“If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to get lost getting there” It’s a very simple quote from Alice in Wonderland. But when I heard this quote, I was in college during a strategy class, and the main point of the strategy was to understand where you’re going in the next 5 years, 10 years, 20 years from now.
When we apply this to our day-to-day lives, it’s really a series of simple steps we take every day that take us towards our goal. There are a lot of books around this topic, some books talk about your subconscious, the power of the universe, and more details on how to build goals and strategy. So, I’m going to simplify it and tell you exactly what I do.
While setting your goals you really have to go through the simplest and most cliché question: “Where do you see yourself 5 years from today?”
When I was first asked this question, I didn’t know how to answer it. Until this day, I still have difficulties understanding where I see myself five years from now.
I know what I want to do; and to put it all together, I sat down one day, and I just made a list. I started from one year, – what do I want to achieve this year?
I split that into multiple sections. The first one was life (happiness friends, health, things I want to achieve) and I set a series of goals; for the next step, I addressed careers, which deal with sales targets, investments, acquisitions, deals.
Career development is part of it as well, but I separated it into a separate section called education.
In terms of education, I looked at books I wanted to read, courses, finance, art classes. This section really depends all on you.
After that, I went throuhg investments, which are very important in building wealth.
So, if you ask any of the people my age “when do you think you’re going to buy your first house?” most of us don’t really have a plan because the housing market is so expensive.
We need to build a plan not just to buy a house, but to build our wealth in the future, and not just depend on our retirement by age 63, really to invest in stocks, to invest in startups, to invest in land, in whatever ways each of us can.
The one-year plan should really be handy – it should ideally be on your phone or in your notes, that’s what I really recommend.
From here, we address the 5-year plan: “How do I think I’m going to grow five years from today?”
With time, maybe 6 months into the process, maybe by changing some goals and tweaking around we’re going to understand better and better where we can be five years from now.
But what I recommend is that when you look at five years be a little bit more optimistic; being realistic is fine, but you really want to build a plan to grow and make your dreams come true.
We can dream of a little bit there and that will really set not just your mindset, your subconscious mind, but everything around you to work to push you towards that goal.
While, the first part – 1 year and 5 years – most of us know this, but I really recommend you do it on new year’s and then revise it by the middle of the year if your birthday is in July (such as mine) and make it a ritual.
So, the next thing is the big question that I learned from reading “Principles” by Ray Dalio, and he says, “What’s your definite purpose in life?” why do you wake up every morning? Why do you think you exist?
That’s a big very question, because I know what I want to be 5 years from today, maybe 10 years from today, but knowing why you exist and figuring that bit out has really two parts.
One, is you setting why you exist and two, understanding why you exist? That goes to your surroundings, your place, your country, your family, your job, and it comes down to a list of 3 to 5 small paragraphs and that’s your definite purpose in life.
This could be to connect with your family, could be to build wealth, to help the poor, to end climate change, could be anything you want.
That is something very important to define because “your definite purpose in life will drive all your goals” and it takes a bit of time to figure it out.
Once you do, I recommend that you go back and really see if your goals match your definite purpose in life, does your career match with your definite purpose in life and how can you build yourselves to become happy.
Khaled Sharbatly, Group Chief Investments Officer/Partner at desert technologies.
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