January 14th, 2008
Your Ultimate Life – Step Two
Happy New Year! I hope 2008 is off to a great start for you.
This month, I take you through a five-part process to define your ultimate life vision. It’s important to define a happy life before defining your specific career goals. Once you know what’s most important to you overall, you can design your career around those things. Therefore, your career will fit in with your life, rather than forcing your life to somehow fit around your career.
As an executive coach, I help professional women discover their authentic career fit. I want to help you do the same. This means identifying a career that:
- Is a natural fit for your authentic self
- Is in alignment with your skills, interests and values
- Feels right and meets your personal and professional needs
Before I take clients through the steps of identifying their ideal career fit, I first have them define their ideal life. I ask them to create a description of their ultimate life.
Each week in January, I’ll take you through a specific step to help define your ultimate life vision. These exercises involve brainstorming and writing down specific aspects of your ideal life vision. I provide thought-provoking questions to help you get clear on what you’d like your life to “look like.”
Your Ultimate Life – Step Two
The second step in defining your ultimate life vision is identifying with whom you live. Naturally, the people with whom we surround ourselves influence our happiness. To have a happy life, we must be around people who feed our soul and allow us to blossom into our true potential.
The following questions will get you started. Feel free to add additional details that come to mind. If you’re not exactly sure how to answer these questions, that’s okay. Simply write the first thing that comes to mind. The idea here is to start the process of brainstorming your life vision.
Let your creativity flow and do not judge or censor yourself. Have fun with it! There are always practicalities to consider (kids in school, a partner’s job, family nearby, etc.), but you have permission to suspend reality for the purposes of this exercise. Think about it in these terms: “If I could not fail, how would I like my life to be?”
- With whom do you live?
- Do you have children? If so, how many?
- Do you have a life partner? If so, describe this person.
- With whom do you spend most of your time?
- Who is in your social circle?
- What family members are near by?
Give yourself the time and space to ponder these questions. Remember, don’t filter anything - let your creativity flow!
I suggest you work on this a little bit each day. This will allow you to consistently focus on the process and will open you up to new possibilities.
Schedule time in your calendar to complete this second step in the next seven days. That way, you’ll be sure to get it done and not let it linger on that never-ending to do list. Next week, we’ll focus on the next phase: How You Spend Your Free Time.
I wish you much continued success as you move towards defining a life you love!
Until next week…
Warmly,
Maret
