Your Path to Success

How to put The Path to Meaning into practice

A grounded, practical guide to finding, revitalising or renewing the meaning and purpose in your life.

This series of leaflets on the importance of having meaning in your life have covered the reasons why it is important to lead a meaningful life, the challenges that face us and a summary of our unique five-step process to developing a meaningful and purposeful life.

In this final leaflet – Your Path to Success – we set out in more detail how you can implement the five-step process. Whilst the third leaflet is about the theory of creating meaning in your life, this leaflet covers the practicalities of the process of taking you from where you are now to where you want to be.

For each stage, you will learn about:

✓   What you should be thinking, feeling and doing
✓   The objective of the stage
✓   The action steps you should be taking
✓   The milestones you should set so you can congratulate yourself on your progress

The Success Path helps you to identify where you are in the process and to see clear steps to measurable, unambiguous progress.

Remember that the process is iterative. You may want to circle back to an earlier stage at some point, and even restart the whole process after a break or partial success.

Stage 1 – Cheerfully contemplate change
You are surviving, not thriving. You feel vulnerable, anxious, demoralised, directionless and bored. You think that your personal circumstances and global events are preventing you from living a meaningful life.

 

Objective

  • To come to terms with the fact that you need to change and to develop a positive, compassionate and outward-looking mindset.

Action steps

  • Take steps to think, feel and communicate in a positive way
  • Talk to people in similar situations
  • Create habits to bring happiness to you and others
  • Take exercise to develop your energy.

Milestones

  • You answer “Yes” when you ask yourself ‘Do I want to change my way of life?” and “Can I change?”
  • You no longer use negative language such as “but”, “if”, “try” and “probably”.
  • You regularly practice at least two happiness habits such as maintaining a gratitude journal or showing interest in others by listening rather than talking
  • You have connected with others in a similar situation and shared your thoughts with them
  • You adopt health advice as recommended by your Government (10k steps per day, 150 intensity minutes a week in the UK).
Stage 2 – Prepare and plan wisely
You have begun to research options, read self-help books, attend courses etc. You now think that, with help and support, change is possible. However, you sometimes wonder if this is wishful thinking and you feel apprehensive, worried and excited, all at the same time.

 

Objective

  • To reinforce your view that you need to change and to start planning for changes to your life.

Action steps

  • Continue with your Stage 1 activities
  • Take steps to become more self-aware
  • Identify your passions, aspirations, patterns, impact on others, strengths and weaknesses
  • Set goals
  • Define your important guiding values.

Milestones

  • You are maintaining and improving your Stage 1 practices around positive communication, connections, gratitude and health
  • You have drawn up a manifesto setting out your high-level aspirations, values and behaviours
  • You have a set of short-term (one to three year) goals, including goals around resilience
  • You have an outline plan for achieving these goals
  • You have shared these with a partner, close friend or fellow traveller.
Stage 3 – Take action to become resilient
You are feeling a little more confident about your life although you still have concerns. You are thinking about how important it is to make sure your house is in order before you get serious about helping others get their houses in order.

Objective

To become resilient.

Action steps

  • During this stage, you should take defined steps to maintain or improve your health
  • Become financially resilient, with reserves and positive cash flow
  • Resolve any problems in close personal relationships
  • Reconnect with and build your personal network

Given the specialist nature of some of this work, you may retain expert advisers such as a financial adviser, accountant, solicitor and personal trainer. These will become the core of your support network.

 

Milestones

  • You have developed and implemented a regular and habitual regime of appropriate exercise to improve your energy and health
  • You have confronted, understood and dealt with the emotional obstacles preventing you making progress 
  • You have developed and implemented a diet that is healthy and affordable
  • You have a fully-funded emergency cash fund equivalent to at least 3-6 months’ expenditure
  • You have Implemented a plan to reduce your debt to within acceptable ratios, if necessary
  • You have resolved issues with personal relationships
  • You have refreshed your social media profiles (especially LinkedIn)
  • You have identified and reconnected with the ten most influential people in your network.
Stage 4 – Maintain resilience, grow wealth
Using your new resilience as a foundation, you begin to build your wealth in all its forms that you need to make a difference in the world. You feel more confident and think that with sufficient resources, you can initiate or join projects or pitch for assignments where you can live and work with a sense of purpose and meaning. Importantly, you are beginning to think like a leader.

 

Objective

  • To develop the skills, resources and relationships necessary for you to find and pitch for suitable projects where you can make a difference.

Action steps

  • Review your resources and skills and prioritise where you need to fill the gaps
  • Increase your savings so you start to build financial wealth
  • Train for new skills, especially around change
  • Develop your relationships and network.
  • Improve your self-worth and, with humility and compassion, become a leader in your home, work and social life.

Milestones

  • You have identified and filled the gaps in your skills necessary for you to achieve your goals.
  • You will have achieved the correct balance for your age between savings and debt.
  • You will have received one or two approaches at least from your network suggesting meaningful projects or assignments of interest to you.
  • You will consistently show leadership at home and work and amongst your social circle.
  • You will have demonstrated your ability to create and manage change.
Patient courage
Stage 5 – Time to make a difference
Get less done
You are now creating change and leading a meaningful and purposeful life, actively involved in making a difference in the world. You feel exhilarated at being able to create change and relieved at being your own person. You think your work and the contribution you are making leave you more secure than you have ever been.

 

Objective

  • To create change in the world and make a positive difference that gives your life meaning and purpose.

Action steps

  • You lead and love one or more projects to create change and make a difference in the world

Milestones

  • You have an assignment or project earning financial and emotional rewards far exceeding anything you have done before
  • You are leading all or part of a project that is making a difference in the world.
  • You are financially and emotionally secure.
  • You contribute more than you consume.
  • You know this exceeds anything you have done in your life so far in terms of financial and emotional rewards.
  • With a hand on your heart, you can say that your life is meaningful, purposeful and memorable.

Continue the Journey

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Success path pdf

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