I often worry about where my life is going. Even though I consider myself to be someone who has always had a direction and something to strive for, I’m big on achieving goals – so I worry.

I worry about where my life will end up, how successful I’ll be, where on earth I’ll be in 5, 10, or even a years time. However, a little while ago I realised something that appeased my worrying somewhat.

I’m sure you’ve all heard that saying that goes something along the lines of

“You have to know where you’ve been to know where you’re going”.

Well, I’ve realised it’s more a case of

“You have to know where you WANT to be in order to know where you’re going”.

I’ve always equated many things in life to driving, and another way I think about this particular theory is that life direction is a bit like a Sat Nav. Yeah, I said it – a Sat Nav. Don’t worry, I’m not talking crazy, I’m going somewhere with this…

As you know, with a Sat Nav, you type in the postcode of where you want to go and the device will guide you to your destination. Knowing where you want to be or what you want to do is a bit like having a postcode for your life. It creates focus, and having focus on our goals is what helps us achieve them. This can apply to most long term (and even short term) goals.

Someone once told me (It was probably my ever-wise Mama) that you don’t always have to know HOW you’re going to get there, as long as you know where, or indeed WHAT, ‘there’ is – you’ll reach it. ‘There’, in this case, is your dream career, or your ideal weight, or knowing how to play the guitar well; anything you want to achieve really.

So basically, a postcode = knowing where you want to be.

The other thing with Sat Nav’s is that we need a building number in order to reach the exact location we want. Well, as with life, we don’t always know that building number, or the specific place we want to end up. However, a postcode gets us to the area we need to be in and although we may need to knock on a few doors, we will find the right one sooner or later.

It’s when you don’t know the building number and you’re knocking on all of those doors that knowing your postcode comes in really handy. At least you know that the one you want is among the next 10 rather than the next 1000 and if you make a wrong turn or reach a dead end, you will keep being redirected towards your destination.

If you don’t know that postcode, or at least where you want to be, you could spend all of your time knocking on the millions of doors that you THINK could be the right one, when in reality, you’re not even close. That map you’ve got isn’t any good if you don’t know where you’re going.

It may sound too good to be true, but this really is foolproof. So many books, teachings, life coaches, you name it – tell us that we should visualise what we want, focus on it and put in the work in order to be prepared for when the opportunity arises. The only catch is that, just like you have to put petrol into a car for it to go anywhere, you have to put your ENERGY into reaching your goals. As long as you put in the work, you will find yourself reaching your destinations. After all, a parked car will remain just that – parked. But a car with petrol in the tank, a running engine and a foot on the accelerator will move. Add to that a driver who knows where they want to go, then that car will be steered in the right direction until it reaches it’s destination.

I realise my mind works a bit (ok a lot) differently from the rest of the world, but this is how I see it.  Knowing all of this has really helped me, so I hope, in some lovely yet strange way that it might help you, too.