325 Holly Worton ~ Life Planning + Goals for Each Decade of Your Life

Today’s Guest

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What You’ll Learn

• How to create a detailed vision for your life
• The questions you need to ask yourself to get clarity on each stage
• Distilling this vision down into goals for each decade of your life
• Why it’s never too late to get started – and why this is vital to creating a happy life
• How to get started creating your life vision today

Things to Consider in Each Decade

• What does your career/business look/feel/sound like?
• What does your finance/money situation look/feel/sound like?
• Where are you in terms of personal growth?
• What does your health/wellness/fitness look/feel/sound like?
• What does your family look/feel/sound like?
• What do your friends and your social life look/feel/sound like?
• What does your spiritual life look/feel/sound like?
• How are you expressing yourself creatively?
• How are you giving back with your time/money?
• What do you want to be/do/have in each decade of your life?
• How do you want to feel?
• When do you want to retire, and what does retirement look like to you?

Things I Discussed

• Wheel of life
• 315 Holly Worton ~ Know Yourself: How to Answer the Question of “Who Am I?” (now with downloadable transcript!)
• 316 Holly Worton ~ Know Yourself: How to Answer the Question of “Where Am I?” (now with downloadable transcript!)
• 317 Holly Worton ~ Know Yourself: How to Answer the Question of “Where Am I Going?” (now with downloadable transcript!)

Connect With Holly

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• LinkedIn

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Related episodes

• 361 Cara Wilde ~ How to Take the Brakes Off Your Personal Growth
• 335 Holly Worton ~ What Does A Fulfilling Life Look Like To You?
• 329 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ How To Get Past Your Addiction To Busyness
• 306 Holly Worton ~ How To Create New Habits That Last
• 253: Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ How to Get What You Really, Really Want… When Wanting Isn’t Enough

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to Into The Woods podcast, episode 325. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode.

Today’s episode is inspired by an email I received from a listener who was commenting on the episode – 323 – with Joanna Hennon – from a couple of weeks ago which was about Knowing Yourself. I found this email really interesting and I wanted to share a clip of it with you:

“Nature helps me find my inner peace … It allows me to breathe better and even sometimes when I lie down comfortably on the ground floor next to flowers and grass, I then indulge into some private thinking time without any interruption. Have I come to any exciting realizations you ask? Well I can say I definitely have and my most recent one was establishing my life goals for the next 50-60 years from now. You might think it’s ambitious, but I believe with a little help and fresh air, I’d established myself where I want to be in 50 years’ time. One such moment before the end of August, I was sat down with nature with a pen and paper and I plotted where and what I want to achieve in my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and even my 60s and 70s! Sounds like a lot of hard work I’m preparing for, but I’ve a whole life to achieve these goals before I hope to die before I’m 100!”

So I was pretty impressed with this, I certainly did not have that level of clarity about my life in my teens, much less my 20s. I did not really start planning my life and setting my goals until I was in my mid-30s, which is pretty late, I mean better late than never, but yeah I wish I had started earlier. So I started thinking, what has each decade of my life been like so far? And what do I want future decades to be like? And I realised that I spend a lot of time setting goals for each upcoming year and each upcoming quarter and months, but it has been ages since I really took the time to look this far into the future. I think this is a fantastic exercise in life planning and reality creation and no matter where you are in life or how old you are I urge you to take the time to do the same.

So, let’s have a think about this, what I did before I started this episode was basically I just sat down and wrote 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, who knows we are going to live but let’s assume 100, because people are living longer and longer these days and something that I have been reflecting a lot is that a lot of us still think about retiring in our early to mid-60s but really that’s kind of ridiculous because it means that we are going to have several decades before we die, without income. And assuming, obviously some of us prepare better than others for retirement, and plan to become financially free, and invest and have passive income coming in from investments, most people aren’t like that. So looking at the average person who has just worked a job and maybe has a pension and some kind of small retirement fund, and plans to retire at age 60 or 65, that’s a lot of years without an income coming in and it is a lot of years to do nothing if you don’t have a plan. And I have seen people get to that point where they are retired, they don’t have hobbies, they don’t have much of a social life, they don’t have enough stuff going on an they don’t have goals and they haven’t planned what their retirement is going to be like. So, no matter when you want to retire I think it is a really, really, important to plan our lives, our goals, for each decade all the way up through how far we think we are going to live, let’s go with 100.

So I think it is useful to start with retirement, when do you want to retire? What age would that be appropriate for you? What age do you want to retire and what does retirement look like to you? Do you want to keep on doing maybe volunteer work? Do you want to work on more creative projects? What does that look like for you? I think retirement is a really clear line in the sand that we draw in our lives where we move into a very different phase of our lives, so maybe start with that: when do you want to retire? And some people of course want to achieve financial independence and retire early and that’s fine too, but if you don’t have a plan then that retirement is not going to be very meaningful. So that’s part of our plan here and then work back from there depending on what age you are at now or what decade you are in start with your 20s, let me speak for myself, I am 46 right now, so mid-40s, heading into late-40s. So 20s, 20s are usually an age of trying new things, experimenting, getting to know ourselves through experience and seeing what works for us and seeing what doesn’t work for us. I didn’t really do a lot of that, I went to university and I went to grad school, quit grad school before I got my degree to start my first business, was in mid-20s when I started my first business and I just went straight into really hardcore entrepreneurship, working long hours, living a very stressful life and I didn’t try a lot of new things during that second half of my 20s but I did one big thing for 10 years that I know is not what I want to do ever again. It was one big long experiment where I learned a lot of things, basically learned what I do not want to do with the rest of my life. So, like I said, that was mid-20s to mid-30s. I kind of feel like your 30s is the decade where you continue to get to know yourself, hopefully — for me that journey didn’t start until my mid-30s — but it is continuing to learn from life’s experiences about who we are and what we want in life, where we are in life, do we like that? Do we not like that? And then planning the rest of our life accordingly. I really think that our 20s and 30s are a time when we should be spending time getting to know ourselves above all else. Really being mindful about the choices we make and the decisions we make and whether we want to continue down that path or start pivoting onto new paths. Again, I didn’t really do that until my mid-30s and that was when I started on my personal development journey, I wish I did it earlier and I love hearing from listeners who have started on that path earlier, I love that because I wish that had been me, but it wasn’t so start when you can.

As I said, my mid-30s I really started on that path of self-knowledge and personal development and started paying attention to what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and made a big move to the UK and trained as a coach and trained as a NLP practitioner, eventually trained in PSYCH-K®, and tried all these different iterations of my business until I got to where I was today. So the last 10 years have really been about the experimenting that I think a lot of people do when they are in their 20s. But you know, do it when you can. I am still getting to know myself; I am still getting to know what I want for the rest of my life and how I want to create the rest of my life. I know writing is absolutely going to be an important part of it, I know I will continue to create things like my podcast, blogging I would like to get back into, books, that kind of thing, personal expression through podcasting and writing is very, very, important to me. That might take on different themes and flavours in the future but really I think it is going to be a lot about sharing my own personal journey of business mindset and personal development and personal growth and self-awareness — and I can’t believe I just started that whole description with the word business! {laughing} — that was not conscious so I guess that came up from somewhere and I guess helping people with business may or may not be a part of my future, I did not plan to say that word, but I guess that means something, I think that is very telling.

So, look at, wherever you are in your life, going back to that wheel of life which I keep referring to I think looking at those categories is really important as you plan the next decades of your life. So I will link to the wheel of life in the show notes, so you can access that, I have got an old blogpost that discusses that, basically it is an easy way of looking at where you are in different aspects of your life. So the main categories you can divide these as relevant to you, but the main categories I always look at are: career, business, finance and money, personal growth, personal development, health wellness fitness, family, friends, spirituality, self-expression, and maybe look at each decade of your life for the next say until your die, so for me, I am in my mid-40s, my 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 100s. Where do I want to be? What do I want each of those categories to look like in each decade of my life? Who do I want to be in each decade of my life? What do I want to be doing in each decade of my life? What do I want to have in each decade of my life? If you want to buy a home, when do you want that to happen? Maybe you want a retirement home or a holiday home or whatever, look at the things that you want to have in each phase of your life and eventually what do you need to do to achieve those things? Also, and I think this is perhaps more important, how do you want to feel in each decade of your life? What do you see yourself doing? What do you see yourself feeling? How do you want to feel in each decade of your life? And there maybe an overarching theme to how you want to feel but I think it probably will be different, look at giving back, how do you want to be giving back? How do you want to be donating your money, your time? What causes are important are important to you? And that may change in each decade of your life, that may change as you grow older and you get new interests. I think giving back is a really important part of life that you also need to consider and that may or may not be important to you so if it isn’t just ignore me.

