How to Take Control of Your Life
Are you looking for a helpful tool to help steer your life to where it is that you would like it go, vs. just wherever it may be? Or are you looking for something to use to encourage your clients take on a more proactive vs. reactive role in their lives?
If yes, you are likely to find Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want , [affiliate link] the book Michael Hyatt co-authored with Daniel Harkavy, the answer you have been looking for!
It provides you with important reasons why you (or your clients) would want to take the time to create a life plan, the 3 critical questions you would need to answer to create your life plan, as well as an action plan to carry it out.
Creating a life plan feels completely feasible and inspiring due to the many examples the authors provide throughout the book to both clarify and illustrate its various components. The various templates and online tools are also a huge help!
As a social worker or other mental health professional, having a tool like this that enhances overall wellbeing can be powerful. In our efforts to focus on the care for our clients, some of us may forget to tend our own gardens. However, as Michael and Daniel state: “You can’t take care of anyone else unless you first take care of yourself.” In other words, we must take care of ourselves to provide the best care for our clients.
Secondly as they wisely state, before being able to support and empower our clients, we must “Practice before you preach.” Or to put it another way, we can only ask and encourage our clients to take control of their lives after we have written our own life plans.
Now, without further ado, below are the key ingredients Michael and Daniel recommend for creating your life plan.
What Is a Life Plan?
As per the Living Forward authors, a life plan is akin to a GPS app that you need to stay on track to the path of the life you want. It is usually a short written document (5 to 15 pages) that:
- Is created by you and for you
- Describes how you want to be remembered
- Articulates your personal priorities
- Specifies the actions necessary to take you from where you are to where you want to be in every major area of your life
- Is a living document that you will tweak and adjust over time
Why Create a Life Plan?
To increase your likelihood that you will get to where you want to go + live a more fulfilled and balanced life!
- Clarify Priorities – You will avoid overanalyzing or second-guessing; what’s most important to you will be clearer.
- Maintain Balance – You will be able to give appropriate attention to each of your life areas (i.e., you may grow at work without diminishing other areas of your life).
- Filter opportunities – You are able to manage your opportunities rather than be managed by them.
- Face realities – You must acknowledge any problems you may have in health, work or at home etc., to be able to address and improve them.
- Envision the future – You focus on what you see; choose a future/vision that compels you.
- Avoid regrets – You can dramatically increase the chances of doing what you want to do.
Create Your Life Plan
How Do You Want to Be Remembered > Your Legacy
- Identify key relationships
- Children
- Parents
- Extended Family
- Friends
- Colleagues
- Mentees
- Community Members
- Others?
- Indicate how you would like to be remembered by each relationship
- Visualize how you would like to be remembered when you are gone? This is your legacy. You have the ability to change the direction of how they will remember you now!
What Matters Most to You > Your Priorities
- Identify your life accounts (for example)
- Faith
- Self-care
- Family
- Extended Family
- Career
- Creating
- Adventure
- Prioritize accounts
- To avoid the cultural drift, you have to choose where you want to go.
- Assess current status
- Accounts either have a growing, consistent or declining balance.
- Use the online Life Assessment Profile tool to see whether each account is getting what it needs.
- Aim for a positive balance in each of your life accounts.
How Do You Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Go > Action Plan
- State purpose of each life account – describe your primary responsibility as if you were assigned the role of wife/mother etc.
- Describe envisioned future – employ all five senses to describe how the account looks when your account is functioning at its best as if it is already a reality. Use present tense to further solidify this feeling, belief and confidence in yourself and your ability to achieve your goal.
- Select an inspiring quote for each account
- Summarize current status – a few simple bullets of where you stand for each life account
- Commit to a few specific SMART actions that are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time-bound
- Dedicate 1 day to creating your life plan – it takes a full day to get it right; block time off on the calendar and unplug.
How Do You Implement Your Plan?
- Triage your calendar – Templates are provided to help!
- Schedule priorities
- Use the Yes-No-Yes technique to say no to more requests
- Maintain a schedule for reviewing and tweaking to keep your plan on track!
To elaborate a bit more on why using Living Forward [affiliate link] may be particularly helpful to working with clients:
Clients often come to social workers and other helping professionals looking to improve one area or another of their lives, not being aware of how one area may be impacting other areas. Other individuals may come in feeling a drift from where they want to be and/or seek to improve their relationships.
By encouraging clients to create their own life plans, you may help them gain quicker clarity over what their needs and issues are, determine their desired destination in all the areas of their lives and start making improvements within their relationships and other realms.
Now, that I’ve finished the book and this post, I can’t wait to set aside a day to put together my plan!
What are your thoughts about putting together a life plan, or using the book in your work with your clients?
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one copy of the book mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
Wonderful infographic, Dorlee. I have always liked Michael Hyatt’s blog. It’s good to hear that you like his book, too. I have found that clarifying my priorities and taking stock of where I’m putting my energy that’s always been a very helpful process. That said, I’ve never had much luck with the life plan concept. I’ve never been able to articulate goals that were that definitive, and my life has never felt very linear. The more meaningful question for me has been: what do I want more of and less of in my life? This has helped me make the needed decisions to guide me.
