Got milestones?
Sure you do.
If you’re two, you probably want to walk without holding someone’s hand.
If you’re twenty-two, you probably want an independent living situation.
If you’re forty-two, you probably want to educate your kids without going bankrupt.
And, if you’re sixty-two, you probably want to retire.
For some of you, those cultural milestones – driver’s license, graduation, homeownership, parenthood – are opportunities for saying no – No thanks, I’ll walk. No thanks, I’ll go right to work. No thanks, I’m going to travel and blog about it. No thanks, I’m taking a pass on kids.
Accept them or reject them, these milestones can come to define us. That’s swell, that’s easy, that doesn’t take a lot of thought and most of them are pretty satisfying. I love my car, my home, my spouse, my son, and my 401K. I don’t want to give any of them up.
The problem is… after two years of thinking short-term – as in… “How do I not get dead from a pandemic?” short term...the long-range plan is looking a bit dusty.
To make matters worse, pre-built milestones run out.
All these years, we were looking forward – forward to eating with a spoon, forward to driving on the highway without an adult, forward to buying a beer, making a living, having it all.
If we haven’t been practicing creating our own milestones, our own futures, we can be left looking like a blank canvas when the prebuilt template falls away.
So how do you create your own milestones? You can start with the advice that Dan Sullivan and Catherine Nomura say in “The Laws of Lifetime Growth” – Always make your future bigger than your past.
The book is a free listen on audible if you’re a member there… so check it out – or click the link above and find it on Amazon.
Having a future that’s bigger than your past is about letting go of the rules that hold us back, those cultural conditions that say the goal of life is to be able to stop working, that tell us that women do some jobs and men do others. (And yes, that’s still a thing. Hello.)
The goal of life is to become as much of who you are and what you are as you possibly can.
See that tree up there at the top of the blog?
Do you think it was looking at other trees to show it how to become that grand, spreading, wonder of global carbon reduction? If you do, please write me.
That sparkling green marvel is an example of what that kind of tree can become when it has plenty of water, sun, space, time, and – yeah – some luck.
What kind of human can you become if you have plenty of water, sun, space, and time?
What kind of human can you become if you just start where you’re at and keep growing?
What is the biggest, broadest, most ALIVE version of you that is possible in the world?
Don’t breeze past that question. A good answer should take you at least a half-hour of journaling. You have a lunch break… why not jot some ideas down? After all, that’s the milestone you want out there.
That’s the milestone we all want you to reach.
You – being that big, alive version of yourself – makes the future bigger and brighter for everyone.
You. The fullest expression of you…is the path.
And that? Is just the best thing ever.
I have a six-week program that walks clients through ending over-working. Clients consistently see results by week four, at which point – we do the work of building out what a bright future looks like. Sound good? Sign up for a quick conversation, let’s see if I can help you branch out.