Does the Unexpected Undo Your Best-Laid Plans?
We can’t plan the people.
We can’t plan the surprises.
We can’t plan the creative solutions to problems that we never expected.
Planning too tightly removes our chance to leverage those rare opportunities that is the serendipity of new adventures and new people.
Rather than planning out every possibility, know yourself and you’ll have a strategy for work and for life.
Have a Strategy for Your Work and Your Life
So don’t just plan. Have a strategy. Know yourself as well as you want to know your business. Have a strategy for yourself in work and life as you do for your business. A strategy is a realistic framework that moves you forward over time by leveraging opportunities that are uniquely yours. A strategy leaves room for opportunities you might not see when you first start a plan. To build a great, working, living strategy you need to know a few things.
- Know who you are, what you’re building, how you’ll build it, and why you’re building it. That way you’ll know which people share your values and which opportunities will help you move forward.
- Know where you’re standing and where you’re going, so that you know which direction to focus on. That way you’ll understand which choices are detours on the path to your golden destination. Besides knowing where you’re going is irresistible. People who are drawn to your goals will figure you’ll know how to help them achieve theirs too.
- Know your own cycles and patterns of behavior and those of the people you care to about. That way you’ll be able to make some predictions, choose the behaviors that keep you winning, and learn how to lose those that don’t.
- Know how to make decisions based on your experience, goals, and values. Then you will know how to kill off the stuff that gets in the way of your successful mission without killing off yourself, your relationships. A great decision will keep you from wasting time that you could spend on a world of choices that are more fun and alive.
- Know who you include in your personal development, care, and support systems. Make a list of who truly cares about your life, your goals, and your dreams for the future. That way you’ll be able to always show them their importance in your life.
The key to leveraging opportunity is knowing that who you are and where you stand has as much to do with what can move you forward as where you want to go. Get know yourself deeply and you’ll be aware of what work and life opportunities fit your best strengths, when they’ll be coming, and how you might best incorporate them into your plans.
Know yourself and you’ll know how you can move forward.
Know yourself and you’ll know how you can help others.
Know yourself and you’ll be able to see how our goals align so that we can make things we could never make alone.
Take a few minutes now to go through the list and find out …
what do you need to find out about yourself?
Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss