Begin With The End In Mind - Setting Your Stage For Success

Setting Your Stage For Success

If you’ve worked in start-ups, you know that things can change at the drop of the hat. A new vision emerges and suddenly you report to someone new. Products shift and you have to scramble to re-focus your work and learn on the fly. You can win big when the buy-out happens and you can loose big if the whole Grand Plan goes belly-up.  

When you engage in life and business with your end goals firmly articulated, even ups and downs find meaning in your overarching theme. 

Beginning with the end in mind is just that-looking at your life in hindsight and asking yourself, “What do I want this life and my career to be about?”  

Perhaps you want to be remembered as a visionary who saw solutions to pressing problems. Maybe you want to be a strong support for your colleagues. You may want to work closely with an inspiring manager or maybe you want to become one yourself. 

By visualizing what your ideal life would look like, you can be proactive now about taking steps to create the life you will be satisfied with at its end. 

It’s kind of like planning for retirement. You know you will need x amount of money to live comfortably when you stop working, so you start saving and taking actions now to move in the direction of financial stability. 

You can do the same thing to create a life you will be proud of when looking back.  

If you like this blog you might also like: Being proactive in business and in life 

Get real with yourself

To train 'Begin with the end in mind' mindset, consider taking some time to get real with yourself and write down what you find.

Here are a few questions to help get you started:

What do you want to achieve in a project, meeting, in life or business?

What do you want people to say about the meeting, project or you if they didn’t know you were listening?  

What kind of values do you aspire to embody? Things like being truthful, proactive, innovative, kind, inspiring, positive…? 

When will you know that you have succeed as a team, group or as an individual? What will success look like? Where will you be?

Writing down the story of a meeting, project, your career, business goals or your life before it happens allows you to chart your course in the present so you end up where you, your team or organization want to be. 

In business or in your personal life, beginning with the end in mind is a guaranteed way to be proactive about creating and manifesting what you want in life and business. 

Because time matters, we engage fully charged.