A part of constructing a plan for your life involves anticipating the future world you will live in. In order to do this, you must use your imagination to create stories. By placing yourself in these scenarios, you can visualize your responses to different conditions. Developing the skill of reviewing the future possibilities enables you to anticipate and prepare to react to new realities. That is why you must harness the ability to dream or make-believe, because they can help you plan and execute your personal strategy. 

Planning involves writing a story around your dream and giving it characters, a location and a plot with different circumstances.  Since no one knows for sure, you create your best guesses of what will happen in the external environment.  You basically dream different beginnings, challenges, endings, futures and outcomes. You should develop a set of plans for each scenario. You place your best thinking and research around what you think has the greatest chance of happening and what you want to happen. Draw up at least 3 scenarios, although you can have more depending on your capacity for complexity. They should be labeled Base case, Worst case and Best case on the following criteria. 

1. Base case – highest chance of happening
2. Worst case – the outcome that scares you the most
3. Best case – the one that gives you the greatest for success and reward 

You surround each of these views of the world with reasons to support your thinking. What are the circumstances, assumptions and conditions that must happen to make them come true? In highly sophisticated companies these assumptions are surrounded by mathematical equations to justify the allocation of resources. In your case we should just ask ourselves from 1 to 10, which scenario is most likely to happen?  What chance do you give each scenario? The one with the lowest number wins. 

The Base case scenario is the one you feel has the greatest chance of happening. When you examine the world around you, you ask yourself what has the greatest chance of happening.  This reminds me of high school when you voted people into a number of categories. There was the most talented, best physique or figure, most persuasive, attractive and most likely to succeed.  However, we never established odds for their success or failure.

Knowing people, knowing yourself and your strengths and weaknesses can help you arrive at a decision. Your actions and knowledge of things that tempt you compete for your time and your ability to give in to or resist these forces play into all of these scenarios. The base case is the one most likely to happen. The odds are in its favor. 

The Worst case scenario is the one that causes you the most fear. This set of circumstances would severely keep you down. It would leave you in a desperate position regarding your health, relationship and finances. A company would be in bad shape in sales growth, market value of the company and the solvency of the enterprise. In your situation, the worst case scenario would leave you in a position of poverty, ignorance, poor health and bad relationships or other bad situations. The worst case scenario is the one that cost people their jobs, promising careers, their health and their freedom.

The Best case scenario is the dream scenario. It has the best circumstances and your best responses.  It is the ideal position for you. All of the best possible conditions happen at the right time. Every good thing that could occur and a number of unforeseen positive situations arrive and place you in the perfect light. The right people come into your life and act according to your positive script.

Your goal is to do everything you can to ensure that the base case is the lowest you want to achieve and the Best case is a possibility.  

Use this strategic approach to think about your life. Ask yourself what would be the base, worst and best case scenario for your life. At the rate you are growing, what is likely to be my fate and how can you change the future, now?  Sometimes it is easier to do this exercise if we look at other people. Is there someone you know who is living a life that if they continue on the same path, bad things will happen to them? What are they doing? What can they do to prevent this negative future? The assumptions around their lives are very clear. At the rate they are going bad things will catch up to them and shorten their lives and cause them to have many self-inflicted bad days. When you are comfortable with this methodology, you can share it to help others. 

When you think of your dreams, what must happen for you to reach it? What must happen to reach your best case scenario? What people should you bring into your life or avoid? What environment must you grow up in to ensure that people who act as weeds don’t choke the life out of your growth? Look at the assumptions or things that must be true for you to make it. What role must you play? How courageous must you become to not betray your purpose on this planet? Remember you deserve the best, so strategically plan as if you believe this to be true.

Copyright © 2011 Orlando Ceaser