After Two Years In Pandemic Land Here's A Roadmap For A Happy, Safe, And More Prosperous Year In 2022. Redesign, Rebuild And Reclaim It For YourSelf

It's almost New Years again and we are, a lot of us anyway, looking to the future and what we can do better than we did this year. I'll grant you all that the world has thrown us a lot of curveballs. It seems like we've been hit with a continuous round of curveballs. From the Covid-19 virus to the rise in inflation, to the messy politics we're forced to endure, to the crazy rise in crime the news shows us, all the way to empty shelves in the world's "greatest" country. How can the world improve? I don't know… But I can say that people can make their lives better if they want to in 2022. 

Looking Back!

Looking into the past to see the future. We are all going to do that at one point. Just don't live there. The past is a road map, like a map through a mind field. The differences between people are simple. We've either crossed a harrowing and treacherous minefield, leading us to a place we're not satisfied with, or we crossed a mind field that led us to a nice, peaceful, and prosperous place. 

If you're in that first group, then don't be worried. Many people find themselves there at some point. The minefield we've crossed is littered with the explosions that were our sorrows, our mistakes, our lack of judgment, and our failures. Each one of them pushed you a bit closer to the next minefield. But guess what that really means. You're a winner! You're still the hero of your story, fighting to get to your prize, your reward, your happy ending.

Only now, we are all looking back at a different world. The world of Covid has changed a lot about how we live. We don't see too many smiling faces anymore, especially in areas where people have remained masked up for their safety. Donning masks became a part of regular routines for most of us, especially if we work in government or private sector jobs that require them. Again, if you haven't let the world beat you and you aren't living in fear of the virus as well as the world outside your four walls, you're a winner. 

Looking At Today

Look around you today. What is it that worries you? What parts of your life aren't what you hoped they would be? What are you not satisfied with? Now, the biggest question - what are you going to do about it?

"Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay." 

 - Simone de Beauvoir

"Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present."

 - Jim Rohn

"The future starts today, not tomorrow." 

 - Pope John Paul II

Looking Forward

Looking forward is less scary than looking back. The forward part hasn't been written yet and it's up to you to write that timeline. With every action that you took, there was a consequence, seen or unforeseen. You wrote that story.

It doesn't matter if you were playing a bad hand of cards dealt by some insidious person in your life. That includes the boss that let you down, didn't recognize you, or shafted you over employee politics. It includes the lover or spouse that snuck around behind your back, lead you down a path that you followed because you were committed to him or her - or in 2021 whatever pronoun they might want to be considered.

When you're looking forward what do you need to move in the right direction? In a perfect world, we would all have a master plan, a mentor, and a conscience that would keep us on task and help drive us in the right direction. Alas, this isn't that world. 

So, it falls to us to make a plan. 

"A goal without a plan is just a wish."

 - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Redesign

2022 can be the year of the redesign. It is as good a year as any to redesign life as we know it, and hopefully move on into a new and more prosperous world. By prosperous, I don't necessarily mean a world where we simply get rich. I mean a world where we are prospering in all avenues of life. 

First, we have to identify our goals. Whether your goal is to make more money, get ahead in your career, learn a new skill, improve your relationships or even forge new ones, how you are going to go about accomplishing those goals is your plan. 

Secondly, what goals are the most important to accomplish? Nothing says that you can't multi-task in your life plans but establishing what needs to be done in an order of importance will help you to prioritize your energies. Where do you spend the most time improving life? 

Thirdly, tangible actions. What have you been doing wrong that you're not there yet? Have you not been watching how you spend your money? Have you not been the go-getter that you need to be at work to get noticed? Have you ignored your personal relationships, causing distance in your marriage or neglecting a significant other? These questions need answering so that you know what tangible actions you need to commit to getting things moving in the direction you want them to move. 

Once you have identified your goals, prioritized your goals, and examined the habits that kept you from achieving your goals you can now formulate a plan of action to change the life that you're unhappy with and move forward toward a more successful life in the future. Whether it means you have to commit to exercising, getting to work on time and doing a little extra, making sure that you're putting away enough money for that new car, retirement savings, or home repairs - you now know what's important and why you still have to work harder to achieve those goals.

For every avenue you are planning to change, make a list of what you need to do to make things better. Start with small actions to improve. Then big actions. Then every day, make sure to get those small actions taken care of and start working towards those bigger actions. By doing so, you're going to follow your own grand design.

"Plan for what is difficult while it is easy, do what is great while it is small."

 - Sun Tzu

Rebuild

Now that you have a design you can start to rebuild your life, or that part of your life, that needs attention. In life we all fall, we all fail, and we all have to decide what to do about it when we're on the "ground" feeling like we just got hit with the knockout punch. But, if we fear failing, then we're never going to succeed. 

Your failures are your foundation to build success upon. We have to fail in order to learn, grow, and succeed in life. If you recall your first bad grade in school, someone probably told you to study harder, to focus more on a part of the subject that was holding you back, and to spend less wasted time on things like video games, talking to girls, or hanging out with your friends. Mine, personally, was algebra. But, I learned from my mistakes, spent more time studying and going through my work slower, and ultimately I was able to pass the course with a B.

So, on top of your foundation of any failure, you start to build from your mistakes. If you're working on being more financially secure, getting out of debt, or being able to make a large financial purchase like a home or car, then you have to put money aside and decrease your overall debt to income ratio. That means paying off those credit card bills.

If you're working towards finding love in a world where it is increasingly hard to keep up with the dos and don'ts of dating, then you have to start finding new ways of putting yourself out there. Visit with old friends, attend those events you haven't been paying attention to, show the world through social media that you're someone who has a life and knows how to enjoy yourself. People respond to people who are happy, well rounded, and that know who they are and what they want. 

If you're working towards moving up professionally, talk to your supervisor about identifying the faults they'd like to see you improve on, your desire to be better at your job, or move up in the company or organization. Having been in middle management, we sometimes take people's faults on the chin to keep things moving forward but when someone comes to us for help to improve it is always taken as a challenge. 

"The best way to create the future is to create it."

 - Abraham Lincoln

"The future depends on what we do in the present." 

 - Mahatma Gandhi

"The past is your lesson. The present is your gift. The future is your motivation." 

 - Anonymous

Reclaim

After redesigning how you want your life to look, then you rebuilt it or started to from the foundation of your mistakes or failures. I'll be doing some of that as well because my year was not without failures and mistakes. Now, as you're rebuilding your life, using your plan to achieve your goals, there's one last thing left to do. Reclaim!

Guess what, this is the easy part. Redesigning takes facing yourself, your bad habits, and your mistakes. Essentially, it is a hard look at the path to where you are today and what is the path you need to take to get to where you wish to be in the future. 

You've rebuilt your pathway to the life you want by assessing the failures and prioritizing your goals. As you started to rebuild things, you take action towards your goals. Using your past mistakes and failures, you're building towards that life you really want to live and deserve to have if you're willing to do all this work to improve your lot in the world. 

Now, you get to reclaim your life, and you get to enjoy living it along the way. You're putting the past in your rearview, practicing better habits than you were before, have a clear vision of what it is you want and how to move forward towards achieving that goal. You are reclaiming your world and writing your own story. 

It doesn't matter if you're a 22-year-old college drop-out or a nearly 50-year old that is just figuring out who he is and what he really wants in life. If you're a neurotic mess or an agoraphobic that has an anxiety attack when you open the front door, or someone who is scared of the covid virus, you can get control of the avenues of your life. All it is going to take is some work, a little perseverance, and commitment and you will have redesigned, rebuilt, and reclaimed the spot as the hero of your own story.