Page 164 - Talane Miedaner - Coach Yourself to a New Career_ 7 Steps to Reinventing Your Professional Life (2010)

152 COACH YOURSELF TO A NEW CAREER

may thrive on it, but I’ve yet to meet anyone getting ready to retire
who wants to work that many hours. This is the time to think
of your life plan. A life plan helps you
plot a course over your entire life. For
Men, for the sake of example, if you want to do something
getting a living, forget athletic, it makes sense to do it early in
to live. life when you are young and strong, as
you probably won’t make the Olympic
—MARGARET FULLER team when you are ninety. Likewise, it
is much easier to have children before
you are forty—not that it can’t be done
later (as I’m proof of the pudding); it is just that it is easier and less
risky for both mother and child. Also, I’ve coached many execu-
tive women who got so busy in their careers that they lost track of
time, and when they finally came up for air, it was too late to have
children.
Making a life plan, even if it is a coarse outline or a few bullet
points scratched down, and referring back to it every year or so
is a good way to ensure that you don’t miss the chance to do the
things in life that are really important to you. The life-planning
exercise is fun and relatively easy for those who can imagine the
future, but if your brain thinks only six months to a year ahead,
this could be a difficult if not impossible task. Not everyone has
the ability to imagine the future—your brain may not go there. So,
just do the best you can to sketch out a few rough ideas of what
you’d like to accomplish in life. I’ve given two options for creat-
ing a life plan and you can do whichever you prefer or do both for
good measure. If you are really stuck, work with a coach who can
help you create a bigger life plan.

Create Your Life Plan

As a culture, we are so career focused that we tend to forget that
the purpose of working is to support our ideal life. The pursuit of