Recently, a 23-year-old engineering student from Pune wrote to me about the problem of getting fat and happy in a job. He dreamed of starting an engineering consulting firm, but before that he wanted specialized work experience. He was afraid if he took up a job he would end up like others he saw—”earning good pay and vowed to remain employed forever.” His question recalled to me a powerful tool I had learned from a most remarkable man—Dr. Michael Gladysch. Dr.G, as he was fondly called, taught me the power of a life plan.
In one of my initial meetings with him, Dr.G asked me, “Have you decided how long you want to live?” I didn’t know what to say. It was not something that I had even thought I could determine. He sent me away, asking me to come back after I had determined that. When I came back the next time I told him that I had decided to live to be 92. He looked at me and nodded: “So what will you do with the time you have between now and then?” I was floored again.
This time he told me to write down everything that I wanted to accomplish in my life and to then divide it into the following categories—career, family, personal, cultural, community service and spiritual.
I was working then at Microsoft, very comfortably. I had been living a typical software engineer’s lifestyle, long hours huddled on the computer, junk food, no exercise. Dr.G insisted that dreams and ideas must first be written down on paper so they are tangible. Slowly I started writing down my dreams. I wanted to launch a startup company, I wrote on an index card. To write a periodic column, on another. I made out cards for specific books I wanted to write.
As the plans flowed from my head into paper, they started acquiring a power of their own. Even selecting the age I wanted to live to made an impact. I would be a pretty pathetic 92 if I continued the way I was. After writing down that age I took yoga lessons, became more aware of my diet and the ergonomics of my work posture, started paying more attention to my health. I quit Microsoft a little while later to start my first company.
It is an exercise worth doing. Creating a life plan is a compass for life.
Everything you write on that piece of paper (I used index cards) will become tangible realities with the power of your commitment. Our essential nature is to create, Dr.G would say. With the power of faith and commitment, you can boost the intensity of those ideas to the causative level.
With a life plan, the 23-year old engineering graduate has much less to fear about being fat and happy—his destiny is in his own hands.
Writer SANKRANT SANU is the founder of Miloka Inc. (www.miloka.com). He lives in Gurgaon.
