A good life plan will help you reflect on where you are and where you want to go. Years ago, as I sat in a coffee shop and was listening to a seminar, I first started thinking about life plans. The seminar took you through a process of reflecting on the past year and the year before you. The speaker did not speak about a life plan, but the questions he asked were very similar to a life plan. His questions made me start to ask, where do I want to go?

Here are three ways a life plan can help you:

a. If you do not take control of your life something or someone else will.

A life plan helps you move from the back seat of your life and take the driver seat. Your plan needs to be flexible enough to deal with changes in life, but also structured enough to keep you alive.

b. A life plan helps you reach your potential, your dreams, and your calling.

If you are going to build your house, you are going to need some plans. A life plan can work as a road map to help you reach the dreams you have. It is a strategic road map to move ahead.

c. It can be a spiritual discipline to realign your life to be what you were created for.

For followers of Jesus, a life plan can help us reflect. Are we staying connected to the vine? Susie Larson shares, “Days will fly by, and sacred moments will continue to elude us until we decide to hit the brakes and take inventory on what’s driving us.”

Creating a plan lets you hit the pause button and center yourself so you can fly.

Try this exercise:

Take a moment to reflect on your own life. Write down on a piece of paper different areas of your life such as career, relationships, health. On a scale of 1-10, how are you doing in these areas? Now go back and ask these two questions:

a. Where on the scale do I want to be in these areas?

b. If there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be, what needs to happen to move?

Here is a free resource to help you reflect on where you are at and where you want to go – Life Graph