I have a question for you: Do you see yourself in the same spot (job, relationship, wealth, or health) 5 or 10 years from now? If you answered no, then this article is for you.
In this blogpost I’ll walk with you on a journey where we’ll see how to be in a better place in the future, in two simple steps.
Step 1: have the right compass in your life
Hands down the best idea that I took from the book The 7 Habits of highly effective people, by Stephen R. Covey is: All things are created twice: first in your mind, and second, physically.
For instance, if you were to create a home, you’d first create a layout in your head to later reduce it to a blueprint.
In this first phase, some iterations could come and go, but this is the most important part of the home creation. Otherwise, if a blueprint wasn’t created beforehand, and all decisions were to be made along the way, you’d have to make expensive changes that may double the cost of your home.
If you create a blueprint for building a home, why not for your life? Don’t you think that your life is incalculably more important than a home?
If fixings and adaptations during home construction could cost thousands of dollars, how much could they cost for your life construction?
Plan ahead! You’re the one to decide if in 5 years from now you want to be in the same spot as of today. Regarding your job, debt, health, or relationship.
If you find yourself in the future in the place where you wanted to be, it’s all due to the planning and improving through iterations. At this point, you’ll want to shake hands with your past self: He/She was the one planning your current life, he/she was the one improving 1% every day to be where you’re right now. And this takes us to the second step:
Step 2: 1% Better every day
I have good news for you: Your skills are not fixed! You don’t have to tag yourself as being bad at something for your entire life. Skills development is not a cliché, it’s actually promoted by the psychologist Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New psychology of success.
Your future self doesn’t have to be equal to your current you. Actually, the idea is your future self being better than your current self, in several planes of life.
How do you make sure that your future self is going to be better? Little but constant improvements, every day.
Health: What could start as drinking enough water a day, could evolve to running 5km a week, to going to the gym three times a week. The first steps are baby steps, then walking, and finally running. It doesn’t have to be all at once.
Reading: It’s a habit that opens worlds. It’s a way, maybe the best way, to get the experience of someone, through their own eyes, in a condensed way. Years and years of living are reduced to a single book.
Start by constantly reading a blog (maybe this one) to later evolve to easy books like Investing for Dummies to later evolve to the Intelligent Investor. Or maybe from How to win friends and influence people to later evolve to Emotional Intelligence. The thing is: start today the reading habit!
Investing: The first step is to learn about basic investing vocabulary. You can learn it in the 3-blogpost series “Creating Your own route of investments”. Later evolve to setting up an account with a brokerage firm or financial institution. By this time, you’ll know what to invest in.
For all these areas there will be ups and downs along the way, that is normal. With every down, then comes an up. Actually, it’s the downs that give you feedback on what to improve on. And those feedbacks produce iterations that will bring you to be better.
Highlights:
- If you plan a project, a home, or a journey, why don’t you plan your life? Don’t let your life-route be run by random events.
- Your skills are not fixed, don’t let your mind think the other way around.
- Just 1% improvement every day. The quantity of improvement isn’t as important as consistency.
- Again, plan ahead!
