THE FUTURE…?
Posted on October 12, 2015 by Phil Elworth
As a business owner thinking about transitioning from your business there is often the fear of what’s next. I would like to propose you think about this next chapter of your life as a new beginning. What have you always wanted to do but never had the time or the resources to pursue it? The idea of moving into a new chapter of your life should be filled with excitement not dread.
Jack and Suzy Welch in their book the Real Life MBA describe this process as finding your Area of Destiny. This is the intersection of what you are good and what you love to do.
When we describe what you are good at we mean what you do better than anyone else. People will often affirm this skill for you. If you have never thought about this before it may take some work on your part to identify what these skills are. They can be the way you deal with a project. The way you deal with people or specific situations. I would propose an exercise to help you determine just what you are really good at.
We call this exercise the Turning Point exercise, as defined by the Patterson Group in their StratOps process. This is where you write down all the key milestones of your life, both good and bad, note the year they occurred and the impact they had on you. What did you learn or what did you begin to do differently because of this event. As you get more and more detailed about these events you will notice a pattern. A pattern about who you have become and why your life has taken the trajectory it has. From this you will have an opportunity to determine from your successes just what you are good at.
The second part of the exercise, which is often the easier of the two, is to determine what you love to do. Take a look at your calendar, what upcoming event are you really looking forward to? If you could do anything tomorrow, no issue of time or expense, what would it be? Most of us know what we love to do, what sets our heart to beating more loudly. We just have never given ourselves permission to think about pursuing them.
Once we have determined these two questions we can begin the process of understanding where they intersect. How can you combine both of these together? Is anyone already doing this that you can learn from? At this stage it is a research and creative process to determine how you can fulfill and live in your Area of Destiny. To accomplish this however, the process must begin today.
photo credit: OutaTime (P365-196) via photopin (license)
