How to Design Your Life Purpose

                                                How to Design Your Life Map
                                                        by Jodi-Ann Walker

Planning out your life is important because it allows you to be the master of your destiny and helps you to live a fulfilling life based on your goals and personal vision. To strategically and systematically plan out your life, the following points should be borne in mind:

You need to do a personal evaluation based on your beliefs, values, and principles. To help you to this, you could reflect on personal experiences to help give you insights on your good ( and not-so-good) traits, skills, knowledge, strengths and weakness. Note that your self-evaluation should not include your economic, professional, cultural and civil status.

Determine what it is you would like to become in life. This makes a personal evaluation even more necessary since you need to know yourself well before you can decide what you should become. You also need to assess what you need to change about yourself. These could be thinking patterns, attitudes, habits or world view. Your personal vision should take in account all the aspects of your being: physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual.

You need to determine your personal life mission. Your life mission is determined by your goals, talents, abilities and what you intend to do to improve the world around you.

Determine the required knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to fulfill your life purpose. This will determine your competence and help you realize your vision. Therefore, it is necessary to determine what you need to do to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way.

Set goals for life plan/vision/map according to S.M.A.R.T. objectives. The goals that you set should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound. Therefore, if you want to receive your master's and doctorate's degree, you will know that it is unrealistic or impractical to expect these degrees in two years.
Expect turns, detours, and setbacks while on your journey in achieving your life purpose. Your life map should minimize any hasty or hurried decisions which would cause you to miss your way. However, you should recognize that life maps can be modified to accommodate unforeseen circumstances or any other eventualities that might come up. You need to anticipate these and adjust accordingly.