SUCCESS… What does it mean to you? Wealth, fame, power? Or, what about happiness, no fear of the future, job security?

How do you define success?

For some, it’s as general as the terms mentioned before—wealth, fame, power; for others, it’s a bit more specific—being a heart surgeon, a nuclear physicist, a movie star, having a million dollars in the bank, owning a hundred-acre ranch.

In our introductory article Why Do I Need a LifeTime Planning System? we saw that being successful is getting what you set out to achieve. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with money, it can be anything, big things as well as small. Success is different for everyone; it all depends on what a person wants to achieve and how important that desire is.

Success is different for everyone; it all depends on what each person wants to achieve and how important that desire is.

This is why many persons whom others think are successful don’t feel they are successful for the same reasons that others think. Moreover, some consider themselves successful when others do not.

So then, “What would make you a success?”

What do you daydream about?

Whenever I feel my life is at a standstill, I pull out my daydreams. My daydreams are fairly consistent, very detailed, and very realistic because they represented things that I want to happen in my life.

You have to know very clearly what you want to achieve, and be realistic about your desires. Wanting fame is not enough. What do you want to be famous for? Athletic ability, musical genius, financial acumen? And is it athletic ability in tennis or golf? Professional or amateur? Local or international?

A long time ago when I first started on my LifePlanning journey, it dawned on me that since I had planned out my dreams in so much detail, if I just followed the steps and did in real life all the things I had been dreaming of, I’d have my dream life every day. So, having nothing to lose, I did just that with one small dream, and it actually worked. Did it again with a bigger dream, just to be sure, with the same result—success.

I have since found out that the things I cherish most in life, the things that I achieved and am proudest of, are those things that I dreamed of and dared to do and make real against all the odds, reasons, and obstacles. They had become so real in my head that I just had to make them happen in real life or I’d go crazy; and because I had spent so much time dreaming about the details, it was easy to define the goals, objectives, and activities needed to accomplish my dreams.

Dreams are the start of your reality.
Dreams, no matter how far-fetched and impossible they seem at first, are the draft of the blueprints of your success.

Know your dreams like a native and not like a tourist

Dreams are the start of your reality.

Dreams, no matter how far–fetched and impossible they seem at first, are the draft of the blueprints of your success; but you must have a clear idea or a clear vision of what you need to achieve, and the desire you need to fulfill.

You need to identify what your dreams are, and try to put them in some decipherable form—whether on paper, flash drive, clay, whatever. Once you start to do that, you are taking your first step towards living your dreams and managing your life.

First of all you need to ask yourself “What is my BIG dream?”

Take a couple minutes to think about it and write it down, preferably in a journal that will become your LifePlanning roadmap.

Look at all aspects of your life—work and career, family, lifestyle, personal development, finance, other areas for achievements —and write down the dreams that you’ve have that relate to that area of your life.

This is a first draft, so don’t worry about being neat or precise.

Just bear in mind that sometimes you may identify the wrong thing as your dream. Let me explain what I mean.

One of your dreams is to be an important trial lawyer like your grandfather, a man that the family held in awe and who was admired by everyone in town. In your dreams you would see yourself presiding over matters of high import and making significant decisions just like him. Your sister also wants to become a famous trial lawyer, but that is because she just loves to win an argument and the drama of courtroom battles.

Both your dreams may seem the same—to be important lawyers; but are they really? Your sister’s dream is genuinely to be a lawyer, to be there doing the work of a lawyer and enjoying the rewards that only being a lawyer can give.

Yours, on the other hand, is a bit different, isn’t it? What you really want is to be as important as your grandfather, to be shown the same level of respect and to have your decisions affect the course of living. That is your dream and being a lawyer is only a means to that end. You could become an archbishop, or a president, or a prime minister and have the same effect.

To truly understand what your dreams are, you have to identify what is important to you, what would make you happy with yourself, your successes, and your life.
These are your values, the codes by which you live your life.

Values – the things that give meaning to your success

This example shows that in order to really understand what your dreams are, and if you are heading in the right direction, you have to identify what is really important to you, what would make you happy with yourself, your successes, and your life.

These are your values, the codes by which you live your life. Values dictate right from wrong, good from bad, what’s acceptable from what’s not. Your values cause you to care about some things and not others, and cause you to work for some things and not others.

So, in order to zero in on the big dream, you need to identify the things that mean a lot to you.You need to answer questions such as:
What do you want from life?
What are the things that make you feel that you are okay, and that your life is what you want it to be?
Is it happiness, wealth, freedom from responsibilities, recognition, health?
How important are all of these to you?
Which do you want first?
How easy will it be to achieve all of this, and how hard are you willing to work for it?

