Many people never seriously ask themselves what they want from their lives and what they want to achieve in their life. Resultantly, they hardly ever accomplish their dreams. No one of us wants that to happen to us, so this article will help you guide us about the importance of thinking bigger and begin with a memorable end in mind.
Begin With a Memorable End in Mind
According to Dr. Stephen Covey, everything is created twice—once in the mind, and then in reality. Physical creations follow mental creations like the houses are constructed according to blueprints. To make your dreams a reality, firstly, you need to understand the dreams. Shortly, to begin with, the end in mind is to visualize your dreams. Career, or a specific project the way you want it to be manifested before you begin pursuing it. After taking this conscious effort, you are taking great control over your life and circumstances.
The ‘beginning with a memorable end in mind’ concept is important because of the following three reasons:
- Clarity
When you know where you want to end up in life, you will have immense clarity in various aspects of your life. For instance, if you know that your biggest career goal is to become a businessperson and run your own business, the stages to accomplishing the goal will become clear.
Firstly, you’ll need to think of a viable business idea. It will be followed by creating a product, reaching customers, hiring staff, finding investors, and so on. The steps you involve in your process will be unique to the vision, however, the general stage of running your own business remains. When you are beginning with the end in mind, you’ll also have clarity as to what you need to avoid and what you need to pursue. If your big dream is to have a beach house, you would be clear not to accept a job offer from an organization in Boston.
- Efficiency
When you start with the end in mind, you gain clarity, and that in turn will make you more efficient. You will be planning and strategizing for the best path to your goals. For instance, your goal is to become a top project manager at your company. You have a big dream, so now can start planning out the most efficient method to achieve it. Rather than focusing on erroneous side quests, you’ll concentrate on the steps you must do to become a project manager.
- Purpose
Ultimately, when you begin with a memorable end in mind, you will gain a purpose. You will chase goals that are impactful and bring meaning to your life, build a career you can be proud of, and eventually live the life you always wanted to live.
Several people feel that they lack fulfillment as they are accomplishing other people’s goals without even realizing it. It is not everybody’s goal to become famous and rich, or become the CEO of some company, or have a summer home. Many people would want to live a quiet life with the persons they love and care for.
And there is nothing wrong with any of your dreams! The key is to focus on what you want and start working to get it. That is the way to gain fulfillment and purpose out of your dreams.
Steps to Thinking Big and Begin with The End in Mind
Until now, the article covered the meaning and purpose behind the beginning with the end in mind. Let’s delve into the steps to begin the memorable end in mind:
- Dream Big (Or Small), it’s Your Choice.
First of all, you want to decide what you want and where you want to go in life. It can be performed on a large scale for your whole life or a small scale for some project you are working on. In short, identify the objective you hope to accomplish. The following exercise by Ryan Carson, CEO of Treehouse can help in this endeavor. It is a helpful way to understand what you want to achieve. It can be used to assess your whole life and what you want to accomplish during it. However, it can easily be adjusted to small, everyday goals too.
It is a visualization exercise. Imagine you are in your home. It is a fine morning, and you just woke up, you are preparing to attend a function later in the day. You are not sure the type of event, but it is an important one. Now, you need to imagine yourself getting ready for the event, the dress you’ll be wearing, and the way you’ll be styling your hair. After you are done, imagine yourself leaving your house. Notice the weather outside, the neighbors’ activities, the traffic, etc. You are following the GPS’ instructions after a few moments; you arrive at the venue. After you walk from the doors and in the lobby area, you are welcomed by your dear ones. Everybody that means the most to you is present there, they are all smiling. Finally, you walk through another corridor and into a hall. You discover more of your close ones here, family, friends, colleagues, your favorite high school teacher; every person that ever influenced and played a role in your life is present. Imagine how this place and position will make you feel. Then it occurs to you; you are at your funeral and each person in the hall is there to cherish and reflect on your life. You wonder what they would say and more importantly, what you want them to say.
It may seem a bit stretched exercise, but you know how it would go. You’ll suddenly realize who and what matters to you and then use this information for your benefit.
- Be honest
Assess your current situation and analyze where you would want to go from here. If you were not clear about the goals before taking the first step, you would want to make solid adjustments to put yourself on track. It is better to discover this now than days or even years from now. Now is the time to make essential changes and start chasing your dreams.
It is mandatory to be painfully honest with yourself during this step. The clearer you see your current situation, the better prepared you’ll be to remove yourself from it and work towards your goals.
- Prepare a Roadmap
When you are aware of where you stand, you’ll have a clear vision of where you need to end up; you are ready to prepare a roadmap between the two. The goal is to achieve a straight line between your goals and yourself. As suggested, you need to work backward from what you need to accomplish i.e., begin with a memorable end in mind.
- Put Pen to Paper
After the above-mentioned three steps, it is time to write down your mission statement on a piece of paper. A mission statement will be a sentence or two defining your purpose, the meaning it holds in your life, and how you plan to achieve it. It is to be noted that this personal missional statement can be for your life, a business statement for your company, or a project statement for the current project in hand.
The most exciting part is you have already done most of the effort involved in this step. You have defined your purpose. It is what you hope to achieve, the goal you have set for yourself. You also have identified why this goal is significant to you. These critical steps were achieved in the first step. You have already figured how to accomplish the goal, in the third step. Therefore, all you need is to gather the information into a short mission statement. Some of the iconic mission statements from famous people are given below:
- “To create content that educates, informs, and inspires.” —Public Broadcasting System (PBS)
- “To use my gifts of intelligence, charisma, and serial optimism to cultivate the self-worth and net worth of women around the world.”—Amanda Steinberg, founder DailyWorth
- Commit Fully
The last but the most important step is commitment. You can define your goals and existing status in accomplishing them. Then you can devise the greatest plan to get you from where you are at present and where you are headed in the least time possible. You’ll only be able to achieve this by sheer hard work and full commitment—despite when it seems hopeless and unachievable. It will certainly seem difficult now and then. However, if you stick with your objective, you’ll find happiness, purpose, and fulfillment.
In a nutshell, when you think bigger and begin with a memorable end in mind, you are on a journey to success. This is the best way to identify your goals, the significance they hold in your life, and the path to achieving them. With sincere hard work and commitment, you’ll achieve the goals and fulfillment that you always dreamed about.