500 Words a Week - What do you want your life to look like?

As I explore the life/ executive coaching realm, there’s a question that I think we should all reflect on. That question is what do you want your life to look like?

At times, we can become caught up in the day to day motions that we are unaware of the precious time we have slipping through the hourglass never to return again. Our life becomes centred around “just getting through things”. I just need to get through this day, I just need to get through to the weekend, I just need to get through the next few months till my next holiday. Pretty soon all we are hoping for is to just get through life as we wish away our time.

The problem is that we are unaware that this is what we are doing. We get in such a routine that we begin living on autopilot, going through the motions one day after the next.

If we don’t take charge and start assessing are we living a life we want, we find ourselves at some point becoming lost. It’s like swimming in the ocean. If we don’t have a sense of direction, and we just continue swimming, eventually we will find ourselves lost in the deep blue, with no land in site each way we look.

There’s a spectrum to this question of what do you want your life to look like? On one end, there’s having no clue or idea about what you want, and on the other there’s having your life and future planned to the smallest detail. I think we should look to be in the middle ground of these two situations. I’ve spoken above about what it’s like when we have no idea, but in over planning and being over precise we don’t give ourselves time and space to explore our curiosity. To live a life that’s directional, yet open to the signs that pop up around us showing us different paths we may want to travel or meandering detours we may want to go down, all allowing us to experience this wonderful life we have been bestowed.

Can we find the middle ground? What that middle ground looks like is having a clear sense of purpose, a clear sense of our values and what we hold in high regard. We can then use these aspects as a compass to navigate through those times when we find ourselves lost in the deep blue.

As we grow, some of these aspects may change but it’s important that we still regularly assess are we living a life we want to live.