đ¶ It's the Most Reflective Time of the Year
On what you value and what most dying people wish they had valued more
Hello hello,
Iâm not sure how it happened either, but yes, the year is coming to an end. Time is a funny thingâor as J.R. Moehringer aptly described in his memoir The Tender Bar, âTimeâs a winged fuckinâ chariot.â
This season is amazing and peculiar in the way that it triggers us to both look back and think ahead. If youâre anything like me, you might already be looking forward to drafting your New Year resolutions. But if you really are anything like me, youâd probably really only sit down on it after Christmas, striking a buzzer-beater on New Yearâs Eve with your oh-so-comprehensive list of plans and goals.
The New Year high is real. But if thereâs anything writing has taught me, itâs that extracting lessons takes time. The best-laid and most beautiful plans never come in flashes. Meaning, I strongly believe, becomes a catalyst for change when you let it marinate in your mind and your heart and your soul.
So starting today up till the end of the year, this newsletter will be all about stories that will hopefully help you better reflect on where you are, reassess how you want to steer your life, and of course, plan accordingly.
For short reads, I will include in full here (such as this edition). For longer reads, I might ask you to view them on my Medium page. Whether you read all or some or none of my stories, I hope you really take the time to sit with yourselfâyour thoughts, your best parts, and your shadowsâand remember that The Good Life is best lived from within.
What We Misunderstand About the Value of the Ten-Year Plan
The best piece of advice on planning Iâve ever received was from a marketing professor. He said: âLatag bago lamon.â Latag refers to the act of laying something on a surface, bago means before, and lamon is to devour something. In total, the phrase loosely translates to âSet the table before you dig in.â
A good marketing plan, he said, starts with laying down the groundwork before diving into the execution.
I found myself remembering his advice while thinking about my personal ten-year plan. Weâre often told of the benefit of defining your long-term goals: âYouâll get there faster if you know where youâre headed.â But as Iâve come to realize lately, this outcome-driven mindset may have its risk: We overlook understanding why we want a certain outcome in the first place, or even if it really is what we want. In the context of my professorâs advice, we dig in without properly setting the table.
In her guide on how to create a ten-year plan, Tchiki Davis, MA, Ph.D. from the Berkeley Well-Being Institute emphasizes the letter M in the SMART criteria for goal-setting. M, which stands for Meaning, she says, is most crucial because if your goals arenât meaningful, then you wonât be able to stick to them. âWhen I say, âset meaningful goalsâ, Iâm not saying that you canât change your mind later on about the goal and pursue something else,â Davis clarifies. âI just want to encourage you to set goals starting from a desire for meaning rather than a desire for an outcome.â
She proposes that a ten-year plan must start, first and foremost, with oneâs values. After all, values, as Nir Eyal likes to put it, âare the attributes of the person you want to become.â So Davis suggests beginning with values-based goals, where you identify your most compelling personal values. This will then trickle into lifestyle-based goals, or how you can demonstrate those values in your life, which you can then translate into more tangible steps.
For example, letâs say you deeply value freedom â a value that can be manifested in flexibility in your lifestyle. Your ten-year plan will then most likely involve steps towards financial freedom, such as making smart, early investments, or growing your income streams so can enjoy a greater financial cushion.
Consequently, an added benefit of this approach is that it forces you to sense-check where you are and what youâre currently doing. We may not be aware of it, but, as Davis cautions, âthere will always be a part of you that is striving for something that isnât really you.â Without getting clear on your values â your true pillars â , itâll be difficult to evaluate your course, much less make the necessary pivot.
It was the process of answering my career development plan that triggered me to quit my previous job. The very thorough survey asked me to define my short-term (2 years), mid-term (5 years), and long-term (10 years) career goals. I was working in a big, established company, and I knew I was lucky to be there given all the benefits, a beautiful office, an admirable culture, and the promise of a long, stable career. But there was one thing that had been nagging at me for a while. What was it that was lacking in my work?
The value of creativity.
Hard as it was to admit that, I was grateful for the eye-opening experience and how it pushed me to pursue a more creative future. Another big learning here is that some values override others and that as we go through life, this hierarchy can change. Thatâs why it always pays to be subjected to opportunities that force you to pause, be honest with yourself, and recalibrate â whether it be an extensive career planning tool or simply mulling over questions like âHow do you see yourself in ten years?â
When my boss first asked me that in my early 20s, it never really left me. The question felt like a pressure-cooker or a ticking time bomb. There was also that fear of locking myself into a path for the sake of having one. But my experience, aided by Davisâ process, gave me a better mindset. This approach tells us: itâs not radical foresight nor a fixed roadmap that we need â but the ability to place our values at the heart of everything we do and hope to be.
The beauty of the ten-year plan doesnât lie in the plan, but in the planning. Itâs the chance to anchor your life on what matters most to you. To envision and strategize a future where your goals are in full alignment with your values. To set the table, as a wise professor once put it, for this feast that is a meaningful life.
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The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying
I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is from Bronnie Ware, an Australian nurse who wrote about her experience working in palliative care. It started as a blog post which apparently went viral a couple of year ago. Her blog was called Inspiration & Chai (which I think is the wisest combination of words Iâve ever encountered), but it seems that itâs not in the web anymore. Bronnie turned it into a book called The Top Five Regrets of Dying People.
I want to find a way to remind myself of these things more often. And maybe I wonât be able to live by all of them all the time, but I do want to try. I mean, thatâs all we can ask from ourselves, donât you think?
Personally, the ones that resonated with me are âI wish I hadnât worked so hardâ and âI wish I had stayed in touch with my friendsâ. As a recovering Type-A who for the better part of her life focused on studies, work, and anything achievement-oriented, I now recognize where I have failed. Iâll always love the notion of getting things done and taking next steps, but Iâm learning to redefine that part of myself in a way that wonât compromise what truly mattersâthe people I love.
Anna Akana said in her video of this list of deathbed regrets: âGetting older makes you pretty lucky.â Casually said, but profoundly true. Another year is another chance to act on these five things.
Which regret/s resonated with you the most?
Thatâs all for this weekend! Iâm off to refurnish my studio apartment. đ Itâs my home improvement x self-improvement experiment (Why am I rhyming??) Anyhow, I shall report when itâs done.
Donât wait! Donât procrastinate! Today is the day to start figuring out how toâŠ
Create the good life,
â€ïž Ria