The teen years can be a lot of fun, but they don’t last forever. You will be an adult longer than you’ll be a teenager, and you’re going to want to have fun then, too. The best way to make sure that happens is to make a plan in your teen years
Great Expectations? You can achieve them step by step
that will help all your adult dreams come true.
The first step is to know what your dreams are. “Planning Your Life” teaches you how to figure all that out. Once you have you at age twenty-five all figured out, it’s time to sit down and think about how to get there.
Be sure to start your planning session with a prayer. God knows everything, including how to make your dreams come true. If your dreams are righteous, He will help you achieve them, so ask Him to guide your thoughts so you’ll know what to do.
Open the notebook or computer page you used to describe your adult life. You divided your adult life into several categories, so create a page or section of your computer file for each of those aspects of life: Career, family, home, hobbies and activities, and character. You’ll be setting goals for each of those.
Let’s say your career page said you were going to own a bookstore and be a writer. Those are related jobs, but they each have different requirements. To own a bookstore, you need experience working in a bookstore. You also need business skills. You’ll need to know math so you know if you’re making a profit or not. You’ll also need good people skills to get along with your customers and employees. Of course, you also need to know a lot about books.
To be a writer, you need good grammar, spelling, and punctuation skills. You’ll need to do a lot of reading and writing, and you’ll need self-discipline.
Your plan, then might include taking hard English classes instead of easy ones, making a list of books to read every year, talking to real writers, and working hard at your math class even though you don’t like it.
Write a very specific plan. Start with the big goal and then write smaller steps that will get you there. If you’re artistic, you might want to draw or create a graphic that puts your goals into footsteps leading to a picture that represents your goal.
So, your big plan might be to do a lot of reading. The smaller steps might be:
Talk to parents, librarians, teachers, and writers to find out what books to read.
Make a schedule for reading the books.
Put money in my budget to buy the books I like best so I can read them over and over, and even write in them as I have thoughts.
Make a chart to keep track of what I’ve read and what I like or don’t like.
Start reading.
You’ll need a plan like this for every part of your Age 25 Life Plan. If you follow each of the plans, you’ll achieve your goals.
Don’t forget to factor in education. You need to know what kind of education you need to get the career of your dreams, and figure out which schools have a good program. Then you have to make sure you can get into the school and pay for it.
Some of the categories in your life plan take some special planning and thought. Next we’ll tackle the family section of your plan.