Before I graduated from high school, my English teacher had each of us write a letter to ourselves describing where we would be five years in the future . With a bright future in front of us it was easy to fill up the page with our dreams of finishing college, getting a great job, and, for some, starting a family. However, when I received that letter in the mail five years later I realized I had strayed very far off of the path I had set for myself. Not that I am not happy with my life, I am, but I realized that without those goals in front of me it easy to let time and life carry them away. Without goals and something to work towards, it is easy to stay where we are and just let time slip away. So I would ask you, what goals do you have for yourself?
Sit down and write out where you see yourself five years from now. Do you want to start a new career? Perhaps you see yourself in management? Do you still want to be living in the same location? Or even the same state? Once you have it all written down, it’s time to make it happen. Break your five-year plan down into one year plans , and if you are super detailed, monthly plans. Determine what you have to do over the next five years to get you where you want to go. Think about whether you have all the leadership skills to get you to the next level at work and, if not, what you can do to enhance. If you want to be a leader and eventually work in management, find out if your company offers a management training program that can help you sharpen your skills.
Don’t think that just because you write down your goals you have to stick to them. Pull them out every once in awhile and reevaluate them. As you change, so will your goals. Goals are a good way to feel like you’ve accomplished something and keep you moving steadily into the future.
My good friend Mike is visiting me this weekend from Sacramento, California and we have had a great time. Today we spent most of the day in Tempe. He has only been to Phoenix once before and that was actually only for a day. He’s not at all familiar with the Valley so I wanted to take him around and visit some of the standard popular areas. Of course one of these had to be Mill Avenue in Tempe, and it was a beautiful day to be down there. We actually started out with a stop at the Wild Flower Bread next to Changing Hands Bookstore because he wanted to find a book on gluten free cooking for his mom. It was nearing lunch so I had one of their salads and he had a chicken sandwich.
After he found the book he was looking for we headed down to the Mill Avenue area and parked close to Tempe Town Lake. There was some kind of an event happening at the beach park there was a live cover band playing though I don’t know the name of the band. There were quite a few people down there and we listened to the music and walked along the water’s edge. We also walked up Mill Avenue stopped in at some of the shops. There’s a place that sells bamboo based clothing and I bought a cool t-shirt there. Around the corner there was another small store where Mike bought a small ASU themed toy basketball and hoop for his sons.
Mike love’s hotel lounges and we were going to stop at one of the Tempe hotels but needed to get back into Phoenix because we had tickets for a show at Space 55 downtown. We spent quite a bit of time walking along through old town and thought about getting some food at Monti’s on our way back to the car, but like I said, time was short so we didn’t do that either. Mike’s leaving tomorrow and while we had a great time, it’s always kind of sad to have guests like this because the more fun you have the more emphasis it puts on the departure. Oh well, I’ll visit him this summer.