Live by design
How will your life be in the next 5 years?
What we are today is a consequence of decisions and actions of the past. Some of those decisions were not ours like which school or college to go and some were. I wanted to add choosing our profession to the list of things that we choose, but that wouldn’t be true for all because for some it is pre-decided by their parents. This is how our life happened to be where it is now whether we are living our dream life or not.
According to research, 98% of people will die without fulfilling their dreams.
That’s huge!!!
Do a bit of introspection and figure it out if you are in that 98% club or the élite 2% and be honest to yourself.
Ask this question to yourself WHY are you doing what you are doing (business, study, job)? Of course, you studied hard, prepared for this for years and it was all exciting in the beginning, but is it still?
I was in a job for a little less than 20 years and when I think of that question. The only answer that came out later in the years was that the salary was good and paid my bills. I wouldn’t say that all of it was bad, but a few years down I guess after 15 years it started going downhill. There was nothing exciting about getting up every morning and going to the office. Thereafter I realized that I was living life in an autopilot mode. I was looking forward to something new; exciting and challenging, but as years passed on it was getting dull, boring, energy-draining, unexciting.
The life we envision is fun-filled, balanced, free of tensions, full of excitement and challenges, etc. But for a lot of us, the life we end up living is different. A lot of us are living it on autopilot mode. Get up and go to the office, do the routine work, come back and sleep and repeat the next day.
You may be successful, but are you happy? Is it fulfilling? We have grown up with the belief that if you are successful, you will be happy and various other beliefs like money give you happiness. Despite having all that you may be miles away from being happy.
What you need is to rethink your life and ask yourself these questions
- What is it that you really want in life?
- How would your life be in 5 years if nothing changes?
- Imagine that you have achieved what you want, how does that feel?
If the answer to the first question is different from what you are doing now and if you feel stagnant, stuck seeing yourself few years down the line then you need to take actions and take control of your life. Transformation to a better self is really what you need to make significant and lasting change. The good news is no matter what stage you are in you can still live the dream life you ever wanted. You need to act NOW.
If you are in that 98%, most likely you are one of those who want to change their situation but haven’t been able to and have settled for a good enough life (auto mode).
‘Your one conscious decision to act can change your life’
How about designing your way forward and living life the way you want it to be. And if you are one of those who are not clear about what you want to do, no problem, you are amongst many. As you work your way through the transformation journey, you will gain clarity on a lot of aspects about yourself. I call this process of transformation ‘Live by design’ and it uses design thinking principles and methodology to design your life through self-exploration and analysis.
It is a process of gaining clarity, exploring possibilities, prototyping and finally building a life that excites you, is meaning full, and is fulfilling. It’s like a designer who builds things that don’t exist and off-course they do fail, but instead of thinking about the failure and getting stuck with it they get on and try the next best option.
OPTIONS EXIST and POSSIBILITIES will open when you are ready to EXPLORE. Without exploring there will be no discovery.
So, what’s it going to be for you, Transformation or being stuck?
This is part one of a series of eight posts. To know more about the transformation journey and the process watch out for the next post……
Author: Abhishek Budhraja
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