I would love to hear more about the Yes-No-Yes approach to decisions.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment and kind feedback, Nancy!
While you may some have difficulty in articulating some specific goals for a life plan, it sounds like you, have in fact, been in engaging in some of these steps (clarifying priorities and taking stock of where you’re investing your efforts) without a formal plan and it works quite well 🙂
On the off chance that you feel like putting together a Living Forward type of life plan over a full day, I think you are likely to gain much more clarity about what it is you want and don’t want because we don’t often think and ask ourselves the specific questions that Mike and Daniel recommend vis a vis key relationships/all our life accounts.
It is true that you may indeed have some unspecified or TBD goals but that is ok, because we are living and changing daily. Similarly, our life plan is a living document to be tweaked and evolve as our needs change.
The Yes-No-Yes approach is a way of saying no to more requests and it refers to the idea of:
1) saying yes to yourself and protecting what is important to you and affirming the person making the request
2) saying no to the other person’s request in a clear way
3) saying yes to affirming the relationship and offering another solution to the person’s request
For example, if someone asked you to speak at an event that you do not want to speak at, you could decline in this manner:
(yes) Thank you so much for thinking of me.
(no) Unfortunately, I will not be able to make it.
(yes) I do have some materials that I may offer you as background to assist you, and I also have the name of two other experts on this very topic whom I could recommend for this position. They are X and Y; both of them would be excellent speakers on this topic and their contact information is as follows….
Thanks again!
I’ve been doing something very close to that Yes No Yes. I like how they describe it. Thanks for sharing it.
I actually have done these types of “retreat” sessions, with all sorts of questions. I just come up pretty blank about specific life goals/legacy. I find myself having a hard time setting a goal without the embedded context. There’s too much “it depends” for me. But the valuing of priorities and checking alignment with life works well for me.
I’m so glad, Nancy, that you liked Mike and Daniel’s Yes-No-Yes approach.
I also really like it. It feels like a very respectful way of both declining and respecting your needs/priorities (thereby making it easier to say no when you want/need to).
How interesting – it sounds like you have actually done the deep dive into the life plan type of approach.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by you having a hard time setting a goal without the embedded context. Can you give an example?
That’s great that you have a method that clarifies priorities and works well for you. Occasionally, I find myself conflicted and therefore I think I’d benefit from the clarity that the life plan yields.
Thank you for this great read which is filled with life enhancing guidance for identifying a life path that’s well aligned with ones personal values!
Effective immediately I am taking a day to work on my life plan!
I’m so glad, LaTonya, that you found this post helpful and that you have become inspired to work on your life plan!
Thanks so much for sharing 🙂
Best,
Dorlee
Good Morning, having worked in EAP and College Counseling this Life Plan tool would be empowering. I am currently in a life transition both personally and professionally so I plan to use this for myself. I would love to attend a workshop. Have a great day and thank you for all your insights!
Hi Ingrid,
I’m so glad that you feel that creating a Life Plan would be empowering for your employees/students/!
And that you plan to create one now for yourself! I’d love to hear how you find the process.
Life Planning workshops could indeed be fun. Michael and Daniel plan to create trainings for corporations to empower their employees with this tool. Perhaps if/when there is enough demand, they will also consider establishing workshops for individuals.
Thanks so much for sharing and good luck with your life plan!
Best,
Dorlee
You have such a wonderful site, Dorlee! Thanks for the wonderful tools you share, such as this. We can adapt and use as appropriate.
Sunya Folayan
Thanks so much for your kind feedback, Sunya
I’ m so glad that you find the tools helpful!
Thanks again 🙂
Best,
Dorlee
Again with the fabulous infographic. You do have so many talents, Dorlee!
I love that right off the bat you state a life plan is created by you, for you. Too often, one gets stuck dreaming of someone else’s life, when time is best invested in living the life you were meant to live.
A life that includes meaning, which makes room for self-compassion, along with the other things that make your heart sing.
Marianna,
Thanks so much for your kind feedback and thoughtful comment!
All the points you’ve raised are critical to living a fulfilling life: living your life’s dream (not someone else’s), making sure that your work/life consists of something that is meaningful and makes your heart sing (wonderful goal), and remembering to be self-compassionate with yourself.
I love that phrase “makes your heart sing” and now may I ask, can you give a few examples of what makes your heart sing?
Being in, on or near the water. Clean, crisp, cold sheets. The days when I awaken and move with ease right from the get-go. Forbidden laughter. A full moon over a wintry landscape. A harvest moon. That moment when a friend and I say the same thing at the same time. I can go on, but shall stop here.
How about you?
Thanks so much for sharing, Marianna!
Aside from gratitude for feeling well/better, it sounds like part of what makes your heart sing is both being close to nature (being in or near water), as well as a particular type of sensation – which you obtain from both being in water or touching clean, crisp, cold sheets…
I think my heart also sings with my being in water (warm though as in bath) or near (as in a lake/sea etc). I would probably add also being fully engaged in a creative art activity 🙂
Frankly speaking, I greatly appreciate being in this site. The write ups in this site are quite educational. Thanks for the opportunity.