* Life Mapping: A Vision of Success By Titus Maduwa

 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 high school 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. 

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# 1 International Author Titus Maduwa

Lesson #6. Reduce Stress and Be Happy-by Titus Maduwa

Anything taken too much is bad for health. A little stress is actually good, as it could serve to help you function at your best. However, stress that seems a little too much could take a physical, as well as mental, toll to your body. Stress should be managed in order for depression or anxiety to be prevented.

So how should you do it then? The following are tips and advice to help manage stress.

Write it out, schedule it out.

It is best to write down everything that seems to be overwhelming. You will find a things-to-do-list much easier to manage than having errands all crumpled up in your head. Writing down the tasks, and putting a specific schedule and time to do them, helps anyone manage activities one chunk at a time. Crossing out an activity that has already been accomplished is very rewarding and could actually help you feel more relaxed when doing the other tasks at hand.

One at a time works.

Focus and put all your attention specifically on one task at one time. It does not help to feel panicky about the other undone or to-do tasks. Thinking about them only adds unnecessary stress and could even hamper in doing the task you are attempting to accomplish at present.

Relax and take it slow.

At least, try not to expend too much energy on activities that are currently not priorities. This is in order for your energy to be not easily expended on the tasks that are not that important, at least for now.

Delegate, delegate, delegate.

You need not do everything all at once, and you need not do everything on your own. Ask for help, get help, or pay for help. When there is a feeling of being overwhelmed that is cropping up, hire someone to mow the lawn or get a sitter for your children. The feeling of being pressed to finish something on time will somehow be eliminated if tasks are delegated. It takes a load of unnecessary worry and anxiety. Moreover, it is easier checking up on how things are than worrying yourself sick doing everything on your own, all at once.

Give yourself a reward.

You deserve it. Acknowledging your accomplishments, no matter how big or small is an effort that is necessary before getting on to the next tasks and activities. It reduces stress and could even make you happier in doing the next task.

Give yourself a break.

You need it to be more productive. A ten to fifteen-minute break during your work is necessary. Go visit a café nearby, take a quick brisk walk, or do anything to put your mind off work, at least for a while. This is necessary to refresh and recharge. Believe it or not, you can also stay in your work and sit with your eyes closed as you visualize a peaceful landscape or a relaxing scene. This frees the stress from your muscles and your mind.

Relax and be cool. Doing so makes you healthier, happier, and a lot more productive.

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Author-Titus Maduwa

Message From the Universe: Doing the Best You Can!

Always keep in mind that no matter what has happened, you did the very best you could.And so did those who may have let you down.

Great Love, The Universe Sometimes, life has an unjust way in dealing with our commitment to succeed. We can work our butt off for months or even years on a venture that doesn't pan out. We have invested our soul and every penny we have saved in our life but the imminent failure came and slapped us on the face. 

Despite these challenges and disappointments, you need to be able to get up and move forward. Life is no sunshine or rainbows. It doesn't matter how positive or enthusiastic you are about your success, life will beat you down to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. No matter how many ways you try to succeed, it will find a way to tackle you down violently. However, life is not very patient at doing that to people who are stubborn to succeed. You see, like any mean and cruel people in this world, they will attack the ones who have weak personalities and abandon ship at the first sign of distress. Life has no time to mess with the strong people, the ones that will push harder and stronger when they are being challenged. Once life sees how stubborn you are, it will go for the path of least resistance, where others will just give up after the first failure. It will bounce around until it has challenged everyone who tried to create something big in their life. You can simply avoid all of that by just living a normal and uneventful life and never be challenged by life itself. The journey is really up to you.

As long as you give it your all and as long as you've tried everything in your power to make that change that will propel you to unimaginable heights, you will never be at peace with yourself and will always wonder: "have I done everything I could to change the path of my future?". Never live life with regrets and always questioning yourself as to what else could have been done to increase your chances of success. Consider yourself lucky that you are still around to learn from your mistakes and realize that life will always challenge you when you try to come up with ideas that will revolutionize the world. Nothing ever came easy to anyone who have brought great changes to our past and present generation. If you want to be among the ones who contributed to these amazing changes, expect to fail numerous amount of time before anything great happens. It's all about expecting steady progress to your journey to success. It is not a race, but even if it was, you are still the only one running it.

Dr Dan Amzallag, PhD, MBA, CLC
Author/Inspirational Speaker/Life Coach
Consultation: 301-325-1550

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Daniel_A_Amzallag/257690

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