Thinking about your Life Plan, your own personal big picture, is crucial to the success of a new business, but it is especially important for those of us who are making a mid-life career change.  

I'm amazed by the people that I've worked with who are not particularly happy with their work, but say that they have no idea what would make them happy.  Then, if you get them to think about what they'd really like to do, they come up with something pretty quickly but then immediately dismiss the idea of actually doing it.  That's a real shame.

Be brave; you really can succeed at doing what you love.

One of my favorite books is "Do What You Are," a perfect phrase for helping me focus on my next step in life.  I like to write, I like to travel, I'm now a freelance travel writer after almost 23 years in the Navy.  By being brave (or maybe just open to the possibility of looking foolish,) I also jumped into writing about music and drag racing and found new worlds for my talents.

I smile at my toothbrush every morning, eager for the start of a new day in my new life.

I even learned from my medicre performance in jobs for which I was ill-suited. I bring that self-knowledge to my current job, which is so well-suited to me that it doesn't even feel much like an effort to "go to work" each day. 

So, entrepreneurs, "measure twice and cut once" means to think about that Life Plan a lot before you make your personal leap.

What a brilliant idea to complete a "Life Plan" before we get down to business!

As Seafarer mentioned above, very often I would hear people complain how they don't know who they are and/or don't know what would make they happen.  For that reason, as soon as I found this "Life Plan" I took some time to work on it without any distraction then forwarded the template to some friends.  I was surprised that most of the response was, "Wow, this is amazing. Why didn't I think of it?"

I, however, added a few items to it:

• under "Things that make me happy" I added, "Particular Things I can do for hours" then under "things that make me unhappy" I added, "Particular Things I'd purposely avoide and/or procrastinate.
• "Positive qualities I have" + "Not-exactly-positive qualities I would like to change about myself"
• "Situations I'dlike to change in my life"
• some time ago a friend of mine forwarded me an email asking me to describe him in one word; he also asked me to ask my friends to do the same and see what the responses would be.  I thought that was interesting except most friends complained it was hard to just use one word. So for that I added, "Words describe me from people I know" and "Words describe me from myself"

Working on the Life Plan totally allowed me to be 'reunited' with myself if that makes any sense! 

I stumbled onto the SuN resources a couple of years into our business.  Life Planning seemed to be such a common sense thing to me when reading the book, but it turned out to be so terribly difficult for me to do!  I recently had an "ah-ha" moment regarding life planning. 

One of my favorite local haunts is a little retail establishment that specializes in home decor.  They are only open on Thursdays from 10am - 6pm.  Despite this fact, they are extremely successful and have a line waiting long before they open the doors each week.  Many of us drive from nearby towns to shop this establishment.

Behind the cash register is a very thought provoking sign.  Don't quote me........this is a paraphrase, but is very close:

We proudly own and operate "------------" as a family.  It is our desire to keep our family strong and our prices low.  For this reason we are only open one day each week.  We thank you for coming today as a customer and hope to see you return as a friend. 

What a perfect example of life planning in action!