Life Mapping: A Vision of Success

Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Planning for
success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a
map, you need to define the following details: origin, destination,
vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route.

Origin:  Who you are

A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most
people when asked to introduce themselves would say, "Hi, I'm Jean and I
am a 17-year old, senior highschool student." It does not tell you about
who Jean is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. To gain
insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs,
values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural,
and civil status. Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to
give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills,
knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses. Upon introspection, Jean realized
that she was highly motivated, generous, service-oriented, but
impatient. Her inclination was in the biological-medical field.
Furthermore, she believed that life must serve a purpose, and that wars
were destructive to human dignity.

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

"Who do want to be?" this is your vision. Now it is important that you
know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to
be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes,
habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision
and targets for the future would also be unclear. Your destination
should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional,
intellectual, and spiritual. Continuing Jean's story, after she defined
her beliefs, values, and principles in life, she decided that she wanted
to have a life dedicated in serving her fellowmen.

Vehicle: Your Mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can
be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent,
your mission would depend on what you know about yourself. Bases on
Jean's self-assessment, she decided that she was suited to become a
doctor, and that she wanted to become one. Her chosen vocation was a
medical doctor. Describing her vision-mission fully: it was to live a
life dedicated to serving her fellowmen as a doctor in conflict-areas.

Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are contained
in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with
you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your
competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a
need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at
present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold
assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of
success. Jean realized that she needed to gain professional knowledge
and skills on medicine so that she could become a doctor. She knew that
she was a bit impatient with people so she realized that this was
something she wanted to change.

Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route
determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also
need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of
success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable,
realistic, and time bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such
as earning a master's degree and a doctorate degree within a period of
three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master's
degree is two years. Going back to Jean as an example, she identified
the following landmarks in her life map: completing a bachelor's degree
in biology by the age of 21; completing medicine by the age of 27;
earning her specialization in infectious diseases by the age of 30;
getting deployed in local public hospitals of their town by the age of
32; and serving as doctor in war-torn areas by the age of 35.

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment
decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are
modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other
situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns,
detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust
accordingly.