Ten Years From Now
Pastor John Braland
Imagine life ten years from now. This is your ideal, preferred future so dream without limitations. Dream big. Dream in detail. Dream without burdens. Where will you be sitting reading this Leader Lifter? What kind of work will you be doing? Who will you be doing it with? What does your work environment look like and feel like? What typical activities will you be doing throughout the course of your day? Don’t worry about the feasibility of creating this life, just let the image develop and place yourself in the picture.
You may even want to do some free writing around this vision. Write about life in ten years, put down as many of the details as you can. Then re-read your preferred future and add even more clarifying statements.
The authors of the excellent book Primal Leadership write: “When doing this exercise, many people report that they experience a release of energy, feeling more optimistic than they had even moments earlier. This kind of envisioning of an ideal future can be a powerful way to connect with the real possibilities for change in our lives.” (Primal Leadership, page 116)
I am convinced that many people never step into their preferred future because they spend their entire lives focusing on the present and working in crisis mode. We call this “getting stuck in a rut.” If you are stuck in a rut you are unable to turn left or right, you just follow the depressed path that is right in front of you until you reach the end. How do you know if you are stuck in a rut?
Tell tale signs you are in a rut.
1. No movement.
You are in the same place now as you were last year. You do the same job for the same pay with the same level of dissatisfaction as you had last year at this time. Nothing has changed. You are just chugging along neither gaining nor losing any ground. You just exist.
2. No reward.
You don’t feel any sense of personal reward for what you do. The satisfaction is gone and now you work because you have to, not because you want to. Research has indicated that if you hate your job, pay will never motivate you to like it more. Pay will help you raise your tolerance level, but pay will never make you satisfied.
3. No challenge
A trained monkey could do your job with a little training! Every day is the same as the last and there are no new challenges in sight. The biggest challenge you faced last year was adapting to the new brand of coffee.
4. No hope.
There are no promotions in sight. You have peaked early and hard. There is nowhere else to go in your current position and the outlook for tomorrow looks identical as yesterday. When you dream of life ten years from now you feel like taking a nap because it’s just that boring.
Your future starts now so start working on your preferred tomorrow, today. Do whatever you need to do to start working on tomorrow right now. You may have to go back to school or seek continuing education in your current job. Look for opportunities to take you to the next level.
Thirteen years ago I made the decision to take control of my life. I was stuck in a rut and didn’t know how to get out of it without making some dramatic changes. After praying about what to do I opted to make the dramatic changes needed to begin working on my preferred future.
I resigned from my job which wasn’t easy considering my wife just resigned from her great job to raise our 1 month old son. Then I started to articulate my passions on paper and began working toward fulfilling them. Thirteen years later I can look back and say that I made the right choice. I love pastoring at Freshwater and find great fulfillment in what I do.
Ten years from now I don’t want to be in the same place I am today. I want to continually grow and learn. I want to open new doors and work through new challenges. I want to work toward tomorrow, today and begin striving for what God has in store for me. I am sure you do to.