Life Mapping: A Vision of Success
Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning
for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a
map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination, vehicle, backpack,
landmarks, and route.
Origin: Who you are
A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now.
Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jean and I
am a 17-year old, senior highschool student.” It does not tell you about who
Jean is; it only tells you her present occupation. To gain insights about
yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles
aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover,
you can also reflect on your experiences to give 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 in the biological-medical
field. Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars
were destructive to human dignity.
Destination: A vision of who you want to be.
“Who do want to be?” this is your vision. Now it is important that you
know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and
the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of
view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future
would also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your
being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Jean’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 can reach your destination. It
can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your
mission would depend on what you know about yourself. Based on Jean’s
self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a doctor, and that
she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a medical doctor. Describing
her vision-mission fully: it was 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 travelling 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 attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to
assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you
need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on
your landmarks or measures of success. Jean realized that she needed to gain
professional knowledge and skills on medicine so 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 (goals) confirm if you are on the right track while the
route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also
need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of
success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic,
and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a
master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since
the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years. Going
back to Jean 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 specialisation in infectious diseases by
the age of 30; getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the
age of 32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.
Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes
The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and
spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes
our plans are modified along the way due to 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 be able to adjust
accordingly.
For further helpful information, see also the chapter on Goals and
Goal Setting
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