When I started googling goals for each decade of your life, all that came up were financial goals for each decade of your life and I found so many blog posts on how to set financial goals for each decade of your life. I think this is really important because also I am at stage in my life whereI wish I had started earlier on saving and investing and preparing for retirement and of course it is never too late to do that but because of compound interest and the magic of compound interest you want to start earlier than later. So honestly, I wish I had started this way earlier because I would be in a better spot right now. So learn from other people’s mistakes, it is really shocking if you look online and see how many people don’t have savings and even few people have investments. Interest rates and banks are terrible these days so really what you want to be doing is investing somewhere where you can take advantage of compound interest to have your pot of money grow rather than just sit there which is what it is like with most savings accounts. So no matter how old you are make sure your financial situation is taken care of as well and that you are planning responsibly for your future so your later decades will be as comfortable and happy as you want them to be. So that you have as many options as you want to have. People always say that money doesn’t buy happiness, but I think it does buy options, and I don’t know about you but the more options I have the happier I am. I have been in different places in my life where I had lots of money, I have been in places where I have very little money, and I can definitely say that it is better to have more money because more money busy options which helps you to create the life that you want using the options that you have available to you. More options = better, easier! That’s a no-brainier.

So, really look at what you want each decade of your life to look like, feel like, be like, and then once you have fleshed this out and you might want to do this in your journal leaving more than enough space for each decade, so maybe take several pages of your journal and just block them out and do one page for each decade, so for me it would be: 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 100s, and then just start writing. I think this is something that you know maybe you want to go back to over and over and revisit and look at the different categories for the wheel of life, look at the things you want to be, do and have. Look at how you want to feel, look at giving back and look at what you want to achieve in each decade of your life. What are your goals? Break that vision down into goals and look at the things that you need to do to get to that experience for each decade, I think once you have the overall vision it is easy to create those goals. And what kind of legacy do you want to leave? What do you want to leave the world? For me, I guess creating all of this content in terms of blogs posts and podcast episodes and books, I guess that is my legacy or what I have got so far. And I am really happy with what I am creating and I feel really happy to leave these books, books more than anything, because I don’t know how the podcast is going to survive after I die and if podcasts are even going to exist 50 years from now, I am sure there will be something else. But let’s hope that books will always be around, books are good! So I kind of feel like books more than anything are my legacy, but also my overarching contents is.

So what kind of legacy do you want to leave to the world? How do you want to leave this world a better place? What kind of content or gift do you want to leave to the world? I think that’s something else that’s really, really important to look at and I think it’s really useful, like I said, to do this in various sittings, so maybe come back to it next week, next month, next quarter, next year, and kind of add to it and flesh out this vision and flesh out this plan, and create those specific goals based on what you need to do to achieve these things. I think this is a really, really useful way of approaching, you know, question three of my three questions, where am I going? And I think this is fleshing it out in a much deeper and richer way than perhaps I’ve looked at it in the past. So thank you, kind listener, you really opened my eyes to this way of really kind of planning in depth our lives in the future.

