Why Have a Strategic Life Plan?

The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. ~Dr. Phil

Although I believe this to be, for the most part, true, I also find that negative change can often occur so gradually that you don’t realize it’s happening until you wake up one day wondering how you got where you are. As Jim Rohn, business philosopher, says, “You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.” That’s why a strategic life plan is so important. It helps keep you on track, because you are constantly checking in with yourself to see whether you are moving closer to, or farther away from your goals. If you are getting away from them, you can make corrections to get back on track before you have strayed too far.

Businesses review their goals monthly, quarterly and annually. They look at what went well, and what didn’t, and make changes along the way so they don’t reach the end of the year thinking, “Wow, what went wrong? We’re not even close to the goals we set at the beginning of the year!” Goals are not something you create and then put on the shelf. It’s important to create long-term goals in line with your vision, short-term goals to support the long-term ones, and daily prioritized task lists to make sure you hit your short-term goals. It’s similar to building a brick house; first you have the idea for the house (the vision). Then you create the blueprint (the long-term goal). Next, you determine what needs to be done first, and by when (the short-term goals), and finally begin laying the foundation and then each brick (daily prioritized tasks). You wouldn’t simply tell your crew to start building – without a vision or a blueprint, they would have no idea what the end product was supposed to look like.

You get the point. Yet many of us go through life just laying down bricks, without any real vision or blueprint of what we want our life to look like. Of course, whether you are building a brick home or a life, there will be times when things don’t go according to plan, whether because of a flaw in the original design, unexpected delays or the inevitable storms. But as long as you have the vision and the blueprint, you can accommodate those changes and continue to move forward.

That is the kind of past behavior that you want to rely on to indicate future behavior!