DEA and CIA: Making a Life Plan Starting with Yourself
If you make a plan about where you want your life to go and then you make all your decisions based on following that plan, your life will take the direction you want it to take and be a better person for it. I know this sounds simple. And it is not a very complicated idea. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.
DEA, Decide Every Action. Before you do anything in your life, ask yourself this: does what I am thinking about doing right at this moment fit into my life plan? Obviously, to do this, you need a life plan. A life plan can include employment goals, educational goals, family goals, or goals for your personal growth. Have goals. Know you can reach them, and know that in order to reach them, you have to make good decisions, how to not continue to make bad decisions, decisions which help you along the way toward your goals. How do you do that?
CIA, Consequences, Intent, Act. When you are trying to decide whether to do something in your life, anything, if you think about these three things, C.I.A., you will make better decisions for yourself. If you have a life plan, a set of goals for yourself, then when it comes to your daily life, you can ask yourself the following three questions to decide whether what you want to do is what you should do.
- Question 1: Does this thing I want to do have consequences that will take me away from the direction of my goals, or get me further toward my goals?
- Question 2: Is this thing I want to do something I really want to do, am I thinking about it really, what is my reason for wanting to do it, what is my intent?
- Question 3: Does the act itself, the thing I want to do right now, does it feel like the wrong thing to do? If it does, don’t do it.
Example from your life (maybe): Your at home. Your life plan is to go back to school, get a college degree, a good office job. On your way to the convenience store for milk and bread, you run into a couple of old friends. Good guys, but you used to drink or do drugs with them. They want you to hang out. You have to decide: stick around, hang out, maybe get high. No big deal. Decide. Consequence: cops pull up, tag you for use, or worse. Get high, or drink, then the downward spiral, life plan a distant memory, again. Intent: you didn’t intend this at all. You were here to get milk and bread, that’s all. Act: if you stick around, your back to old patterns. Doesn’t feel right. You say thanks, tell them you need to go, get your milk and bread, head back to your place. Stay on course.
Sounds easy. It’s not. I am not pretending it is. You will make mistakes along the way. We all do. I certainly have. If you follow these simple ideas—DEA and CIA, Decide Every Act, and Consequences, Intent, Act—your life will take the direction you want it to, not the direction others make for you (like old friends down at the convenience store). If you make a mistake, if you did hang out with those guys at the convenience store, got drunk or high. Later, think about it. Think about the consequences, the intent, the act, why and how you decided to stick around. Don’t make that mistake again. Learn from your mistakes, review your decisions after you’ve made them, and maybe next time, you’ll find a different store to get milk. Maybe you’ll decide its time to move somewhere else, where it will be easier to avoid old friends with bad habits, so you can follow your life plan more easily.
Tags: personal growth, self-awareness, solutions, well-being
