3 Steps in Creating a Life Plan

A life plan is a detailed description of your decisions, intentions, hopes and dreams for your future. Writing a life plan may be an assignment for school, a personal development program, or just an activity you are initiating to improve your life. Educational pursuits, career aspirations, recreational interests, marital life, children and end-of-life preferences are common subjects to address in a life plan. A detailed life plan is instructive for creating greater clarity regarding life priorities and next steps.

The following are the steps in writing a life plan:

Write down your needs, strengths, and dreams.

Writing these down will confirm your plan and make it more of a commitment. Make it geared to you, whether that means a polish, organized plan, or a creative poster with pictures it has to reflect you.

List your mental, emotional and spiritual needs. Being surrounded by loving and caring people may be one emotional need. Wanting independence and freedom from the control of others may be another need. Feeling connected to a spiritual or religious organization may be yet another need.

Pinpoint your physical and material needs. Being healthy and fit is one example. Living in an environment that is free of pollution may be another need. Living debt-free or accumulating wealth may be material needs.

Identify your strengths and talents. If you are a student, think about the subjects in which you excel.

Consider your hopes and dreams. These are aspects of life that give you joy. Falling in love, having children, owning a pet, contributing to a worthy cause and devising a solution to society's difficult problems are some examples.

Look At What's Not Working

After listing down what you want, need and dream of, it's now time to focus on the things which you want to change or improve in your life. When you're figuring out how to make a life plan, it helps to know what you want to change, and in what areas of your life. Here's where it helps to get out a journal and assess different areas of your life. This can be in list form, narrative form, created as a mind map, or in another format, but should cover the areas of life that are most important to you. For most people, that means job, family, wellness, finances, other areas of stress, and even home environment. Think about what your values are in life, and assess how those areas of life are currently working for you.

Plan Your Steps

Looking at where you'd like to be, and at where you are now, you can break down the path from "here" to "there" into small, manageable steps that you can more easily take. This way, you can more easily experience successes that can sustain your motivation, can look at where you may need to change your plan as you go, and can consistently put one step in front of the other and move yourself forward.

When you are done writing your life plan, always make it a point to revisit your life plan often. Make changes when you have to. When you miss an opportunity don't take it out of your planning completely. For all you know a bigger and better chance will come your way.

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