How Theming the Decade Gave me Purpose and Focus.
Back in 1999, I was working for a law firm in the UK and I was not happy. I had gone back to university, studied law, got my law degree and was now working in a medium-sized law firm in my home town with a reasonably secure future ahead of me. The problem was, I just was not happy and the future scared me.
The issue was I discovered I hated working in an office. I had gone through several jobs before arriving in that law firm. I began in hotel management, then did car sales and various other sales jobs before finally going back to university to study law. It had never occurred to me I would not enjoy having to be in a fixed place for eight to ten hours, five days a week every week. To me, it felt like I was in prison. I had to be in a fixed place for forty plus hours a week!
As we approached the end of 1999, I realised I needed to do something. I needed to find a career I would enjoy, feel passionate about and would allow me to grow as an individual. I unconsciously chose to make the next decade (the 2000s) my decade of “career”. Having made that decision, I had a new lease of energy and a purpose and it led to my arrival in Korea in 2002.
That decision to go teach English in Korea for a year ultimately brought me to where I am today. Being a teacher. I love teaching, I love helping people and it gives me the chance to expand my knowledge every day. Seventeen years later I am still in Korea and now I get to do what I love doing every day.
At the end of 2009, I was not in great shape. I had somehow gained thirteen kilograms (30 pounds) over the decade, I was smoking twenty to thirty cigarettes a day and I was going out every Friday (and sometimes Saturday) night and getting drunk with friends. As we approached the start of a new decade I knew if I did not change the way I was living my life I would end the decade in very poor health and the possibility of irreversible damage to my long-term health. I knew things had to change.
I decided to make the decade between 2010 and 2019 my decade of health and as we approach the end of 2019, I have turned my health around. I no longer smoke, my weight is a healthy 80 kilograms (about 175 pounds), I exercise six days a week, I hardly drink alcohol at all and never get drunk and I feel a thousand times better than I did at the beginning of the decade.
What the last twenty years have taught me is when we make New Year’s resolutions we often fail because we feel the change we want to make in our lives must be carried out in the next twelve months. This, of course, is not necessarily true. Most of the important changes you want to make will take longer than twelve months. Often they are lifestyle changes and involve permanently changing the way you live. For me leaving the UK and moving to Korea has been a permanent change. My diet has permanently changed from eating anything and everything I want to being more selective about what I eat. These changes have given me huge positive results but they could not have been achieved in twelve months and sustained. They needed a lot longer to develop and grow.
So now as we approach the end of the twenty-teens and move into the 2020s what would you like to use the next ten years for? You have ten years to make significant changes to the way you live your life. To your health, your career, your relationships.
Having a theme for the decade will give you a focus. To do this, you do not want to be too specific. The next ten years could be your decade of health or career or wealth. One word. That is all you need. By not being too specific you have greater freedom to make changes. Once you have decided on your word, you need a vision for how you will end the decade. For example, my word for the last decade was “health” and my vision was to end the decade in physically great shape, be a non-smoker and only a social drinker. If you choose to make the next decade about wealth you could have a vision to end the decade with a secured financial future.
By having a vision statement like this you give yourself the flexibility to change things as the decade develops. What you would define as securing your financial future today may be entirely different in five years. But the overall goal of securing your financial future is flexible enough to stay relevant for the next ten years.
Making lifestyle changes like this is not easy. Often you need a lot longer than a few weeks or months. By giving the next decade a theme, you give yourself a purpose and a focus and it takes away the pressure to get everything right in a short period. During the last decade my weight has fluctuated a little, but whenever it went up, it was always easy to get myself back on track because staying fit and healthy was my overarching purpose. The question: am I living a healthy life? Was never far away and so if I did slip up and allow my weight to rise and my eating habits to decline, it was not long before I pulled myself back on track.
So as we head into the final month of 2019, take some time to think about what you would like to permanently change about the way you live your life and what you would like to use as your theme for the 2020s.
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