Getting Started

OK, so in my last post I gave you an introduction to my purpose on this blog. Today I am going to tell you about the areas I want to focus on.

In order to determine that categories I want to focus on, I revisited a life plan I had to complete several years ago.  I once worked for a company that required we all complete a life plan. We had to determine the major categories in our life that were important to us, determine our ultimate goals in these categories, and a time frame for completing each. Then we had to work backwards and determine how we would reach each goal.

Let's say an ultimate goal had a target date of ten years, if that was the case, where did I need to be in five years to reach the ten year goal?  Then where did I need to be in one year to reach the five year goal? Ultimately I ended up with a list of action items that I needed to accomplish today in order to  reach each mini goal needed for the final goal. I personally loved this and I am considering revisiting this approach. For today though I am just going to focus on the categories, like those in the life plan.

The life plan template we were provided with gave some initial category examples which we could use or we could modify and reorder in terms of priority based on our own needs. An example of some of the categories that were listed are:

• Family
• Finances/Security
• Spiritual/Religion/Community
• Health/Wellness
• Professional/Career
• Social/Friendships

These are some great broad categories. I googled goal setting and came back with lots of sites that had lists, most of which were just derivatives of the list above. You can make your list whatever you want it to be. I think the goal is just to make sure each category of life is accounted for and I think the above list does a pretty good job of it, however I'm going to tweak it slightly.

• Finances
• Family
• Social
• Self-Fulfillment
• Healthy Living
• Spiritual
• Professional

These are the categories that are important to me in my life and that warrant exploration and continuous dedication and improvement. The big red flashing light is currently on healthy living, which is screaming, "I've been neglected! I've been neglected! I need attention, NOW!" Thus, I think I will be doing some heavy duty focusing there in the very near future. 

I have put thought into each of these areas and I can vision what happiness is in each, which I gladly plan to share. When I look back at my life plan from several years ago, I am amazed at what I have accomplished and what has actually changed. Some things I wanted, I now realize really are not necessary to be happy. There are also things that were missing from my plan that I now know are very important to my personal happiness. 

I plan to expand more on each category and tell you not only what each means to me, but also things I have worked on in each as well. Eventually I would like to share stories from others as well.

Have a great day tipping you happy scale!