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Strategic living: 3 ways to be proactive about what you want in life
We all have desires in life. No matter what culture you represent or where you come from, it’s going to be hard to find someone who doesn’t want something more for themselves.
It can be something as specific as owning an exclusive shoe collection to competing professionally in MMA. Whatever it is, everyone with a heartbeat has some level of ambition — driven to obtain one thing or another.
That is why it’s imperative that each and every one of us goes about life with a sense of strategy — with some sort of methodology to achieving whichever goal it is that we have.
However, if you look closely, you’ll find that the majority of us are aimless in our approach.
It seems like all people know is what they want, although even that changes quite frequently, too. Most lack the focus, discipline, and consistency it takes to see desires come to fruition. They see where they want to go but have absolutely no strategy on getting there.
When we’re proactive and not reactive in our lives, we have a lot more control over how our future pans out and we can also learn how much influence we really do have on obtaining those things we do want.
We cannot go about life wandering, grasping at whatever we can, and think that we’ll perchance stumble across our hearts deepest desires. We have to know what we want, set goals, then periodically check our progress.
These are fundamentals in strategy that, when applied to our everyday lives, will absolutely change how we live.
Have a vision
An easy way to begin living strategically is knowing exactly what you want out of life.
While, of course, that vision may change over time, having a firm grasp over the overall idea of what direction you want to head towards is huge in being proactive about what you obtain out of life.
If you notice, the individuals who do not progress are the ones who continually change direction. When we commit to a singular career, hobby, sport, or just any discipline in general, we can then make progress in said venture.
Know where you want to go and commit to that direction. It’s almost the easiest way to begin seeing progressive change in your life. Whatever your past record for sticking to one thing is, double it — vow to lock in on one singular practice.
Vision and focus is a strategy that will follow you no matter what level you ascend to. It’s a healthy start to begin attracting your dreams.
Set objectives/benchmarks
Once you’ve decided to commit to one primary direction the second tier of strategy is cultivating growth, and the best way to do that is to set daily and weekly goals.
When we make objectives and set benchmarks not only does it push ourselves to meet them, but it sets the course for how we are to attack every day.
The overarching goal is much too big to approach in one setting. If you try to accomplish your dreams all in one go, or in one summer, or without properly realizing the duration of the process, you’ll tire yourself out.
Applying strategy to our lives means understanding that we have what it takes to get to where we want to go, but also understanding to do so with efficiency.
When we segment our goals in digestible increments we give ourselves the opportunity to accomplish them one bit at a time.
Break down what needs to be done to make each year successful, each month successful, then, each day successful. If we consistently stick to that model we’ll accomplish a lot more.
Consistently self-check
The last strategic method to adopt that is fundamental to living life is to consistently check oneself.
You know where you’re going and you’ve broken down the goal to digestible increments, now, what’s just as important is to audit yourself along the way.
Self-checking oneself is important because you can get so locked into and buried in the tunnel vision of your process that it can become hard to see if you’ve gone off track.
We’re all human. Even with good intention and proper planning the error that is our genetic makeup and easily causes us to steer astray or fall victim to practices that are detrimental to our mission.
To keep from doing so, it’s important to take a step back to make sure the brush strokes we’ve been arduously painting is making the portrait we actually desire. You don’t want to have your wheels spinning in place and you especially don’t want to be on the fast-track in the wrong direction.
Now, strategy goes far beyond honing in on a vision, setting up daily goals and periodic oversight. Strategic living goes as far as what you eat, who you hang around, time management and much more.
However, if we can master these three simple concepts, we’ll understand that there is so much more we can do, every day, that the majority doesn’t.