In making a present or future choice, you’re either moving toward something you’re drawn to achieving or having, or moving away from something you don’t want.

Uncertainty, anxiety and outdated stories often muddle the blank space of the future. Creating a future map provides you with a framework to sort your thoughts, document your stressors, and organize your plans to facilitate your progression into the distance.

With each proactive choice, your aim is to stay conscious, alert and committed to the actions you take that support your choice to move forward.

Using a map as a guide encourages you to assess what could undermine your efforts so you can plot your actions and responses accordingly.

Intentional, proactive choices typically fall into three categories:

1. For professional choices you’re determining whether to start or leave a job, step out on your own or improve your current situation.
2. In relationship choices you’re focusing on whether to begin a new relationship, work on mending one you’re already in, or end one that is no longer fulfilling.
3. Your personal choices involve bringing something into your life that matters or removing something that doesn’t.

In the course of your career journey, you’ll likely encounter one or more of the following professional choices:

• Will you leave your current job or embark upon a new career? 
• Will you take time off or venture out on your own? 
• Will you dedicate greater effort to what you’re currently doing? 
  
  

Relationship choices are often highly charged and it can often feel as though the weight of your future rests on the decision to stay or go.

• Will you choose to work on a relationship you’re already in and address its challenges? 
• Will you choose to stay with intention or let the relationship wane? 
• Will you choose to end a relationship that no longer meets your needs? 
• Will you embark upon a new relationship? 
• Will you reconnect to someone who’s mattered to you?
  
  

Making a personal choice is a powerful springboard to orient your life in a direction that has meaning—to step into what you trust is in your best interest and remain faithful and confident that you’re moving toward something that’s right for you. 

You may be choosing to say yes or no to an opportunity. You may be choosing to do something that supports your personal growth—asking for what you want, taking a stand for yourself or taking a deeper look at what triggers you. You may be choosing to shift your attitude to feel more gratitude, more joy, more openness. 

Possibilities can be short-term visions of how you want to feel or more grandiose visions of what you want to manifest. By creating a map documenting your thoughts, you’re preserving your ideas of what’s possible to revisit should roadblocks re-emerge.