Day 8 Feeding the Positive Dog — Take Out Your Telescope

After taking time to smell the roses on Day 7 of Feeding the Positive Dog, our challenge for Day 8 is a little more introspective.

Author Jon Gordon designed this 11 day experience as a daily strategy to feed ourself with positivity.

If this is the first post in my series that you've read I encourage you to go back and read up on the previous daily posts leading up to now.

After enjoying the nature around us yesterday you'd think that today's theme entailed more of the same as we're asked to take out the telescope.

Not the case.

Gordon says, "I often talk about a telescope when encouraging people to create a big picture vision for their future and dream about the life they want to create. The telescope represents our dream for the future and according to Barbara Frederickson research shows this is a simple way to boost positivity."

Day 8 is a challenge to dream about the life we want to create and commit to writing our big picture vision.
From an early stage of my professional life I always had a vision and a plan on how to achieve it.

A big part of that focus was a set of financial goals - eliminating debt like student loans, setting aside rainy day funds and building a nest egg for the future. As time elapsed and those goal s were achieved my priorities changed. 

At this stage of my life, the vision is more about creating a new balance between work and personal life. My wife and I learned a good lesson several years ago about the unpredictability of health and life. We witnessed others toil for decades to provide for their families, often working extra jobs to save money - but without any true plan on what to do with it. The end result being that they got to do virtually nothing with it.

So our vision is to learn from those observations and be intentional about executing our plan to semi-retire and enjoy the fruits of our labor. At the same time we still want to reserve time to work some, volunteer some, sit on the couch and do nothing some.

We've established agreed upon milestones or life events that will serve as triggers for us to execute the next steps of our plan. In the meantime we regualrly make time to check-in on our plan - make sure it's still what we want - make adjustments as necessary - and move on.

All of this is made asier by having what I call our personal board of directors. These are people we've entrusted to help guide us along the way. Your financial advisor, attorney, your parents or other family, your closest friends and your professional mentors are all examples of who might be on your personal board of directors. 

It's one thing to have a dream. But without a plan, the dream may remain just that. And without writing down a plan, you're plan may be destined to fail. 

So, to Mr. Gordon I say mission accomplished. The telescope has been in my back pocket all along.

We shall see what's in store for Day 9 tomorrow.