To envision our future self, we need to reflect on our experiences from the past. When we evaluate our experiences, we can start to understand our unique motivations and value that we can contribute. And then we can formulate a picture of our preferred future state.
Evaluate Experiences
“Experience is not the best teacher – evaluated experience is!”
John Maxwell
Good questions to ask ourselves to evaluate our experiences are:
- What energized me?
- What drained me?
- What did I want to tackle first in the day because it was fun?
- What did I put off because I just didn’t want to deal with it?
- What upset me?
- What made me smile?
- What did I learn more about?
- What did I choose not to learn more about?
These questions can be applied to your daily work, special projects, and everyday life.
If you’ve never done this exercise before, it’s an easy one to do and can give you good insight into where you are super productive and where not so much.
Motivations
If you’ve had more than one job or position at work, do the experience evaluation exercise for each role you’ve had. Look for patterns in your answers. Ask yourself why for each answer:
- Why did something energize or drain me?
- Why did I get upset or why did the experience bring me joy?
Asking these questions unearths values. Write down your thoughts as they come to you.
Shape Your Future
Make another list that combines the results of your reflection.
- What is the environment like where you are excited to go to work every day?
- What kind of work would make you proud to be a part of?
- What skills or talents do you have that you would love to put to use and make a living with?
More practically, what does a ‘great place to work’ feel like to you? Is there travel involved? Are there flexible hours? How much creative freedom would you like to have? Is your boss a coach and mentor, or a good role model? Do you even have a boss? How many hours do you work a week?
Taking time to think about these questions and what a great future would look like is the first step towards making that a reality.
“…all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things.”
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Essentially, we will not get to where we are going if we do not first imagine the destination.
Take Time to Think
You need to be intentional about setting aside time to think through and reflect on experiences, write down the results, and craft a vision of your preferred future state. But this is what leaders do! Leaders take the time to think about how things can be, how they prefer them to be.
Whether or not you lead people, you are a leader of yourself. Set aside time to think and craft your awesome, unique vision! And know that as you grow as person and experience more of life, you can do the exercises again and course corrected if needed.
engineer your life
- Set time aside to think and reflect and honor that time.
- Ask yourself questions that will reveal what is important to you.
- Craft a vision of your preferred future state.
- Start making decisions daily that will align with that future state.
Keep pressing on. You’ve got this!