How to make a life plan (in 6 steps)

A life plan is what helps us create all kinds of projects that support our personal development. Although there are things in our lives that we do not control, having a notion of continuity is important in order to fully experience what the world has in store for us.

In this article we will see various tips on how to create a life plan and how it can be applied.

• Related article: "Personal Development: 5 reasons for self-reflection"

How to create a life plan

It may be paradoxical, but many times we think we are very clear about all our opinions about all kinds of subjects, but we have no idea what we will do with our own lives.

Precisely for this reason, developing and applying a life plan is interesting: it allows us find a project with which we can almost always identify despite the fact that everything around us changes over time.

Of course, sometimes there are moments of crisis in which a life plan stops making sense. But these periods of uncertainty do not have to invalidate the idea itself of having objectives and strategies to get closer to them; it simply requires us to create a new life plan. From this it also follows that any time is good to start one of them,

regardless of how old you are.

So, let's see what steps we have to take to create a life plan tailored to our goals.

1. Analyze your life expectancies

In the first step, you have to stop and think about what we think it can be a realistic margin of change about our living conditions. If we obsess over goals that we can only achieve by being billionaires, for example, that will only make us fall over and over again. time in frustration, or to delay so much the pursuit of our goals that little by little we forget the plan of lifetime.

• You may be interested: "How to get out of the routine: 16 tips"

2. Determine your values

No life plan will succeed if it goes against our values. Therefore, we must be clear about which are those to which we attach greater importance. To do this, it is best to make a list containing the main values ​​that you consider relevant, and then sort them according to their importance. If you have trouble thinking of several, you can find examples in this article: The 10 types of values: principles that govern our lives

3. Determine your needs

Think about what fulfills you the most, but not simply selecting your desires of the moment, but those general objectives that you think can encompass your great life projects. Do the same as in the previous step: make a list of needs and order them prioritizing those that are most relevant to you. Keep a maximum of three of them, since if you try to aspire to several, you may not be able to get too involved in all of them.

On the other hand, think that the best goals are those that involve the happiness of many people, since their mark stays longer and more stable than cases where you are the only person who does it appreciates. In any case, beyond this observation, it is perfectly valid to orient a life to a goal that will make the only person to enjoy the fruit of years of work.

4. Transform your needs and values ​​into action chains

Starting from your objectives and values, develop a series of action chains that take you from the present situation to your goals. Namely, go from the abstract of your goals and values ​​to the concrete, the strategies and methods that can get you where you want to be years from now.

A good way to do this is to go through several layers of abstraction, generating general objectives and then building sub-objectives from it. On the other hand, try to set deadlines for yourself to increase your commitment to the life plan.

5. Reflect on the role that other people will play in your life

It would be a mistake to make a life plan without take into account the rest of the people around us and who will surround us in the future. Do you want to get away from certain negative influences? Would you like to spend more time with those you love and appreciate? How will you combine that with your goals?

6. Apply your life plan and monitor it

It is not enough to carry out the necessary actions to develop the life plan. We must also continue to monitor that those objectives to which we aspire have meaning for us. The simple passage of time and our own maturation and learning process makes these needs change spontaneously, and that is why we need to be vigilant so as not to blindly continue with those plans.

Bibliographic references:

• Lerner, R.M. (2002). Concepts and theories of human development. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Pink, D. H. (2010). The Surprising Truths About What Motivates Us (1st ed. edition). Barcelona: Books Center.