So many people don’t take time to envision the life that they want to live for themselves. And I think so many people don’t set goals or create plans and strategies to achieve and create the life that they want to live. So I think that the more time we spend envisioning the life we want to live, the easier it will be to create a strategy and a plan and set of goals that we can achieve those things so we can live the life that we want to live. I think so many people just float through life and just let things happen to them. And that was certainly me for the first probably 35 years of my life. I did some great things, I achieved great things, but honestly, it was kind of by accident sometimes. You know, I knew I wanted to go to university, I knew I wanted to go to grad school, but I didn’t really think about why I wanted to do those things. It was just, you know, I was good at school and it was an easy option to be honest. You know, I think I probably went to grad school because I didn’t know what else to do with myself. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career. And I got a scholarship and so it was free, so I did it. But when I think back to that, you know, I ended not finishing grad school, because it really wasn’t the right thing for me and, you know, I moved on to start my first business with a business partner and that really was a better path for me because I learned so many more things than I learned in grad school and it put me on a path that I’m still on today. Even though I’m not doing business in the way I did for the first 10 years, thankfully, because I realized that wasn’t right for me, but it set me on a completely different life path. And again, that was kind of by accident, it wasn’t really by choice. It was by choice, obviously, I made the decisions to get there, but it wasn’t like I set out with a vision for my life and what I wanted to achieve. And, again, I think the sooner that you start on this path of consciously creating the life that you want to live, the sooner you will have the life you want to live, which is a happy life, and the sooner you will be happy with your life. I’ve kind of made some big breaks with my life, you know, a couple of times and just completely cut off where I was and

set off on a new path and that was life changing, obviously. And it kind of helped me not just pivot onto a new path, but just kind of break and turn down a new path that was more right for me than the previous path. So, again, self-knowledge to me is kind of the answer to everything in creating terms of creating the life that we want to live, because if you don’t know who you are and you don’t know where you are it’s hard to know where you want to be headed and it’s hard to create that life that you want to live.

So again, this is kind of more expanded way of answering the third question, which is, where am I going? But if you find that you’re struggling with this exercise, go back and listen to my podcasts on questions one and two: who am I and where am I, and I’ll link to those in the show notes. But I think that these are questions that we need to be answering, all three of them, over and over and over in our lives, you know, every week, every month, every quarter of a year, every decade. Who Am I? Where am I? Where am I headed? Where do I want to be going? And revisit this, but I think it’s important to start today by looking at how we want to spend the next decades of our lives so that we can consciously create this life that we want to live. I feel like this episode has been more kind of a rant on taking charge of your life than it is a ‘how to’, but I just I just think it’s so important because, you know, I’ve made so many bad decisions in my life because I wasn’t stopping and taking the time to reflect on what I wanted to achieve, what I wanted to do with my life. So I encourage you to do as I say, not as I do.

So to recap, how I would suggest doing this, and how I’ve started doing this, is to sit down and make a list of the decades. So take a page in your journal for each decade, so you know: 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s 90s, 100s. Sit down, go through that wheel of life, those categories in the the Wheel of Life and I’ll link to that in the show notes. So look at what you want your life to look like in all of those areas in each decade of your life. And I will really flesh out the show notes with all these different steps. But I think listening to this episode will give you a fair start on really fleshing out your vision of who you want to be, what you want to experience in each decade of your life. And again, this is like a working plan, it doesn’t mean that you have to stick to this for the rest of your life. Obviously, as you grow, and as you get to know yourself, and as you change throughout life, your priorities are going to be different; the things you want to do be, feel, have, are going to be different. But if you start out now, wherever you are in life, no matter how old, young or middle-aged you are, if you start out now by creating this really specific, clear vision and goals for each decade of your life, then you have something that you can use as a reference to, to build on as you grow and change and get to know yourself. Because again, if you keep going on this path of self-knowledge and personal development, and the more you know yourself, the more you’ll be able to refine this vision for your life.

So, thank you, again, kind listener for that email. If you are listening to this, and you’ve never emailed me your thoughts on an episode, please do. I really, really appreciate it. My email is [email protected] you can share your thoughts on episodes and ideas for future episodes. I’m always willing and open to hear suggestions for future episodes. Some of my favourite episodes are the ones that people have sent in as suggestions.

So please, please, please! if you have an idea, send it to me. You can email me again at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

And I would also love you to join me on Patreon. If you head over to http://patreon.com/HollyWorton and you can join me there. Membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to content I don’t share anywhere else, including a monthly Q&A and done for you mindset work. It’s also a great way to give back. Hey, if you feel like you get use and value out of this podcast and you want to support me in my continuing projects, I would appreciate that.

So again, thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know I would love to hear from you. And remember to visit http://HollyWorton.com/325  for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.