If you want to know what will life look like for you in five years, or even next year, look no further than the choices you are making and the actions you are taking today. You're manufacturing the future through those choices and actions.
Some of what happens in your life will be beyond your control, true, but you also have a tremendous ability to shape, sculpt, and direct how it unfolds. In fact, whether you realize it or not, you're already doing that. You're already making choices and taking actions (or not making and taking them), and that is defining your future.
In a post on building effective patterns of action (constructive habits, essentially), Laura Schenck said something that struck a chord and pointed the way to a simple yet incredibly powerful question that has the potential to change your life dramatically. She said:
Each small behavioral choice that you make is either taking you closer to or further away from your true goals.
You can flip that observation into a question that, if asked regularly, could make a world of difference in the life you create. The question is:
Is this choice moving me closer or distancing me from my goal?"
Simple as that. One little question with two potential answers, asked over and over and over again, will effectively keep you on track and moving in the right direction. You can replace "goal" with "the life I want to create," or "my vision," or whatever else your big picture inspiration might look like, but the basic concept is the same.
At the micro level asking this question can help you avoid veering off course and create an ongoing awareness of the results of your choices.
At the macro level, the cumulative impact (of both consciously choosing to direct your choices and actions towards your goal and of refraining from choices and actions that lead you away from it) can be enormous.
Try this: For the next week, pay attention to the choices you make and the actions you take and ask whether or not they're taking you where you want to go. You don't have to do anything different. Just notice. The goal is just to start building a more habitual awareness.
Once you start to more habitually pay attention to the long-term impact of your choices and actions, you can start taking the next step, which is asking, "What do I need to do differently?"
One little question. What do you have to lose? Or perhaps more importantly, what do you have to gain?
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by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst
