At my teenager’s insistence, I revisited the story of Katniss and the Hunger Games.  Being familiar with the full story, I saw things in the first book I had initially overlooked.  The most interesting things I had missed were hints about what would come up in later books.  I realized that Suzanne Collins had the end of the book series in mind when writing the first book.  She didn’t write a book and then a sequel; she started with the whole series in mind. 

Start with the end in mind.

I bring this up in the context of goal setting because I think people too often sell themselves short when setting goals.  It will soon be a new year, and many people will set New Years Resolutions.  They will resolve to exercise, lose weight, get organized, learn a new skill, save money, etc.  And most of them will fail within the first month or two, if not the first week of the new year.  The reason for their failure is not that they lack willpower.  They fail because they lack a long-term vision.  They are thinking only of the next chapter in their story when they need to be envisioning the end of the series. 

To achieve your goals, you need to think about more than where you want to be in a week, a month, or a year.  You need to think strategically like J.K. Rowlings, who plotted out the whole seven-book Harry Potter series before she started writing the first chapter.

Think twenty-five years ahead.

What does that look like for you?  You need to think about where you want to be in twenty-five years.  I find a quarter-century to be a good goal as it’s far enough away to put little pressure on you today.  That means you can dream more freely.  It also gives you a long-term vision for yourself that will inform and motivate what you do today.  

Now is not a time to think in specifics; that will come in the next step.  Now is a time to think about the kind of person you want to be. 

If everything in your life went perfectly, where would you be? 

Who would you be with?  

What would you be doing?  

Where would you live?  

Tips for planning your next twenty-five years.

There are several tricks you can try to free your thinking.  If you are having trouble getting started, try one of these exercises;

Lottery ticket. 

A decade ago, I purchased a lottery ticket when the multi-state jackpot was over 100 million dollars.  I did not win, but I gained a lot from thinking about what I would do if I did win.  I envisioned myself living in the mountains of Colorado, where I could ski, hike, and photograph all the natural beauty.  I also imagined myself taking up writing.  Well, that was ten years ago, and today I find myself living in the mountains of western Colorado, surrounded by natural beauty.  I’m currently writing, and when I finish, I will take my daughter skiing.  

I would never have accomplished any of those goals if I had not dreamed about them first.  Once I had dreamed them up, they took on a life of their own.  I became aware of possibilities  I had previously failed to see.  Daydreaming about what could be, got me moving on making it happen.

That lottery ticket may not have paid off in dollars, but it did pay off in a big way.

Write your own eulogy. 

It might sound a little dark to imagine your funeral, but it can be an enlightening exercise.  Think about who will be at your funeral and what they will say about you.  In eulogies, people talk about the effect the deceased had on the people around them.  They talk about what kind of person the departed was and how they made their world a little better.  

No one wants their eulogy to read, “Bob always arrived at the office before anyone else and left after everyone else did.”  You don’t want your eulogy to be a list of projects completed on time and awards received.  That won’t tell people anything about you.  So what do you want people to say about you?  How do you want to be remembered?  Writing out the eulogy you would like to have is an excellent way to getting you thinking about what is most important to you in life.  And once you have described how you want people to remember you, you are on your way to becoming that person.

Letter from your 100-year-old self. 

Imagine you are 100 years old and everything in your life has gone as well as you could have hoped.  You have achieved all your goals, and you are now looking back on your life and your success.  

Now write a letter from your 100-year-old self to the you of today.  What advice would that 100-year-old version of yourself give, what encouragement would they offer, and what pitfalls might they point out?  Write it all down and remember, no one will care more about what you do today than the you of the future who will have to live with the consequences of your actions.

Conclusion

Try any one or all of these exercises.  The idea here is not to plan the next chapter of your life.  The idea is to get you thinking about the whole seven-book series that is the rest of your life.  Only when you have an idea of where you want that story to end can you plan out the next chapter.

Before you make any new years resolutions or set any goals for the coming year, set aside some time to contemplate where you want to be in twenty-five years.

The goal of thinking far ahead is to dream big.  You don’t have to figure out how you will accomplish all of your goals.  You need to know where you want to go to orient yourself in the right direction.  

In my next article, we will get down to more detailed planning.  For now, you need to imagine what could be.  You will never accomplish the goals you don’t dream up.  So dream big, fearless, audacious dreams.  You won’t know what you can do until you imagine it first.