Is your life turning out differently than you intended? Do you wish you could return to the path in life you originally envisioned?
Try this powerful exercise. Play through your life in your mind as if you were writing a screenplay of your life. But in this case, feel free to alter its progression.
You are in control as the director of the screenplay. So you can use your imagination to direct it in any way you desire. Then you’ll discover how different your life may have been — such as working for a different company or choosing a different profession that required you to relocate.
Your whole life might be different, having lived in a different town, knowing other people and making other friends.
The conclusion you imagine might upset you. You might suddenly realize you made the wrong choices. Getting in touch with this vision of how life carries out can help you improve your decision-making in the future to attain your ideal life.
Let’s review the obstacles that interfere with building your ideal life and how to change it.
Take the Time to Think About Your Objectives
When I have a serious problem I need to resolve, I sit in a comfortable chair in my living room (I call it my thinking chair) and contemplate the situation to figure out a solution.
It’s funny, but I always seem to get good ideas in that chair. I’m sure it’s just because I give the issue my attention and think it through.
How often do you think things through? Try it and see what you come up with.
Think About Your Sense of Purpose
While contemplating any decision, ask yourself, “What’s the point?” That will help you focus on the purpose of your decision so you won’t waste time with the wrong choice.
We go through life always choosing one thing or another. Whatever we do, we are eliminating all other possibilities — yet some of those options may have been better.
So always consider if you are doing something meaningful that leads to the purpose you truly want to accomplish.
How Are You Spending Your Time?
Are you overlook the things that are necessary to improve your desired goals? You might be confusing what you “want” with what you “need.”
It will be easier to make choices if you recognize why your needs are important to you. It’s crucial to understand the difference.
There is more to it, though. Your desires might be more important than just having them for pleasure. They could be crucial life plans, such as choosing a lifetime career, wanting to get married, raising a loving family, or buying a house in the country.
So, which is it? Are they needs or wants?
Note that there are no guarantees in life. The best you can do to attain a future with a positive outcome is to spend time with what’s important.
Among the people I know, I’ve noticed that those who don’t have their priorities set right end up wasting time.
Take some time to think about the options you have. How would you feel if you can’t achieve everything you want to do? When you get in touch with your feelings, you’ll be better at choosing the right goals and making the proper decisions to change what’s important.
Visualize Your Future
If you only dimly perceive where you want to go with your life, you will have little chance of getting there.
It’s best to put yourself in the image. Imagine your future. Place yourself there in your mind, and focus on how you feel about it.
Next thing you know, you’ll be on your way to reaching your goals and living your dreams. The trick is to imagine you are already there.2
Consider Your Goals and Objectives
Every decision you make has a tremendous effect on your future. One tiny change can create an entirely new direction that your life takes you. To give you an example, consider your choice of friends.
We spend days, years, maybe a lifetime with certain people we have accepted into our lives.
If we think about it, tracing back to who we met from whom, a friend of a friend who now became our friend, we realize that every decision had a turning point where we might have met someone else instead.
Then from that person, we would have met different people than those we know now. We would have had a completely different life at this juncture — knowing other people in every respect.
You may not have been aware of it, but every person you know, everyone you have been in contact with, has affected your life. One friend may have introduced you to a new venture that you experienced. Another may have made a comment that caused you to change your decisions.
You might have had a completely different life than you have now. Maybe better, maybe worse, maybe just something different.
I’m referring to friends as an example, but you can apply the same logic to choosing a profession, a social club you’re considering joining, or even how you treat people.
Was this meaningful to you? Tap
Many of us have made poor decisions that we later regret. I know I have. Many are minor and of little consequence. However, others may have been life-changing.
We can easily make mistakes in judgment when lacking information. That can happen when we don’t do enough research to get the required information.
Poor decisions can last a lifetime, but no matter where you are in life, you can try to change course. I’ll tell you how.
It helps to understand that while you are involved in any endeavor, you are missing out on anything else you could be doing. So you need to determine if your choices still have value to you. If not, consider making a change.
When you realize you made a bad choice that turned out to affect your future, then own up to it and make it work — or change it.
Sometimes we just need to stick to it. For example, contracts, commitments, and caring for other people are things that we need to respect. However, when we find ourselves going in a direction that offers no benefit or value, we need to correct our path to where we’re headed.
If we can catch our mistakes in time, before they significantly affect the outcome, we need to do whatever is necessary to change course. The sooner this is done, the easier it will be, and the less negative effect will come from it.
Do this thought process. In your mind, go back to a prior choice you’ve made — a career choice, for example. Think about what opportunities you overlooked.
At that time, you might not have been aware of options you missed that might have resulted in having better benefits with an alternative life you might have had.
Looking back now, you can see it clearly. But how does that help now? By keeping in mind what you just learned from this thought process, try to apply that when making new decisions.
Life isn’t always pleasant. We can experience catastrophes and misfortunes. Tragedy can strike anytime. It’s challenging to overcome adversity in life, and sometimes it’s impossible.
When you find yourself in the worst of times and know you need to find a way to pull through for survival, remember to stop and think of the options you may be overlooking.
When we become aware of the choices we have, it’s easier to develop resilience to adversity and deal with the trials and tribulations we encounter. Visualizing the outcome will help arrive at the best alternative decision.
There was a reason for the decisions we made throughout life. We chose the friends we have, the job we perform, and the person we married (or didn’t marry), all for reasons that were obvious at the time.
Even if we chose subconsciously or overlooked other options, our minds were made up for one reason or another.
Although we may make drastic mistakes in our judgment from time to time, the primary purpose of our choices is to improve our lives.
Just because some decisions we made in the past might seem to be poor judgment, it may very well have been what we wanted, and it had value to us at the time.
With that understanding, consider the future benefits of your next big decision. Don’t forget to value your safety, your satisfaction, your health, and your comfort.
Was this meaningful to you? Tap
