How are you tracking on your quest to achieve your life’s dreams and goals – your vision of your life? Do you have a life plan to make the vision, dreams, and goals happen? Do you really have a life plan? My guess is that most of us had a life plan to achieve our vision, dreams, and goals. It may not have been documented, but we had an idea of where we wanted to go.

Clarity of dreams, vision, and goals is where it starts. I truly believe we all leave school and embark on our lives with dreams, goals, and a vision of what we want out of life clear in our minds, not just for ourselves but also for our families. Many dreams and goals are achieved by our initial steps being in the direction of going after those dreams and goals, often not written down or documented, however going in the right direction, right out of school. More often than not our vision gets clouded through living life, day to day activities, road blocks, and our disillusionment with the realities of the world. No doubt my generation has seen plenty of ups and downs—Viet Nam and Watergate to incredible technological, economic and government growth to 9/11 and the Great Recession. Not to mention the realities of living—joys of marriage and children, enjoying the wonders and beauty of the world, and the pain of illness, divorce, and the death of those close to us.

The unfortunate outgrowth is that the ups and downs, life, etc. may breed apathy, we may go listless through periods of our life, or we just get lost, and in many cases lose focus. And focus creates growth and accomplishments.

We need to plan our lives, create our destiny, our careers, and our retirements. Even if we have gotten derailed, we can embrace the concept that today is the first day of the rest of our life and revisit or establish new dreams and goals and write a plan on how to make them a reality.

Start moving toward that vision with your documented dreams and goals. The next step is the strategies necessary to achieve the dreams and goals, followed by the actions you must take for each dream, and goal to become a reality. This becomes your plan and yes, it does need to be written/documented because a plan that is not documented is not a plan. It is just a thought. Your plan must be reviewed often, focused on, and the actions taken that are contained in your plan to move you forward toward your vision, dreams, and goals.

Your plan needs consistent review to ensure you remain on target to reach your dreams, vision, or goals. Your plan should be ever evolving as you evaluate your progress, keep score. You may need to make adjustments to get back on track to achieve your dreams, vision, and goals. After all, most efforts to achieve goals in business and in life are not a straight line to achievement. Your plan is not etched in stone, so you need to make adjustments to stay on target.

How do you eat an elephant should be part of your life plan. Your dreams, vision, goals need to be broken down for benchmarking. Beginning with the end in mind—long term then maybe a 5 year goal or objective, 3 year, 1 year, and a strategic plan that you review consistently, add to, delete, edit, and adjust to keep you moving forward to your dreams, vision, and goals.

If you have not done a self-check on your life plan lately, there is no time like the present. Get clarity on where you want to go, what you want to do, and make your bucket list. Document your dreams, vision, and goals. Document your plan on how you are going to MAKE IT HAPPEN, get the most out of life and enjoy not just the results, but the journey!