All of our lives, we are so busy doing things that most of us never understand the purpose we want our lives to serve.

• As a child, you are busy learning to be human – walking, talking, eating, learning the social and intellectual skills needed to live in our society.
• As a young adult, you were busy taking your place in society – getting that college degree, finding a job, getting your own home, being a productive worker or business owner.
• As a parent, you are super busy raising the next generation – having babies, earning enough to pay to raise them, and teaching them all of the things they need to know.

 

It’s only as we approach death that our lives come into sharp focus. What have we done that is worthwhile? Have we made the world a better place by being in it? Have we really been effective and productive in society?

If only it were possible to find our focus sooner, before it is nearly too late to live it.

It is possible and some people achieve that focus at a very young age, others (like me) don’t get it until later. Here are my retrospective tips on how to lead a focused life.

Build In Dream Time

Allow time in your day and week to dream. You can dream through personal meditation or in conversation with a person close to you. You can dream while you do physical tasks that don’t require a lot of mental activity. You can dream in church or during those college dorm sessions where you try to re-write the rules of the world. You can dream at work in those brainstorming meetings or at the gym while you work out.

Some of my best ideas and revelations came to me while ironing or raking leaves, or sitting with hubby in the morning talking things over. Some have even come as I write.

If you are in a constant frenzy of activity, rapidly switching from one thing to another, you can’t pursue a thought to its’ final vision.

Set your schedule to allow time for activities which allow you to dream about what you want your life to be and mean.

Picture The End Of You

As Steven Covey said in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – “Start with the end in mind”.

To live a focused life, start by figuring out what you want people to think, feel and know about you on the day that you die.

Everyone dies. Most of us just don’t want to acknowledge it. Picture yourself at your own memorial service. What do you want people to say of you? What do you want them to list as your accomplishments? Who do you want to be there? How do you want them to feel about your life and death?

Answers to these questions lead you to the vision you have for life’s purpose. Within them are multiple legacies that can be left – legacies that show you met your purpose in life, that what you have done was worthwhile and that you did leave the world a better place.

Pick one or two big legacies you want to leave. Make them the focus of your life. Then figure out what big things you can do or be to build those legacies.

Test Your Vision And Legacy Ideas

Talk to others, in multiple walks of life about your vision for yourself and how you plan to implement it. Use their input to test your willingness to pursue that vision and refine the legacies you choose to make it come about.

But be careful not to let their expectations rule your definition of your life’s purpose. You must live true to yourself. If you try to meet everyone’s expectations, your life will meander aimlessly through other people’s purposes.

Do test your vision and the legacies you want to leave behind against the values held dear by others to make sure you can hold true to them.

Develop A Roadmap

What big things can you do to achieve your legacies? Which of them will you do, which will you avoid?

If you don’t know where you are headed, looking at a map doesn’t do any good at all. Once you decide on a direction, then you can start choosing the roads to travel.

Find the big deal things to do and be and put them on your roadmap.

Set Time Frames For Your Big Deal Things

Will you be ready to take that mission trip this year or should it wait until the kids are grown? When will you have enough knowledge to start teaching those classes to pass that valuable knowledge along to future generations? How long will it take you to build up the resources to start that successful business to enrich the lives of thousands?

Think big chunks of time, measure life in decades and set big timeframes at decade markers for your big deal things to build legacies to achieve your life’s purpose.

Develop A Plan

Think about what you need to do or what skill you need to have to accomplish those big deal things. Think about the activities and tasks that you need to do to get the skills and to accomplish these big deal things.

The activities and tasks for each and every big deal thing leading to a legacy will be your life plan.  A plan that lets you end up having lived a life of purpose.

Set Priorities

Which of those tasks are you working on this year. What will you do today to make progress towards reaching this part of your life’s vision?

I use yearly goal setting and daily to do lists to try to stay on track. We are all easily distracted by many demands on our time and attention. It is often hard to stay the course.

Stay the course by setting priorities to step towards your life’s end purpose.

Allow Yourself To Change

Different stages of life may bring you to different conclusions about your purpose and vision. You may decide to change or tweak your desired legacy. Permit yourself to do so, without guilt, but then continue to live a life focused on that changed purpose.

What purpose does your life serve? Are you making progress towards the legacies that will prove you lived a worthwhile life? How will the world be better off for you having lived in it?

These are hard questions to ask and answer. How do you go about living a purposeful life?