When most people hear the word strategy, they immediately think it’s some big word reserved for corporations and businesses. The word connotes big time professionalism. But strategies help those corporations and businesses become successful. So if companies become successful through creating and executing a business strategy, why don’t more people become successful and create a life strategy?

It seems during our formative years, our influencers – parents, teachers, coaches, relatives, caregivers – all set the strategy for us. Our parents taught us basic skills that allowed us to transition away from home to be able to spend the day on our own at school.  Then our teachers taught us what was necessary for us to learn (or what was required by the government). For those that went onto receive secondary education, professors educated pupils about a specific craft. And then during our careers, our employers (hopefully) taught us how to do our jobs better. For the first 20-25 years of our lives, someone else taught us what we need to do to become successful.

But after we became adults and are out on our own, who has taught us how to holistically become successful for the rest of our lives? We have learned so much from other people before the age of 25, but how do we put it all together and create our own vision for our lives? How do we create our own strategy?

Below I offer a free download of the “Top 10 Signs That You Need A Life Strategist“

When we do get to our 20s, we are so ready to just be on our own that we exhale and relish in the fact that we can make our own decisions. Ahhh, life is good. We can almost just go on auto-pilot and finally relax.  We can finally live life according to our own set of rules without anyone telling us what we need to do.

But life keeps ticking. Time keeps moving. And before you know it, we reach our 30s. For many, relationships begin to form. Families begin to grow. Children are added to the family tree. Life speeds by. We could even reach our 40s and 50s before one day stopping to ask ourselves questions like:

• Is this where I wanted to be?
• How did I get here?
• Is this how I wanted to live my life?
• Am I doing the things I wanted to do?

I would hope for many, the answer to those questions are ‘yes’ and are positive responses.  However, it’s easy to see that life has a way of going so quickly that we get to a point one day where we aren’t doing the things we love. That we somehow arrived at a point in life that was unplanned. And that if we would have thought through the decisions that helped us get to the “unplanned” point, we may have made different decisions.  All those decisions could have made up an executed life strategy.

Begin with the end in mind

What if, after we began our early careers, we took time to write down the answers to the following:

• When I am 80, I will look back and have achieved this…
• How do I want others to remember me?
• How do I want to feel about my life?

These questions certainly address a principle of beginning with the end in mind, which is one of the habits outlined in Stephen Covey’s long time best selling book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. This principle allows us to think ahead to the end of our lives and vision what we hope our lives will look like at that point in time. And then with this forward-thinking vision, you create a plan working backwards of the steps required to achieve this vision. But how many of us take the time to write out a plan of how to achieve something that is decades ahead of us?

Writing down the action steps to achieve your goals and executing them is a life strategy.  Sure, many of us write down goals each year – possibly New Year’s resolutions – but writing down annual or monthly goals is different than writing down bigger picture goals. The monthly or annual goals are just a part of a bigger life strategy.

For most people, writing an action plan requires two important ingredients:

1. Time: something that is scarce unless we consciously create the time
2. Deep thinking: something that requires bravery (and honesty) to go within your gut and uncover sensitive inner feelings

Most parts of our lives are seamlessly merged together and each piece is impacted with each decision we make. Thinking through all of the pieces together can quickly become overwhelming and is not something people actually do. But when you break it down, thinking through each piece of your life is probably one of the most important things we all should do in our lives. 

I would guess that most of us have dreams. We have hopes and aspirations for our lifetime. Aspirations like owning a home, having a family, owning your own business, seeing the world, and working smarter and not harder to earn income (or not having to work at all for income). Of course some dreams are more achievable than others. But achieving dreams and aspirations takes planning. It is rare for things to just randomly occur to achieve our goals – although I am sure it happens occasionally.

Life Curveballs

It is one thing to have goals and create some sort of plan to achieve your goals, but then how do we handle all the curveballs that life throws at us?  Big curveballs like the loss of a job, unexpected children, relationships ending unexpectedly, or the loss of family members. Or even less stressful curveballs like being passed over for a promotion, getting a mediocre job review, not getting a job you wanted, getting into a minor accident, or your children not getting into the school they wanted.

Life curveballs makes it harder for us to navigate life. Having a clear purpose is one of the best ways to manage curveballs. But therein lies the biggest issue most people have: handling life curveballs on your own can be extremely difficult due to the emotional layers that impact your thought process.

So what if you were able to talk through various life situations and strategies with someone who has a clear mind and can objectively see the pros and cons to the decisions you are facing? This person would need to be different than a partner or significant other who is emotionally connected to you. It would be someone who can truly think through each of the layers in a non-emotional way. Someone who wants the best possible outcome for you and would be able to create a roadmap to help you achieve your goals.

Life Strategist can be a Game Changer

This is where a life strategist can be a game changer. Objectively honest. Non-emotionally invested to provide less emotional, more realistic options with pros and cons to help you see the consequences of each decision. Someone who has the ability to see the larger picture and how all of the pieces fit together.

A life strategist could help you through any type of life situation. It could be any type of the following:

• Managing day-to-day flow
• Organizing difficult pieces of your life
• Providing long term career advice and planning
• Assisting with a mid-life career switch
• Sharing life hacks to avoid procrastination and live more efficiently
• Planning for future life events
• Discovering your higher purpose to life

We often first think of hiring a therapist or counselor to help us through difficult life situations. And therapists are certainly important for dealing with deep emotional situations like parenting, dealing with grief, relationship issues, and family situations that involve other people. But a life strategist is geared more towards the individual.

A life strategist will help you analyze your own world, help you set goals, assist in creating a roadmap to follow and then work with you in any capacity to achieve what you hope to achieve. A life strategist is like a coach who is there to give you advice along your journey. To help assess the pros and cons to many of life’s big and even small decisions.

So the next time you are feeling stuck or trapped in life or looking for advice about difficult life situations or just wanting someone to help you achieve a life goal, consider utilizing a life strategist, someone who will be able provide objective consideration and be able to help you execute a roadmap to move forward to realize your hopes and dreams.

Do you need a life strategist?

CLICK HERE to download the “Top 10 Signs That You Need A Life Strategist”

About the Author

Cory Calvin is no stranger to life strategy. Cory successfully navigated the corporate world working in finance on Wall Street, consulting and finally become a strategy executive for a Fortune 50 company, PepsiCo, building strategic plans to grow global beverage brands like Pepsi, Gatorade, and Aquafina. However, after sixteen years climbing the corporate ladder, Cory realized there was more to his life than conference calls, cubicles, and reply alls.

In 2017, Cory built up the courage to leave the 9-to-5 rate race behind, travel the world, and now lives the life he has always envisioned (through planning). He has written a #1 best selling book about his life transformation and has helped others develop successful roadmaps to navigate challenging life moments. He has recently launched Pivot Trip, a transformational travel company designed to inspire others to build successful life strategies.

If you are interested in receiving a free life strategy session or interested in Pivot Trip’s experience in Bali in October, please click here to send Cory a message.