8 Tips for Creating a Compelling Future

Everyone needs a vision of the future that holds a little excitement! It would be dreadful to live year after year with nothing to look forward to. Life is just better when you have the expectation of something positive happening in the future. It could be retirement, a vacation, buying a particular item, or meeting an old friend for lunch next week.

No one can design a compelling future for you. You have to choose it for yourself and then begin working on it.

Try these techniques to create a future that will make you feel excited to get up each day:

1. Make a list of the things you’d love to do, see, and accomplish. A compelling future has to be, well, compelling. The only way to make your future compelling is to choose things that you’d like to see, do, and accomplish in the future. It’s entirely up to you what you’d like to pursue.
2. Set a timeline for each item on your list. Go through your list and put a realistic timeline for each one if you were to start working on it today. There should be items that can be accomplished relatively quickly while others could take years.
3. Choose several items with varied times to completion. You can do just about anything in life, but you can’t do it all. It’s time to make some choices.
   • It’s important to choose some short, medium, and long-term items.
   • If you’re going to have a compelling future, it’s important to always have something to look forward to. If all of your goals are 10+ years in the future, you’re not going to feel very motivated or positive about the next few months or years.
4. Consider everything these goals will require to accomplish. Consider the time, money, and other resources that will be required. Do you need to acquire a boat? Learn to surf? Speak Vietnamese? Do you need a lot of time off from work? After all, it takes quite a while to climb Mount Everest.
5. Make a plan. Create a plan for each goal that you have. What do you need to accomplish tomorrow, this month, and this year? Map it all out as well as you possibly can. This might take some time and research.
6. Visualize daily. One of the best ways to keep your goals in mind is to visualize yourself achieving them. It will also keep your motivation high and keep you on track.
7. Review your day in relation to your goals. At the end of the day, evaluate yourself. How well did you live today based on what you’re trying to accomplish long-term?
   • For instance, if you want to lose 30 pounds so that you can learn how to surf, how well did you eat today?
   • If your plan was to learn five new words in Japanese, did you accomplish that?
8. Make tomorrow better than today. Improve your behavior as it relates to accomplishing your goals. If you live each day a little better than the last, you’ll eventually achieve everything you set out to achieve.

If you’re feeling down, perhaps you just need to create a compelling future for yourself. Everyone needs a future filled with positive expectations.

You don’t have to rely on luck to have a future that is interesting and enjoyable. You can put the pieces into place right now to ensure that you have things in the future worth looking forward to. Get started today.