Planning One's Life

(The following is a guest article by my dear friend with his unique perspective on planning one's life.)

How to plan your life? It is a rather bold question. It would be safe to assume that, everyone, at some point in their lives, ‘plan’ their life out in some sense of the word or, at least, believe that they are doing so. But it might not be planning in the true sense of the word. Planning cannot be making decisions when faced with certain moments in life where a decision is inevitable. Planning implies a rather detached process where one can step back from the steady flow of one’s routine life, take an honest look at the state of things, identify a clear and specific goal and then chart out a course directed towards reaching that goal. More often than not, people’s lives tend to drift along being subjected to sheer randomness and circumstantial forces that abound all of the Universe, without them even realizing it. In order to determine whether a person has consciously planned his life, we ought to chart a person’s life from the beginning to a particular point in his life, and to examine how much of that person’s current position is shaped by conscious decisions they took.

The importance of planning cannot be overstated. You could be blessed with the greatest of talents and may be filled with dreams about reaching for the stars, but without a plan that charts a course for you to reach your target, you may very well be forced to take your place in the cess pool of mediocrity, at most being one of the above average crabs among a sea of average crabs. Meanwhile, sharks and whales keep prowling the seas. Also, keep in mind, planning by itself does not guarantee success. Planning merely gives you a chance to succeed, provided you have the drive to succeed. Planning is putting on your gear on before a 1000 mile trek across an unforgiving landscape. It is not an end in itself, but it could be the means of securing a desirable end.

That said, the ideal planning ought to be as follows. The first step is to affirm to oneself that the highest goal in an individual’s life ought to be to reach the best version of oneself possible. There cannot be any compromise about this. Planning primarily involves treating life as a sport driven by strategy. Thus, it goes without saying that the objective of playing a game ought to be to win it and anything else would be insufficient. To win at the game of life would be to achieve maximum realization of one’s capabilities.

Having resolved to one’s self that the pursuit of maximum realization of one’s potential is the ultimate ideal, one must be very honest in one’s assessment of one’s capabilities and shortcomings. Ideally, planning ought to be done before one sets about taking decisive steps in one’s life through decisions and choices. However, more often than not, one does not realize the need for planning until one has reached a stage where one has already taken several unalterable decisions and is left with certain strengths and weaknesses as a result. Consider the state of affairs that exists when a person wakes up to the need for planning, as a set of cards that life draws in favor of a person. No single person can draw an entire deck. Each of us finds our self with a mixture of good, bad and average cards. You might find yourself with multiple aces (like being born with an exceptional talent while being born in a wealthy family and having very good physical attributes), or find yourself saddled with a number of average cards(like being born in the middle class, without any exceptional traits, of average intellect) or in some of the extreme cases, a set of extremely unfavorable cards (being born with physical or mental disabilities coupled with poverty etc.).

Irrespective of the desirability of the ensemble, the next step is to fully embrace the existing reality without any inhibitions. Be it the lack of looks or the lack of an exceptional talent, be it lack of wealth or lack of attractive features. Accept the deck you are handed out, without any conditions. Always remember, no single person has all the aces. While it might certainly be true that some may find themselves with a better set of cards than you, you have to remind yourself that there is no point in lamenting over others’ fortunes. Your aim should be to make the best of your set of cards. You are not playing against any one person. Your task is to use these cards to bring out the maximum value out of each of them.

The next step is the most crucial. It is to identify the target i.e., to identify a goal that would appeal to your conscience. It has to be the highest aspirations that one can attain through the whole-hearted pursuit of one’s capabilities. One’s dream is nothing but a manifestation of the highest point that one can reach through the pursuit of the aggregate of one’s abilities. But it is most essential to have great clarity about this target. If it cannot be singled down to an exact position or a moment, it must at least be a clear picture of the landscape one wishes to see oneself in. For example, if the goal cannot be narrowed to a specific instance as for example winning a gold medal at the Olympics, it at least ought to be clear enough so as to be conducive for visualization as for example to become one of the best fiction writers in the world or the country etc. If not being able to precisely define your goal, you ought to at least be clear about the general target you want to reach, so that you have a measure of identifying whether you have reached your goal or not.

Having identified the target, the next step would be to make enquiries and research. Lots and lots of research. Your research is to be directed at examining what skill sets are essential for a person to be able to reach the said goal and whether you can acquire any additional skills at that point in your life which may be essential or may contribute to your progress towards achieving your goal. If these skills can be acquired, one must without hesitation, actively pursue these skills and add them since it is never too late to further strengthen one’s skill-set.

The last part is the most obvious yet the most difficult part. It is the uncompromising pursuit of these goals in life. It seems to be the most obvious of the steps one ought to take in this process. However, it is hardly so. The routine nature of everyday life blows over the best of long-term plans like the sands that bury the age-old relics. One has to constantly keep making an effort to look up and check whether they have remained on the path or have slid away and to constantly course correct. Although the manner of retaining a long-term vision and constantly chipping away at it is a whole different article, suffice it to say that the best way to do this is to put your plans down onto paper and to constantly work on them. Consistently writing about your goal and topics associated with it will ensure that the subconscious GPS remains pointed towards the final destination. This will also enable a person to make decisions and choices on a day-to-day basis. At any point of time, in life, when faced with a major choice or a decision, one ought to analyze such a choice or decision from the perspective of the long-term goal and examine how that decision contributes towards achieving such a long-term goal. If it is a positive contribution towards it, then one must wholeheartedly pursue such a choice. Where a choice appears to be fundamental to achieving the desired goal, it ought to be fought for and cannot be surrendered irrespective of other subsidiary ramifications. However, if that choice does not actively contribute towards the long term goal or worse still, has a possibility of leading you away from it, then one must have the temerity to reject such a choice irrespective of other considerations. It is worthwhile to note that not all decisions may have a bearing on the final destination and may need to be dealt with keeping in mind other considerations.

Lastly, planning represents a man’s ability to shape his own life irrespective of the vagaries of the Universe. It represents your ability to take charge of your own life and to quit making excuses. While the whole world seems happy enough to let random chance determine the course of their lives, it will take great courage to stand apart and not make excuses and accept the consequences of one’s choices.