Road Map
Remember the saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, then any road will get you there?” Practicing true resilience means that you should have some idea about where you are going in the future, balanced with what you are doing in the present, and formed by the lessons that you learned from the past.
Ideally, we spend the majority of our time in the present, enjoying the journey with our loved ones because life is short, very short.
Being organized should be part of our daily ritual. Disorganization leads to wasted time and energy and, of all things, stress. Stay organized and you reduce your exposure to stress. But that’s not enough. We also need to have a plan of attack in everything that we do. We need a road map.
Our work schedules are fairly detailed. Daily meetings, agendas, program plans, etc. We tend to be super organized at work, and don’t even think about showing up not prepared to a sales call or a business meeting. We also know about promotions and jobs that will help us to get promoted. However, our organization and plans seldom spill over into our personal lives.
Develop personal goals for yourself. Perhaps you already have done this with a bucket list? Now it’s time to take a couple of the elements from your bucket list and develop a road map to accomplish those items. What are the specific actions that you need to accomplish in order to work up to the elements that you picked out? Perhaps you need to save some money for a trip to some location that you have not been yet? Write down all the steps that lead up to the item on your list. Now assign dates to those steps. Having a time line is an important part of the road map. Assigning a date creates a sense of temporal accountability. If you don’t have a date, then chances are you will never get started on the item from your list because something will always get in the way. We all lead busy lives.
Road Maps Give You Something to Look Forward To.
Sometimes life throws us some curve balls. We all have had (and will have) bad things that happen to us. These may or may not be catastrophic events. They can be as simple as having a bad day at work or getting into an argument because you said something you should not have said to someone close to you. We all have those days. Having a quantifiable road map with executable intermediary tasks helps us to look forward to something in the future, while executing present tasks to support that future goal. Remember that dwelling too much in the future takes us away from the precious moments that we have in the present, so be careful to only spend the minimum amount of time planning and thinking about the future. Having an organized road map can minimize your dwell time thinking about your mission/goal and the tasks that will support it.
Assignment
This week, take one of your items on your bucket list and write out all the steps that you need to accomplish in order to achieve that item. Let’s say that your item has 10 steps needed to get you to execute that goal. Create a road map where you have the 10 steps, along with completion date goals, written down so you can monitor your progress. The entire process should not only make you feel more organized, but a renewed sense of purpose should wash over you as soon as you see your road map written down.
Dr. N