Some common values are:

Peace of mind	Happiness	Financial security	Physical security
Being wealthy	Meaningful career	Good health	Living to an old age
Living a full life	Religion	Close relationship with spouse	Close relationship with children
Teaching others	Personal power	Control of life	Companionship and friendships
Self employment	Peace and harmony in life	Peace and harmony with nature	Respect for accomplishments
Financial independence	Welcoming home life	Comfort and lack of physical labour	Being admired and liked
Power & control over others	Education and intellect	Sense of accomplishment	Fame

There are many more than these examples, so spend as much time as you need to create a list that represent YOUR values, not your parents, or spouse, children, or friends. You need to be clear about these things so that you don’t waste your time pursuing dreams and goals that will have no meaning to you and will not make you satisfied when you succeed.

Be clear about your values so that you don’t waste time pursuing dreams and goals that will have no meaning to you and will not make you satisfied when you succeed.

Fine tune your dreams & values lists

Once your Values List is settled and written in your journal, go back and examine your Dreams List. You may notice that a number of your dreams do not really match with the things you feel are important to you. This means that you should look at your Dream List again and see if there is any way of making your dreams more in keeping with the things you hold dear.

Make sure you have covered the important areas of your life.
• Business & career
• Family
• Lifestyle
• Personal development
• Finance

You may also notice that what in fact seems to be a number of dreams may just be the several accomplishments that need to be made in order to get to the BIG dream.

Allow yourself some dreams that you can achieve in the short term so that there are early rewards, and plan for the long term so that you are continually moving towards a fuller life.

But above all, don’t overload yourself.

Planning for success

LifeTime Planning and goal attainment should not consume and burden your life but should allow you to achieve the goals that will make your life enjoyable, meaningful, and stress free. For now, focus on the important matters.

You have decided what you want to do and that’s a big, big start. Now you must decide, from your standpoint, which is most important for you to achieve first, and then next, and so on.

Satisfy your most important values first, so that you get the highest level of satisfaction from your life. What time frames are you looking at? Put in some tentative estimates for this/next year, the next three years, as well as the next five to ten years.

Now it’s time to commit to your success. Start with just a few to get you into the groove of things. Look at one short-term, a mid-term and a long-term dream. Write each at the top of a page in your journal.

Dreams are like movies—they have several parts to them.
Each of these parts is a goal that will require a different strategy in order to be achieved.

Make your dreams a reality by setting goals and objectives

The big question now is “How do you make your dreams happen?”

Dreams are like movies—they have several parts to them. Let’s say that your big dream is 1) to have a large 5–bedroom house 2) on the seashore of a tropical island, and 3) live there with a caring and sexy partner. This dream means that you must 4) be rich or have a very good and secure source of income.

Each of the different parts of this dream is a goal that will require a different strategy in order to be achieved.

Look back at the three dreams you have written in your journal and try to and break each down into smaller parts/goals like in the tropical island example above.

Each part or goal you define must be clear and separate enough to cover just one aspect of your dream.

However, while each of your goals is clearly defined and focused on one area, they are not specific enough to take you from dreams to reality. For this to happen you need to have objectives.

Objectives are goals that have been made detailed enough to allow you to start making plans for changing your dreams into reality. Objectives give you something specific to start working on. You will also find that in defining your objectives you may have to go back and break out your goals even further.

So, for the tropical island dream, one objective would be to save eighty thousand dollars by December 20__ to buy an acre of beachfront property in Jamaica; and another objective would be earning at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars per year by that time to be able to afford to build and maintain the dream house; and so on.

Objectives are goals that have been made detailed enough for you to plan the activities needed to achieve your dream.
Planning and deciding these activities are possibly the most important factors (next to actually doing them) in achieving your dreams.

Once you have defined your objectives, your dreams get much closer to reality. You are now able to start making plans, listing the activities that are necessary to achieve each objective you have defined for your dream.

The good thing about this process is that, more often than not, by the time you get down to defining your objectives you would already have started thinking about what needs to be done in order to achieve them. That is what we will do in Part 2.

Preview to Part II – Defining objectives & planning activities

In Part 2 we will go into more details on making your dreams happen.

You have already selected a short-term, a mid-term and a long-term dream and have started breaking them down into manageable goals. We will start there by looking at more examples of how goals are derived.

After that, you will define the objectives and plan the activities, with time lines, for achieving each of your goals. Planning and deciding what activities are crucial to changing your dreams into reality are possibly the most important factors (next to actually doing them) in achieving your dreams.

Before moving on, do another review of your dreams, values, and goals that you have written in your journal. Ensure your dreams and values are aligned. Do the goals you have identified so far support the dreams you want to live?

Start thinking about what objectives you will need to achieve to meet these goals. Consider tentative timelines, things to be done, and the resources you will require for these activities. All these are the things we will look at in detail in Part2, so laying this groundwork will give you a solid head start.

So get ready, success is ahead.