What is Stamped In Your Passport? Make your way with Purpose: Where Can the Next Ten Years Take You?

“Control your destiny or someone else will.”
-- one of Jack Welch’s business principles

If you could be anywhere you’d like in 2017, where would that be?

Charlotte Landram, a highly successful leader of sales organizations, professional coach and founder of High Impact Systems, says she got to thinking about that recently while standing in line to renew her passport.

“As I was waiting to have my passport photo taken, I got to looking – and thinking – and reminiscing. Wow! How quickly 10 years pass. Yes, I look a little older. I traveled to far away places. I saw a lot of spectacular scenes, had a couple scares, and ate at the sidewalk cafés in Paris.

“I also started a quick list of all the things that have happened in my life in the past 10 years,” Landram says. “I started a business and sold a business; sold china at Filenes in Boston and worked for a Fortune 300 company; lived in three different states (one state twice); and, found my destiny and passion.”

How many major events have occurred in your life in the past decade? Were they purposeful? Did you plan to be where you are today? If so, great.

If, on the other hand, when glancing at a 10-year-old photo of yourself you put together a mental list of happenings that followed no plan or purpose, maybe it’s time to make some new road map documents for the next decade: Snap a new photo of yourself even if you don’t need to update your passport; open a new notebook or journal, and draft some goals.

How will you shape the next 10 years of your life?

According to Landram, the happiest and most fulfilled professionals she encounters maintain a sharp focus on their life/work purpose. Whether that’s building the highest-grossing sales organization in the region, turning some spare parts and a dream into an award-winning innovation, or teaching people how to utilize and capitalize on skills they didn’t know they had.

“Some people get up in the morning and focus on tasks,” Landram says. “They fret over a to-do list. They spend too much time reading (or preparing) reports. They set appointments, but they don’t close deals. I encourage my clients to reprioritize their thoughts and actions a bit, and put planning and purpose above task accomplishment.

“Sit down and identify the purpose of your work – whether that’s what it is today… or what you want it to be. Put yourself through a goal setting exercise – and then put your goals down on paper,” Landram suggests.

Did you know? Studies show only about one in four adults take the time to write out goals. No wonder it’s so easy to lose track of them.

“Make a plan and put it in motion. You’ll find yourself creating – and celebrating – many, many purposeful events during the next 10 years,” Landram says.

Put purpose into a plan

What’s the best way to set life/work goals? How can you bring a higher sense of purpose to your life work – and achieve powerful results? How do you create a life on purpose?

Landram suggests thoughtfully answering a few key questions…and then working through a goal-development exercise. Here are a couple of her favorites:

What do you do that brings you the most joy?
What activity seems effortless – and time flies by when you’re doing it?
If you could script a reality for you, your family, or your business in 10 years’ time, how would it read?

Free-Writing Goal Exercise: Find a comfortable, quiet place. Pick up a pen and note pad, and begin transferring your thoughts, wishes, and dreams for your future to paper. Write as much as you can (without worrying about organization or spelling). Pick a specific segment of your life (financial, business or personal) to get started. A day or two later, go back to your journal and highlight all the specific thoughts that you can develop into actual goals and plans.

Mapping Exercise: If you’re more visually oriented, try a similar exercise with drawings. With paper and color pens, sketch your future aspirations. What does happiness, fulfillment, and your own sense of success look like? Draw the specific segments of your life (financial, business and personal) on separate pages…and then connect common visions.

Purchase a new briefcase or a piece of luggage and attach these new ID tags as a gift from Charlotte. Each time you see them ask, “Am I living a life purposefully created or am I just passing time?”

The power of written goals

Yale University conducted a study of graduating seniors in 1953. Students were asked, “Do you have clear, specific, written goals for your life, and have you developed plans for their accomplishment after you leave the university?” 84 percent had no goals at all, but to graduate and enjoy their life. Thirteen percent only had unwritten goals. Only three percent had clear, specific, written goals and plans for their life after university.

In 1973, twenty years later, the surviving members of that class were again surveyed. One of many questions asked of them was, "What is your net worth today?" The researchers’ reported an astonishing figure. The three percent who had clear written goals and plans were worth more in dollar terms than the other 97 percent combined.