aj on brand

if what pleases you is at the heart of the plan for your life, it is flanked on one side by soft, inviting gratitude and on the other by an 800 lb gorilla. this 800 lb gorilla is something that everyone knows, but no one talks about. it’s too much debt. a job you hate or that bores the pants off you. it’s not getting to the gym, or drinking too much. it’s the things in life that you know are keeping you down, but you just don’t quite deal with.

we all have an 800 lb gorilla, or four. and for each gorilla, there is a critical risk, an action that needs to be taken. it’s an emotional risk, an “i’m going to make myself extremely vulnerable to deal with this” kind of a risk. the 800 lb gorilla is the affair, the risk is talking about it. the 800 lb gorilla is you drink too much, the risk is stopping. the 800 lb gorilla is “i hate this job,” the risk is moving on.

these risks, though emotional and values-based, require physical engagement — the big tactics of achieving your dreams. identifying them is the first part of moving through them. then ask the question: what steps am i going to take to clean this up so i can move toward what i actually want?

the 800 lb gorilla and its related risk, the heavy lifting, together with the light and optimism of pleasure and gratitude, provide four questions that, when applied to the different facets of life, guide us in the direction of our biggest, most audacious dreams.

what pleases me? what am i grateful for? what are my 800 lb gorillas? how do i use all of that to move towards my dreams?

important: this is not scientific. this is not the same style of work that i do for business. managing change for a business is research and analytics, budgets and feasibility studies. it’s methodical. there is a lot of creativity that is woven in, but at its core it is business. what i’m writing about here is deeply personal.

i can’t go to the finance department in my life, or see if the research group can do a feasibility study on my dreams. i have no hr guidelines to refer to in the conflict management of my personal life.

turns out our dreams are up to us.

and so, the ten year plan, and its messiness. i create a 10 year plan because i simply cannot keep track of all the parts and the things that are genuinely important to me. i get swept up with things, or bored with them. even what matters most deeply to me can be gone the instant a deadline goes south or a soul i love is sick.

having a plan means that i don’t have to hold on so tightly. i can let go. so i hope that you’ll let your plan breathe. it’s not rigid. you don’t have to be ‘on it.’ let it be there. for you. more like a $3 drawer-organizer from ikea than a corporate brand strategy. let it help you separate the spoons from the knives. have it collaborate with the calendar on the refrigerator, and the suitcase ziplock that keeps shampoo from getting all over your underwear.

it’s not fancy. it’s buckets and bins to hold the bits and pieces that matter. duct tape for your dreams.

• use this link to access a 10 year plan template.