If you fail to plan, you are planning for failure

 

How important is Planning

If having a strong dream was the first step to achieve anything of significance in life, creating a plan for your financial freedom just follows after that as the next step. If you have not yet created a month on month plan for your financial freedom, then there is no way you can move ahead in your journey.

Do we know how to plan?
Most of us live our lives the way we it comes to us. We try and face the set of situations that we are confronted with and just try and come out of them. This is typically called as Reactive Planning. Imagine how beautiful your life can be if you can proactively "design" and "plan" your lives the way you want it to be, and then go on to execute that plan end enjoy and cherish each milestone on the way. In fact this is what a human soul is supposed to do on this planet. We are very capable of designing and planning our own lives, the way we want it to be. But the unfortunate part is that almost all of us "react" to the situations and circumstances for the most part of life and have no clue where we are headed.

We often come up with statements and excuses like "Let us see where our fortune takes us" or "Everything is already destined to happen". But the fact remains that none of these beliefs are true. Yes, fortune does play its role, but that is something which you have no control over.

Assuming that fortune or luck will support you, how many of us have a documented plan for our live?. Hardly anyone ? Why ? Don't you plan when you go out on a vacation trip ? Don't you plan when you go out for shopping ? Don't you plan when you go on an official trip ? Don't you plan when you have to appear for an exam ? Don't you plan when you have to go out for a movie or a picnic? Don't you plan when you have to buy a house or a car? Don't you plan your work in office or at home everyday? You do it, you do it every time you do any of these activities. Some of these plans may be in your head, some on a piece of paper and some very well documented. All this means that you know how to plan, and plan most of the things pretty well.

Then what stops you from planning our life's journey? Is it not important to plan this ? Or we just don't care ? or is it that we never thought that life is going to end, so what is the point planning. Well, you are not going to live forever, so if you have a start date (your birth date) and end date (the date you die), then you got to plan out what you are going to achieve in these in between "x" years. and better you plan it well, because i do not know whether you will get another chance or not.

What happens if you do not plan?
Imagine what happens if you go to a movie without planning for the same. Unless you are extremely fortunate, either you would not get to see the movie of your choice or you will not get the seat of your choice or you may be late for the movie itself or you may feel hungry right at the time the movie starts. In each case, you would repent at the end of the movie that you should have planned it better to have a more enjoyable experience.
It is exactly true with our lives. If we do not plan it well, we would repent at the end of our life. We would get the feeling that i had a chance and could have planned it much better. Now, remember that the risks involved in not planning your life are much more critical in nature than the risks involved in not planning for a movie.

Most of us still do not plan
So, here we are with the irony - We know how to plan very well but the fact remains that most of the people i have met till date did not have a documented plan for their lives. This documented plan can be of any nature  like these are the 10 things i want to achieve, these are the 100 things i want to do before i die and these are the dates i am targeting to achieve them. Forget about documenting the plan, if i ask you to tell me about your life's plan, most of you would laugh at me or look with strange looks, thinking that what kind of absurd and crazy question is this..but think about it - it is neither strange nor crazy. If you do not want to repent at the end of your life - it is better you have a plan and you are working on the same.

Does planning apply to Financial Freedom?
Of course it does !! The same principle applies for Financial Freedom. If you have not yet created a month on month financial freedom plan, then of course, there is a very rare chance that you are going to achieve it. Whether you need financial freedom or not depends on your other goals in life, but if it is important for you, then having a month on month plan is mandatory entry criteria for this journey.

The book"From Rat Race To Financial Freedom" would talk about this in great detail. It will guide you to create your own step by step plan on Financial Freedom plan - something that would be very customized to you. The book will show you how i planned with real examples and templates, but will also tell you at each step, how you should plan for yourself.

In the next post, at a very high level, i will share with you the inputs you need for creating such a plan. Some of you who would be keen to get a plan created can write to me and i can work with them one-one to help them create their own month by month financial freedom plans.

But remember that planning your life or financial freedom is a must.
Because if you fail to plan, you are definitely planning to fail in life !! So, dont be surprised or feel dejected at the end of life.

Happy Planning !!

Cheers

Manoj Arora


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