Life Plan UberSeries Pt 1: Identify What’s Important

The person who makes a success of living is the one who see his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
Cecil B. DeMille

I recently started a Series Creating a Life Plan and this is the first step in that process. The first task in creating a life plan is to identify the areas of my life that are most important to me. It’s very easy to get caught up in many different activities and feel like you are very busy but never really accomplishing all that much. In fact, for the majority of us, we feel like we are simply reacting to what life throws at us and not really being assertive and focused on what is most important to us.

So my first task is to make a list of all the things in my life. I tried to list out two different groups. Things that are actually going on. Things that I wish I was doing. Once I came up with those two lists, I compiled them together and then ranked them. Here is what I came up with:

1. My relationship with God
2. My Marriage
3. My relationship with my Children
4. Improving myself / Continual Growth
5. Health & Fitness
6. Friendships
7. Wedding Entertainment Business
8. Serving in Ministry
9. Financially Secure
10. Giving to Others

The order for the first three are very clear to me. After that I found it was difficult to rank them. They are all pretty much equally important. Although, Friendships and my Health and Improving Myself would be among the most important.

Relationships. In looking back at the list, the majority of what’s important in my life has to do with relationships. Either my relationship with God, my family, or my friends. Even serving in different ministry roles, or working with wedding clients, my purpose and joy has to do more with people than anything else.

Career. I also noticed that my current 9-5 job wasn’t anything that came up as being important at all. I have a wonderful job in the fact that I work with great people and it supports my family, but when I think of what I’m passionate about, my computer programming job was not on the list. I’ve been aware of this for a long time, knowing that my goal is to work towards what I would consider my dream job: Part time Wedding Entertainment / Part time Ministry.

I personally don’t think ‘Career’ should be on anyone’s list. But rather identify what is important to you and your job would be a means to achieve those goals. If your current job doesn’t fulfill your passions, then you should strive to find a job that does.

Next Step. In my next article I will be breaking down each of these Priorities and determining what success will specifically look like for each item.

You may also enjoy reading:

6 Philosophies Worth Living By

7 Choices that will have a Positive Impact on Your Life

The Art of SingleTasking

5 ttributes of a Good Leader

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