"Where do you want to be?"

Last week I was asked the question.

"Where do you want to be in 5 years?"

It was during a performance development session at my work. I rolled my eyes and first. My body constricted and the very notion of thinking about where I wanted to be in 5 years made me rebel against it, like a 5 year old being hand fed brussel sprouts.

I'm not very good at this stuff.

I know I want to be happy. Is that a response? In 5 years, wherever I am, I want to be happy. Can we go with that?

I remember being asked the '10 year' question in my first or second year of uni.... which funnily enough is actually 10 years ago now. Oh. Dear. Fuck.


Back then it was for an assignment. The whole class was to put together a short presentation/storyboard etc of where they wanted to be in 10 years. It got me into a bit of a panic back then. I felt all this pressure to have a 'plan' and at the time I felt way too naïve, too inexperienced to deal with it. I'd just started uni, I mean, how was I to know where I was going to be in 10 years? I felt like I was still learning. Still needed to learn so much. I mulled over it and it really made me question where I was at in life. In the end, I decided it was ok that I didn't know where I wanted to be in 10 years time. And I embraced that. Instead I focussed on how I wanted to feel in 10 years. What things I wanted in my life in 10 years.

I got a big piece of yellow cardboard and started cutting out words and pictures that represented how I wanted to feel and some of the things I wanted in my life; stuck them on with a glue stick at varying angles. You know, for effect.

I wish I still had that sadly constructed piece of card. I can't remember much of what was on it. But one thing I do remember vividly was a set of judicial scales. They represented my need for balance in life. A balance of work and life, passions, relationships, family and friends, challenge and fun.

It's funny, when I think about it what I really should have had was a juggler. All along I've had all these different balls in the air. Flying around in different directions. Different colours and shapes. In the world of circus performers I'm definitely more the clown with the juggling balls than the stringent tight rope walker balancing life high in the sky.

I am still a firm believer that you never know where you're going to be - life could take you in any matter of directions as soon as tomorrow, therefore, the next 10 years? So much could change in the next 10 years!

However, this most recent line of questioning has got me thinking, where am I now? What have I achieved over the last 10 years? And what do I actually want in the next 10 years? Sure, life could steer me down many different roads in that time, plans could very easily change. But there really are things that I want to do and have in my life, in the next few years and in the next 10. And if I don't set any kind of plan in place to achieve those things - will they ever get done? And how satisfied will I be with what I have or haven't achieved when it dawns on me that another 10 years has ever so quickly flashed by?

Life is too quick to be taken advantage of, but long enough to regret the things you always wanted to do but didn't.

So what's the solution... well that still requires some thinking.

For that you'll have to stay tuned ;)

Do you know where you want to be in 5 or 10 years? What plans do you put in place to achieve your dreams and goals?