The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago. The next best time is today! It’s not hard for us to daydream about the life we’d like to live and the people we want to be. If you caught my goal setting class last week (if you didn’t, you can watch the recording and download your own one page business plan, HERE), you know we can reverse-engineer your life’s goals and lay a roadmap to make each year a measurable step toward your ideal life. Why then do we procrastinate? Do we not value our precious and finite time on this world enough?
Let’s start off by quantifying how much life you’ve lived and how much you expect you have left. According to website, Macrotrends (https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy), life expectancy in 2020 is 78.93 years. That’s 28,809 days. Now that is the average. I don’t know about you, however, I am dedicated to living to triple digits, meaning that if I reached my 100th birthday, it would be a win, at 36,525 days. I am currently 34 years old and on the day I am writing this post I have been on this earth for 12,478 days. By subtracting my current days from my anticipated days, I know I have 24,047 days remaining. Imagine that countdown clock on your wall. Would you change your behavior if each day you saw that number counting down? 24,046… 24,045… 24,044. Imagine if you weren’t as optimistic as me and you only expected to live the average and that countdown was about to fall below 10,000. How would you behave tomorrow to ensure you don’t squander another day and to ensure your success?
In The ONE Thing (Gary Keller, Jay Papasan), the authors symbolize accomplishments in life like a series of dominoes. Studies have shown that a single domino standing can knock down another domino, fifty-percent larger than itself. If you start with a two-inch domino, the second would be three-inches, and the third four-and-a-half. As the dominoes get exponentially larger, so does the energy exerted by the last domino. The twenty-third domino would be the height of the Eiffel Tower, the thirty-first would be three-thousand feet taller than Mt. Everest, and the fifty-seventh would reach the moon from the earth’s surface.
What doesn’t change is the energy required to knock down that simple two-inch domino, starting the chain reaction which inevitably knocks down your moonshot domino. Sometimes in life, you’re staring down that domino that casts shade on Mt. Everest, wondering how you’ll ever topple it. Now that you know your objective, we need to go small.
Once you’re clear on where you want to be, we can reverse-engineer your goals and break them down to the year, month, week, and even the day. If you knew that adherence to your schedule today would build the life of your dreams, would you squander another day? Would you let other people’s priorities and “emergencies” distract you from the playbook of your dreams? Your clock is counting down. You don’t have until next year… Not even next quarter. You could live to be 100, like I intend. You could make it to 78. You might develop a rare form of cancer and be given a prognosis of one year from today. What is the legacy you will leave? What will your obituary say about how you lived?
If you are stuck finding your big domino, check out my goal setting class, HERE. Once you have your big domino, join me at my next class, Get the 4-1-1 on Your Schedule. We’ll reverse engineer your goals and I’ll give you the tools you need to fill your calendar with the activities which will ensure your inevitable success.
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