Ideal Life Exercise + Printable

Hello friends

Have you ever been asked the typical interview question, where do you see yourself in 5 years? Do you have an answer? A vague idea? Well, this is an exercise to help build some direction. I hate this question personally as I feel it’s nearly impossible to answer – as so many of us have options and goals that might branch out – but this exercise is meant to help you with some plans you know you want in your life.

You can download this page to help you get started, or just grab a piece of paper.

Start imagining yourself in the future, what do you look like? Did you have kids, surrounded by grand kids – go as far as you want into the future – go all the way to your death if you want to. What have you accomplished? What might you regret? We’re going to start at a point in the future and work backwards.

Now as an example, let’s say you want kids. What kind of family do you want, parenting style? Do you want to be the family that all the kids stay over at and is big and open? Are you more pricate and want to focus on your family. This is a great starting point because most people can see this one way or another – not always. If you are on the fence, make two sections for what-ifs and what you think that would look like. How you want it to look like.

You don’t have to know everything(it’s why that question is so silly!) but this is meant to be exercise in finding your goals to work towards.

 

Now repeat this concept for all areas of your life. If you don’t have a partner, what does this person look like, how do they treat you? What things do you do together?

What does your job look and feel like? Is it nonprofit and helps people? Is it top of the ladder before your kids are 5? Do you want to start your own business, even if you don’t know what that business will be yet, maybe you just know you want to build it and be your own boss?

Go through each life section, imagine how your life looks like ideally. If you are unsure or have a few ideas, add them, they can change or adapt as you start to clarify the bigger ones. Once you are done, you can keep this sheet to help you set smaller goals to get closer to your ideal in each section.

This is a great exercise in sorting through your values and helps set goals if you are unsure where to go next. For example, I know I don’t want kids, but I want a house or condo with a yard. I am not sure yet where or how, but I know I want yard space. So this is a goal I can work toward – saving a down payment or figuring out where then I can work on narrowing down my wants (bedrooms, detached or not detached? etc). It doesn’t have to be set in stone to know I want it.

I hope this exercise helped you, and I highly recommend keeping the sheet with you. It’s really a fun exercise to dream big, think about your values and what you want to leave behind.

Happy Planning~