A Vision of Success

Success is quite economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. almost like a map, you would like to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.

Origin: Who you are

A map contains a starting point. Your origin is who you're right now. most of the people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Kim and that i am a 17-year old, high school school student.” It doesn't tell you about who Kim is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. to gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles apart from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover, you'll also reflect on your experiences to provide 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 within the biological-medical field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose which wars were destructive to human dignity.

Destination: A vision of who you would like to be

“Who do want to be?” this is often your vision. Now it's important that you simply know yourself in order that you'd have a clearer idea of who you would like to be; and therefore the things you want to change whether or not they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would even be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Kim'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'll reach your destination. It may be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a good extent, your mission would depend upon what you know about yourself. based on Kim’s self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor which she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully: it had been 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 traveling 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 achieving your vision. Given such, there's a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at the present and what you would like to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will provide you with insights on your landmarks or measures of success. Kim realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge and skills on medicine in order 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 confirm if you're on the proper track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also got to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bounded. Thus you can not set two major landmarks like earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years since the minimum number of years to finish a master’s degree is 2 years. Going back to Kim 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 specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of 32, and serving aa s doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to reduce hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions which will cause you to lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way because of 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 adjust accordingly.