I have been blogging with ideas you can use like puzzle pieces or building blocks to put together to make a creative and ordered life for yourself -- a functioning whole.   Puzzle pieces, building blocks . . . you can also imagine a dial that is used for tuning -- sometimes tuning dials just need tiny adjustments; sometimes more.

I want to talk about those greater adjustments to that dial.  Sometimes we need to make choices and designs that are major, and until we do make those larger plans, tiny adjustments aren't going to help us.  Think of it like this:  You could get to the top of a ladder rung by rung (tiny adjustments), but it would be pretty sad if you didn't find out if it was leaning against the wrong wall until you got to the top (major adjustment).

So I am going to speak of Long-Term Planning.  Before you do any long-term planning, you will need to have already prepared the following: 1.  You need to know (discover) your purpose.  2.  You need to know your mission for this earth life.  3. You need to have an awareness of the season of human development you are in, its privileges and limitations.  4.  You need to examine to see if previous seasons of your life have been un- or under-developed.  And 5.  You need to examine and be aware of what areas of your life are presently experiencing abundance and which areas are presently experiencing poverty.  Each of these five thing I have touched upon in previous blogs.  Long-term planning works best if each of these five things are in written form -- write down your purpose, have a written mission statement, and have a report or some notes on numbers 3, 4 and 5.  You may wish to have a folder to keep these items together.

Now -- get three blank pages.  Title them "Five years", "Ten years", and "Twenty years" respectively.

A couple of notes:  There is no one perfect way to do this; you can modify this exercise to suit yourself.  But try it this way first.  For example, at one point in my life I had a 10-year "supergoal", and then divided it up into 1-year goals that would reach the 10-year supergoal.

Anyway -- start with the "Twenty year page".  Brainstorm things you would like to Be, things you would like to Do, and things you would like to Have.  Brainstorming means that you don't judge the ideas before you write them.  You just write down whatever desires, large or small, pop into your mind.  You don't establish criteria for their feasiblity or such at this point.  Desire or want is the only criteria at this point.  It is just to get ideas flowing -- write them all down!  Another technique is to write an obituary for yourself, detailing what you accomplished while you lived and the sort of person you'd become.  Put at least one thing on your Twenty year list that takes your breath away -- at least one thing (more if you like!) that you really desire but think that it belongs in fairy tale land.  That might be "tour Europe", "meet the President", "get my kids back", "own 100 acres" -- whatever takes your breath away, would make life magical if you could count on it being true (remember that you are not deciding whether something could be true yet -- no judgments.  Just name the desires.)

For most people, after brainstorming like this, you should have 1 to 3 pages worth of ideas, large and small.  It should be more stuff than any human could do in a hundred years.

Now I want you to make your first judgment with these ideas.  Transfer some of the ideas to your Five and Ten year page, based on the length of time you guess is necessary and/or the strength of your desire/prioritization.  Don't determine yet if the items are possible.  You aren't making any commitments.  Just guess about how long the items might take if you were doing them.

At this point it is important to take at least a 24 hour break from all the writing and meditating you have done.  Put the pages away in the folder and set the folder somewhere and don't look at them for 24 hours or more.  If more desire pop into your mind, you can just note them on another piece of paper that you keep handy, but don't spend thought on it deliberately.

The next time I blog, I will explain what to do when the 24 hours (or more) is over.

Tags: Life Choice Plan Goals Priorities Time

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