If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

~Jim Rohn

I found this quote while doing some work for a client and it really struck home. How many times do we allow others to “plan” our lives for us?

So, that got me to thinking: am I doing the planning and if I am, what’s on the agenda?

Look at any bookstore and you’ll see shelves and shelves of self-help books that promise to help you “discover your purpose”. The same is true with the web - search terms such as “manifestation”, “spirituality” and yes, “life purpose” and you’ll find oodles of websites that want to help you on your quest.

Which means that in the category of questions unanswered, figuring out the “point” of our existence seems to be the real biggie.

But perhaps the secret to finding your destination doesn’t depend so much on making the journey as it does making sure you’re the one doing the driving. After all, if you’re just along for the ride, then the journey isn’t going to have much meaning anyway, now is it?

And so often, that’s exactly what we do - we just go along for the ride. We take jobs we don’t really want in order to pay the bills. We stay in relationships that aren’t fulfilling because we like the security. And we put off our own dreams and aspirations in exchange for a stable, predictable life with minimal surprises.

But life is nothing if not surprising and instead of shying away from change, perhaps we should be embracing it instead. Yes, sometimes that can be quite scary but how will we ever discover our destination if we’re not willing to venture out and explore? Our society has become quite content to just bury our heads in the sand while a select few make decisions that could change the course of our lives. We have simply become victims of our circumstances, unable to really “change our lives” because well… its just out of our control.

But is it really?

So, let me pose the question to you: who’s doing your driving?

Do you take an active role in where you life is taking you or are you merely responding to whatever circumstances or situations happen to be present at the time? Do you know where you’re going and more importantly, is it where you want to go?

Are you changing the world as you believed you would as a child or have you traded those aspirations for something more “manageable”? Do you still dream of doing great things or do you just dream of making it to the weekend?

Do your days count? Your hours? Your minutes? Now, tell me… who’s planning your life?

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Awareness, Challenge Yourself, Change Your Life, Personal Growth, Random Thoughts, Setting Goals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.