The picture of your life
What does the picture of your life look like? Are you heading in the direction you want to go? Are you on the best career path? How strong is your sense of confidence and self-belief? How close are you to reaching your hopes, dreams and aspirations? And how do you know? When was the last time you stopped to look at your progress and to see how well you’re really doing – or where you might need to do more work?
Here’s a simple way to find out how closely the picture of your life today matches how you’d truly like it to look.
First frame
Draw a frame outline on a piece of paper. Think about where you are now, looking at all the important aspects of your life. This could include your career progression, the amount of travel that you do (in normal times!), how happy your home life is, your mental and physical health, education or social life. There are any number of areas to consider so write the important ones for you into this first frame of your life.
Second frame
In a second frame write all the elements of how you want your life to be? Think about your goals, aspirations and dreams. Where do you want to be working and in what role? Where do you want to travel? What are your relationships like when they’re as fulfilling as they can be? What would contentment look and feel like if you could wave that magic wand?
How much do the frames overlap?
Cut out your frames and place your second frame over the first. Look at how much the two frames overlap. How big is the gap and how far away are you from how you’ve framed how you want your life to be? Are you just ticking along or are you on track to get to where you want to go? Give yourself some time to think about how satisfied you are with the different areas of your life and what’s still missing
You might be surprised to see that your two frames are actually closer than you think. Or your pictures could show you that there’s a lot that you want to change and work on. It’ll give you a chance to look at what really matters to you and then plan to do something about it.
If in your second frame you have a completely different career is it time to think about making a change? If your confidence is low what’s stopping you from doing something about it? Where your frames don’t overlap write down the issues that you might like to work on.
Looking at your life through these frames is a way of recognising the gaps that you’re either ignoring or didn’t realise were there.
How to make change
Change is possible with courage and commitment and it always helps to focus on what you want as a result of the change.
If you want to lose weight, the first thing to think about is what you actually want beyond that. Instead of focusing on the how, think about the benefits of losing weight and what success would be for you. Do you want to be healthier? If so, what what would that give you? Is it that you’d like to walk up the stairs without getting out of breath? Do you want to start running, doing sport again or simply feel good in whatever you wear?
Shift your thinking into the future to find out what motivates you – find the emotional connection to what you aspire to.
Take some time out to imagine a picture of your life now and how it matches up to how you’d like your life to be. What’s your overlap? Is your life as good as you want it to be or is there work to do?
