Have you ever sat down and tried to devise a great plan for the next stage of your life – like your retirement life?
A plan that aligns with your passions, interests, skills, capabilities, dreams, and aspirations?
And then you got stuck?
If so, you are definitely not alone.
Designing an inspiring plan for our life or for the next phase of our life is a big challenge for many of us.
Of course, there are many ways to determine what you want to do next.
At the end of this article, you will know more about an additional and quite unusual approach to developing your life plan.
The CHALLENGE of creating a life plan from scratch. And the RISK of creating it solely based on the past.
Many people hesitate to start planning their future because they don’t know how to do it. How to ‘create’ a purpose for the next stage in their lives.
Or they decide to start planning, sit down, and stare at the wall, forcing themselves to make lists or mind maps. They get frustrated because these exercises often feel artificial and/or useless.
Others direct all their attention to their past, hoping their past experiences, actions, successes, ambitions, and preferences will give them the information they need to plan their future.
However, the past can only tell us about our past potential; it doesn’t say much about the possibilities and opportunities the future may offer.
The OPPORTUNITY to use the radical paperwork optimisation process to create an inspiring plan for your life.
Depending on what and how much you have kept over the years, sorting through your paperwork can feel like sorting through your life.
And that can feel challenging!
My suggestion is that you take up the challenge.
Reorganising and decluttering the personal paperwork you have collected over a lifetime can help you better understand the most important person in your life – you – and what this person wants the future to look like.
The BENEFITs of the radical paperwork optimisation process
In a recent article, I presented a list of the beneficial results and outcomes of the Radical Paperwork Optimisation approach.
You can find the introduction to the radical approach HERE and the list of its benefits HERE.
Today, I want to have a closer look at the benefits that the process itself – the organising and decluttering work – offers to you:
The radical paperwork optimisation process helps you leave the past behind and focus on the future.
Sorting through all the paperwork you have collected over a lifetime brings up many memories and emotions, both good and not-so-good.
Making decisions about what you want to keep from the past allows you to acknowledge and appreciate all your life experiences deliberately, the happy and the challenging times, the accomplishments and the failures.
Then, after giving your full attention to all the reminders and leftovers of the past once more, you are now free to let go of what you no longer need and want to leave behind.
You will have a better understanding and stronger appreciation of the person you are now:
your unique strengths and capabilities, specific knowledge and skills, all the precious experiences and insights, and all the other good stuff you gained in the past and definitely want to take along in the present and future.
This allows you to move into the new stage of your life with more lightness. More clarity. And more confidence.
The radical paperwork optimisation process helps you design your future intentionally.
It is not easy to sort through all the paperwork, to focus only on what is very important to you, to select exclusively what is truly relevant to you now, and to decide what is no longer needed.
However, while you force yourself to decide, again and again, what you no longer need and want to leave behind because it is no longer important, you become increasingly aware of what you truly value in your life and what you want to have in your future.
You find it easier to make decisions and create inspiring plans – plans that give your life purpose and direction.
What do you think?
Can you see how radically sorting through your paperwork can help you feel more excited while you are developing plans for the next stage of your life?
The Radical Paperwork Optimisation Process can help you create and enjoy a better-organised and more relaxed daily life.
My article series, ‘Radical Paperwork Optimisation and the VIP Directory’, provides you with all the information and tools you need to start and complete the process successfully.