Identifying and Prioritizing Desires: Foundational questions, Part II

Creating decisioning lists to sort through options for your next life phase.

To create a blueprint for the next phase of your life, it’s important to be clear about your wants, needs and deal-breakers. It’s good to cast a broad net over your desires, initially, then take a more critical look at what is truly a need, what’s a nice to have and what you can do without to get more of what’s truly important. This exercise can be particularly useful to do when you have a specific option or changes on your horizon.

Once these ingredients are combined (especially if you let them marinate for a few days), you can draft an aspirational goal for the fulling life you want to create. From there, the starting step of actualization is to look for ways to make changes in your current situation that align with your list and/or your aspirational goal. Doing this can put you in a better, more grounded place from which to consider whether further/bigger changes are merited and visualize what those changes might look like.

Here's the steps for this exercise:

STEP 1: Brainstorm the components of a desirable next phase of your life. What would really make your life satisfying? What’s important in your environment? What’s important in your internal life?

I like to do this with a full set of colored markers on big sheets of newsprint, but nothing wrong with a bullet list in a Word document. I recommend giving yourself a chunk of quiet time to do this, then come back to it periodically over the course of a few days. Even better is to leave it where you see it during your day. Add to it as you think of things.

STEP 2: Reread your list, and sit with it for at least a few minutes. Come up with a first draft of an aspirational goal for the life you want to create.

Be fairly specific, focusing more on the abstract elements than physical reality. “Live in an environment that supports outdoor time and healthy eating” is more helpful at this point than “live in a tiny house in Oregon with an organic garden”. The purpose here is to help get clarity on the why and allow room for evaluation of a broad range of possible outcomes.

STEP 3: From your Step 1 list, create a short list of components that are the most supportive of the goal from Step 2. If possible, list them in rough order of importance.

Guidelines; if your Step 1 list is long, the Step 2 list should be no more than 1/3 of the items. If you’re having trouble shaving down, are there items on the first list that point to a more over-arching component that’s actually what you’re desiring?

STEP 4: Which (if any) of the Step 3 components are absolutely essential?

This list should be 1 or 2 (no more than 3) things. If you struggle here, check to see if any of your “essentials” are primarily in reaction to your current situation. Or, again, look for an overarching pattern that you can summarize into a single component.

STEP 5: Keeping Steps 3 and 4 in mind, which components from the Step 1 list can you live without, if your critical elements are met?

Life rarely lets us construct a personal Utopia. Getting clear on which desires fall into which buckets really helps sort through options.

From here, you’re ready to begin sculpting your next phase! The first thing is to evaluate what you can achieve in your current situation. How can you meet those critical needs through tweaks where you’re at?

The next step really is situational, depending on where you are in the search. This framework can be useful for evaluating a broad range of possibilities or can be used to decide among a few options.

The third part of this series will delve into some specific questions around your expectations and your contributions into your envisioned next phase.