Your life journey is comparable to a map; you must define the origin, destination, vehicle, backpack, landmarks, and route. With a map in front of you, your journey will be a lot more likely to end where you want.
Origin: Who you are right now? To gain insight concerning yourself, you need to look intimately at your beliefs, values, and ethics aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Furthermore, also reflect on your skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses.
Destination: Who do you want to be? Your destination should envelop all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.
Vehicle: How are you going to get there? You need to make a map as to what methods you have accessible to help you arrive at your destination. Education, money, time - they all play into this.
Travel Bag: You bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These decide your ability and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to evaluate what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to get along the way.
Landmarks and Route: Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Therefore, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound.
The purpose of your life map is to reduce hurried and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you be unable to find your way. However, often our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes. With a basic map in place, these little changes won't be so difficult.