Living without any clear goal and without planning for their future is a common practice for a lot of people.

Immersed in their current urgent matters and daily worries, many people forget that time passes and, at the same time, their lives pass too.

Everything we live is the result of our past decisions and actions.

Even if most people believe that external circumstances are determining their lives, if we take the time to analyze our past years and our present, we can easily see that our lives are simply consequences of our own actions.

By living without any plan, we leave other people and external circumstances to direct our lives.

On the contrary, those people consciously committed to plan their lives head in their right direction.

Taking control of our future, settling goals and planning to achieve our goals is the only way to avoid most of the unpleasant things that we might face both in our lives and in business.

A big mistake many people do is considering any outcome they might get in their lives as being the result of good or bad luck.

This behavior is influenced by our culture and education. Yet it doesn’t mean we cannot change it.

It is true that making things happen is an ability only just a few people have. But the good news is that, as any ability, it can be learnt and applied by anyone willing to make a radical change in life.

So, how could we take control of our future?

Firstly, we have to clearly determine what is it that we want to achieve in our lives or businesses, and to establish clear goals and accomplishment deadlines.

Secondly, we have to focus on our goals and persevere in pursuing them.

And then, we have to plan for achieving our goals, and to take specific actions each and every day.

Having a long term plan covering the next five to ten years further broken down into yearly, monthly and daily plans will help us track our progress.

We have to to permanently follow the plan and evaluate the results, and to form the habit to plan each evening for the next day.

Planning helps us in doing the right actions, staying on track, and avoiding all distractions that could keep us far from our goals.

Without planning for our future, we’re assuming the risk of not getting the expected outcome in any area of our lives. And we will be tempted to blame others of our failures and we will be frustrated without even realizing what is happening to us.