcoming them.
However, not knowing where to start is by far the biggest obstacle to overcome.
This blog post is the second part of a two-part series. Here we’ll explore steps four through seven to find your purpose in order to create a plan for the future. Steps one through two can be found here.
Let’s continue …
Plans for the Future Cont.
Upon completion of steps one through three, it’s time to move on. Remember that you cannot rush this process. It may take some people a few years of exploration and experimentation before they finally land on something they truly love.
Don’t get discouraged if your search for the perfect career, job, or business is taking longer than you expected. It simply means there are valuable life lessons you still need to learn before you find your path.
If you feel yourself getting anxious, think of everything you’ve learned so far and all of the experiences you have gained as a result. And, if you need to, take a break from searching so hard.
Your best ideas will come when you least expect them.
Step 4: Spend Some Time Alone
Go for long walks alone or start to meditate to build a strong connection with your body, mind, and spirit.
Spend the day in silence. Go to a remote place without distractions for a few days and simply observe the world around and within you.
Your mind needs silence to process your questions so it can supply you with the answers you need.
Separate yourself from distracting family, friends, and lovers. Sit by yourself and enjoy your own company.
This is a valuable step you need to make to understand what your values are and what it is you truly want from life.
Analyze your energy. Question yourself to get a sense of your true personality, and what your emotions are telling you.
What makes you feel happy? What drains your energy, and what do you need to remove from your life to feel better mentally and physically?
Most people don’t realize that going into a state of solitude can be extremely introspective and helpful in learning yourself better, which brings you closer to knowing and understanding your purpose.
When you feel like it’s too noisy, or you’re feeling lost and worried, contact your inner guide and ask for support. They’re always with you, and they have the best advice. All you have to do is ask.
Make your solitude times into a weekly, monthly, or yearly habit. Always check in on yourself. It’s how you’ll know when to move forward or when to stop.
Step 5: Journal Your Journey
Every time you journey within yourself, write about all the thoughts, feelings, questions, and solutions you encountered.
Write down what your body is telling you, and what your inner voice is saying to you.
You don’t have to share this information with anyone else, and it’s not necessary that others ever read it. This is simply a tool for you to observe yourself better in the process of finding your purpose.
Everything you write is a form of data you can use to focus on moving forward.
If you’ve never considered journaling before, you might be surprised at how beneficial it can be to you on your journey of planning your future.
Writing down your thoughts, dreams, inner research, and past experiences will provide you with a solid foundation to build upon as you work towards finding your right track.
Take some time to experiment with different journaling styles until you find what works best for you, but make sure to keep it consistent. This is a great way to maintain focus and create better clarity in your life.
Your journal also serves as an excellent reference point to keep your focus on things related to the theme you’re exploring and experimenting with.
If you don’t have one, do yourself a huge favor and get a journal now. Great things happen when you seek wisdom from within.
Step 6: Design a Vision Board
By the time you arrive at this step, you’ll have a great idea of your likes and dislikes, your skills and capabilities, and your personality traits.
Find pictures related to the theme you’ve been working on in your exploration and experimental phase. The ideas you’ve had in your solitary state, and the realizations and self-discovery you’ve discerned through journal writing and creating a vision board.
Include images of people, places, activities, and things that made you happy when you were young and how you would like your ideal future to look.
Use only positive imagery. Doing this increases the value and potential you can attract.
You don’t have to be an artist, and you don’t need to spend a lot of money on this project. A free vision board option is to cut out old magazine pages that have images you like that also resonate with your theme and glue them onto your journal pages.
Creating a visual of how you want your future to look will give your brain a clear example of what you’re working towards. It will also provide you with the satisfaction of having tangible goals to move toward.
Step 7: Take Action, Keep Going, and Be Open to Change
All of this work and research can be overwhelming if you don’t have the right tools, skills, or knowledge to take action.
When you arrive at this step, you’ll have a great idea of exactly how you want your reality to look in the future. By this point, you’ve done the experiments, read the books, and explored the countries or towns beneficial to your education on this journey. This is the moment when everything comes together to format a very detailed plan for your future.
It is imperative that you keep an open mind and be willing to make changes depending on what you’ve discovered along the way and what you’ll keep discovering. Your educational process doesn’t end when you find one answer. There’s always more to learn.
It is important that you avoid getting attached to any ideas, no matter how good or powerful they may seem. The moment you become attached to something in life and overvalue it, will be the moment you allow control to take over.
You can’t control exactly how your life will turn out. You can only set your intentions and work towards them with an open heart. Keeping an open mind will allow new opportunities to flow into your life. When you start to expect things, you begin to limit what resources come to you.
Whatever obstacle that may block your path to success, understand it for what it really is — a lesson — and keep going.
Nothing is achieved without taking action.
If you’ve done all the work up to this point, you’ll be doing yourself a huge disservice if you don’t take the necessary steps to turn hope into reality. You’ve done the research; now create a plan of action.
Don’t be afraid to go against what society says you need to do in order to create the life you want to live.
You’re here on this planet as a divine being having an earthly experience, and that means you have nothing to prove and everything to learn.
Do yourself a favor and work for what you want.
You are the only one who can figure out what makes you happy. Therefore, pursue your purpose in life.
No one else can do that for you. Your parents, friends, or spouse may help guide you, but they will never be able to tell you what’s right for you as an individual.
The Journey Begins When You Decide to Change
Your personal journey will be filled with many lessons. You may currently be going through some right now. The Universe keeps testing us to keep us growing and moving forward and to check our worthiness of the goals we aspire to accomplish.
Remember, everything you go through is a lesson. Enjoy the ride, and figure out how to laugh more at yourself.
Another bonus of this process is that it will allow you to see who your true friends are, and those who aren’t so supportive will fade away into nothingness. Trust me, they were never really your friends to begin, so don’t lose sleep about their disappearance from your life.
In order to have success in life, you have to be willing to face challenges head-on and learn from them. The instant you stop learning is the moment your growth process stops.
Tips to Live By:
- You can achieve anything if you plan it well.
- Stick to your theme.
- Keep educating yourself.
- Learn from your mistakes.
- Don’t get too attached to a specific outcome.
- Don’t let fear stop you, be curious and excited about what’s coming next.
- Follow through with your plan of action.
- Always keep an open mind, and be willing to make changes based on the changing circumstances in your life.
- If you’re not enjoying yourself, do something else.
The journey of finding your purpose will likely be the most rewarding and challenging thing you’ll ever do in life. However, by putting yourself and your desires first, your search for a better future will begin to manifest into reality.
There is no time like right now, and the only person who can stop you from living your purpose is you.
It’s your choice to either continue with the excuses or create a new course for your life.
Life is too short to keep living in the past or worrying about future plans.
What’s holding you back from starting step one today?
“The best way to predict the future is to create it” — Abraham Lincoln
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