How to Get a Clear Picture of Where You’re at Now in Life

I have a life dream – to be a professional skateboarder.

If it sounds crazy when you’re 12 years old, I can imagine it sounds crazier when you’re 40.

If I were to pursue this goal today, I would be sacrificing things that are very valuable to me – income, a career, and my family home life.

It took me a while to accept this, but it’s not an aligned goal for me. I’m not planning on becoming a pro skater in 2018. For me, becoming a pro skater in 2018 is a fantasy.

But it’s still my dream. So what am I doing about it? I’m keeping myself physically fit and sticking to a healthy diet, so that if the door opens for me to spend two hours a day at the skatepark, I’ll be ready. I may be well into my 40s by then.

And yes, I’m aware that the older I get, the crazier it sounds to become a pro skater. With age, the experience of falling off a skateboard can become more severe. But there’s a whole library of low-impact tricks that you can learn. You don’t necessarily have to jump on handrails or off of buildings to be a pro skater.

You just need to use your imagination.

Imagination vs Fantasy

In the book Alice in Wonderland, Alice sees a rabbit and chases it down the rabbit hole. From then on the story gets really weird. She turns little, she turns big, she meets all kinds of crazy characters, etc. In the end, she just longs to get home safely.

Are there rabbits in your life that you’re chasing? Do you want to go down the rabbit hole, to escape the reality you’re facing in your life?

Boy do I get it. I know what it’s like to go down the rabbit hole – it doesn’t do anyone any good.

If you lose yourself by going down the rabbit hole, you don’t find something new. You’re just lost. And then you have to find yourself all over again. Best case scenario: you end up right back where you started.

But if you use your imagination and creative power to deal with the reality of your day-to-day life, then you can start seeing real change. But how do you do this?

A big part of it is taking the time to plan. I do this with Annual Planning and Weekly Reviews. I take a time each year to set out the goals for the coming year, and then I review those goals every week, to see if I’m on track.

This is far from fantasy.

Get a Clear Picture Now

How can you set aligned goals for next year?

Use your imagination. Don’t fantasize.

Planning is not an exercise in fantasizing. That would be a waste of precious planning time.

So how do you stop fantasizing, and start using your imagination? The best place to start is by getting a clear picture of where you are now.

And it helps to have someone help you from the outside. Someone who can objectively look at your life and comment. A mentor.

One of my mentors is someone who I learn from online. His name is Michael Hyatt. He calls himself a “virtual mentor”. And thing is, he really is a virtual mentor – it really works. Because of what I learned from him, I’ve been able to grow in maturity, be physically fit , get out of debt, and be present at home.

Michael Hyatt can help you get a clear picture of where you are now, with something called a LifeScore. It’s a 5m-10m online test that gives you a score for where you’re at in life. Spend a few minutes taking this test, to see where you’re at, so you can figure where you need to be.

It’s free, and it’s only available for a limited time, so be sure to check it out. Get your LifeScore here.

Btw, I took the score and got a 70. What’s your score? Let me know in the comments below. The first three people to comment with their score get access to my advanced productivity course “HighRoad Stage 3: Define Your Work” for free.