I’ve written a lot of posts about steps I’ve taken to improve my day-to-day life and overall wellness, like reading books, meditating, language-learning, and exercising.  I’ve even described myself as a bit of a self-improvement junkie.  I am constantly consuming media about the latest health-related studies and how to become more efficient and effective in my professional and personal life.

I believe this continual learning and experimenting adds value to my life, but it’s easy to let these habit-related, day-to-day pursuits distract me from long-term planning.  Setting big goals and grand-scale intentions is something that I haven’t done very often in my life, though I know it’s important.  I’m talking about envisioning my life decades from now and asking myself what I want it to look like.  What contributions will I have made to the world?  What kind of lifestyle will I be living?  If I could call myself an expert at something, what would it be?

Neglecting to engage in this kind of exercise from time to time can lead us to be pulled along by the current of life, spending our time and energy on short-term tasks that seem pressing but really aren’t crucial, focusing on what our friends or families or society at large deem worthwhile instead of figuring out what is truly important to us.  We can check all the boxes — regular exercise, healthy eating, meditation, reading, career and educational milestones, hobbies, etc. — and still feel as though our lives have less direction than we’d like.  When we fail to ask ourselves big-picture questions, we risk either stagnating — never really going anywhere because it’s easier to stay where we are — or saying yes to opportunities and obligations that don’t really matter to us, and ultimately feeling overwhelmed and burned out.  Either of these scenarios can leave us with the sense that we are not really the captains of our own ships.

Life is short, and time passes so quickly.  We each have the same limited number of hours in each day, week, and year.  We owe it to ourselves to use them in a way that will leave us satisfied with what we’ve done at the end of our time on earth.  I can’t tell you what that might mean for you, and at this point, I’m not even sure I can tell you what it means for me.  But I’m going to make a greater effort to figure it out and then live accordingly.

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