Decide What You Want and What You Will Do to Get it

#2 in our Create the Life You Were Made For series is to decide what you want and what you will DO to get it.

I once had someone tell me that she is “just not a planner,” that she just takes each day as it comes. I personally enjoy being in the moment and embracing the mindset of “one day at a time”; however, that does not necessitate the absence of planning.

Once you have really explored your life and its direction—something that many people are not compelled to do until they are in a “mid-life crisis”—and identified what you want and things you would like to change, the next step is to decide. Deciding what you want and what you will do to achieve this requires some serious thought, which as we know all too well, requires some time.

While time seems to be in short supply for many of us, it becomes especially important to schedule time with ourselves for planning. Do you make planning a daily habit? Weekly? Monthly?

Planning is a skill that everyone can benefit from developing if they ever want to feel that they achieved something they set out to do. It brings home the idea that what you do matters, that you can directly impact results you and others experience! A common example is how fast our day seems to go by. Times when I did not plan my day and 5 o’ clock rolled around I have thought to myself, “what in the world did I do today?”  We all have those days from time to time, but imagine feeling that way most of the time. Without a small amount of such planning, life can seem out of our control completely, and resultantly overwhelming and unsatisfying. With it, you can realize more of life’s gifts that are uniquely yours! 

Once you have decided what you want for your life (and often what you don’t want) it must be followed by decisiveness and practical action in order to realize the desired changes or goals. Unfortunately I know people who know what they want to change and why (a HUGE step!), but fail to decide what they will do and consequently fail to do anything. This results in no change or worse, unintentional changes based on indecisiveness or inaction. Can you think of a time you experienced unwanted events because you took no action when you knew you should? What do you currently desire to change in your life? Identify 1 step within your responsibility that you can take toward creating that change and go for it.

“Success will never be a big step in the future, success is a small step taken just now.”  ~Jonatan Mårtensson

One note here on practical action to realize desired change- many of you reading this are women of faith as I am, so you may wonder about the idea of waiting on God or where our faith comes in with all of this “action” speak. I am not suggesting that we simply decide what we want and make it happen without regard for whether it’s right for us and our life- quite the contrary. Often we need to take a moment (sometimes days or weeks, or longer) to weigh important decisions and courses of action especially if we have any concerns about it. When this is intentional, I believe this is an action.

The exciting part of this for me is when we have confidence and peace that we need to move in a specific direction in our lives, even if we don’t see the entire path forward, we can move forward and take action in faith, progressing one step and day at a time. While we do so, we make forward progress, demonstrate our faith through action, use God-given skills and resources, abandon laziness and deliberately go after the life we were made for!

So, what is it that you will do today to move you a step closer to creating the life you know you were made for?  In what area of your life have you been lazy or fearful and need to step out in faith?

Read More from the Create the Life You Were Made for series or go to Newsletter Archive for past articles in the series.

Please post a comment below and share your thoughts on the subject!