Less than 2% of the people I work with have a written plan for personal success.

A main cause for this number being so low is that people often say, “Gary, how can I write down what I don’t know? I don’t know exactly what I want for my future. And that scares me because it seems that I am supposed to know what I want!”.

I have now worked with over 5,500 people and helped them to create one version or another of their OTM Plan for Personal Success®. I have never had a single person who was not able to write down something that related to the future they wanted.

The evidence is overwhelming. Even when people say that they don’t know what they want for their future, they are able to write down future focused descriptions of at least some aspects of their life. You don’t need to know everything. In fact, knowing the direction that you want your future to go in is just as powerful, if not more powerful than having a single clear objective.

Identifying the questions that we would like to have answered in our future provides direction for our personal success. When we know the questions that we would like answered, we then have the power to create a plan to explore those questions so that we can discover our own answers.

A common statement that people say to me is, “I’m not sure if this is the career that I want to have.”

When creating a personal plan for success this statement can easily be turned into the desire to have answered a powerful question. In simple terms, when a person is saying this type of statement, they are really saying something like; “In three years time I want to have discovered the career that I want to invest the majority of my working life in.” or something to that affect. What a wonderful vision!

Obviously this person’s starting point would be that they aren’t sure about their career. In addition they may have a job and qualifications and even some experience. They can then establish a plan that will enable them to explore career options over the next three year period.

Are they likely to experience dead ends?

Yes of course they will.

In the context of exploration, are dead ends bad?

No they aren’t.

Humans are amazing explorers. In fact we have created this amazing world through our ability to explore.

So I encourage you to explore the questions that, if you could have them answered, would provide amazing foci for the future that you are trying to create. The process of answering our own questions is a powerful secret to personal success.

What questions are you exploring?

Gary Ryan helps people clarify what success means to them and then how to create it. If you’re concerned that because you don’t know what your future should be that you will therefore end up a failure, then contact Gary at info@orgsthatmatter.com now.