How to Define Your Life's Key Areas

You need a clear idea about how you see your life in the future. Instead of responding to life by giving in to the demands of others, reacting to crises, or simply doing things out of habit, you can control your life. But to do so you need to know what you really want.

What do you want to be doing in five years, ten years, twenty years? What do you want to have achieved by the time you retire? How do you want to spend your retirement? Aim to make your life as much like your dreams as possible. Defining your goals and objectives in life will help you achieve your dreams - or at least go a long way towards them. By defining your goals you can organize your life accordingly. At first it might seem as if you can't fit everything in. But trust me - if you know clearly where you want to get to, the journey will be much easier.

First, decide which are the most important areas of your life - your key areas. Look at the various roles you play. Are you a worker, parent, churchgoer, committee member, sports person? By looking at these roles you can work out what broad categories your life falls into. Ask yourself 'What is important to me?' A typical list might be:

- family
- work
- leisure
- community
- spiritual
- money
- health.

Within each of these areas of your life you will have goals you want to achieve. Until you have worked out what those goals are, you cannot decide what you need to do to achieve them and therefore how to arrange your time to achieve them.

What are your secret ambitions?
Forget for a moment about the work you have to do tomorrow and that committee meeting you have to go to at the local community centre. Take an hour to write down your hopes and dreams - all the things that you want to do, however silly they seem. Include dreams and ambitions that relate to the all the key areas of your life, both professional and private. For example:

- become chief executive
- work only four hours a day
- spend three months fishing in Scotland
- live in China
- go bareback riding in the USA
- buy a Rolls Royce.

Don't be shy - let your dreams flow. Some of the dreams may be ultimately unachievable (perhaps becoming chief executive is a little ambitious!) but they give you something to aim for. Other things, such as the fishing in the example, can be planned for and could be achieved, if you had time and money.

Take into account the things you regret not having done, your secret wishes, the things you like doing best, what you would do if you had more free time, in fact anything that you can visualize as part of your ideal life.

Don't write down what you or other people think you ought to want to achieve - write down your own goals however silly they may seem. If you aim for the stars you might never get there but you can at least visit a few asteroids on the way.

Try to write at least one goal, preferably three, for each key area. For example, suppose your goals for family life are:

- spend more time with my family e travel together
- have time to help my children with their homework
- spend quality time with my partner.

By writing down your ambitions in this way you can see in which areas you need to make changes to your time.

What talents do you have?
Write down all your talents and inner strengths, too. These are all part of the resources that will help you reach your goals. Don't underestimate these. No skill or personal resource is too trivial to be valuable to you whether it is courage, needlework, honesty, car mechanics, being a good listener or having the ability to get on well with others. Assess all your talents and skills to see how they can help you achieve your goals, or whether they should become part of your goals. If you are not sure what personal qualities you have, ask a friend to give you an honest assessment.