So many people have asked me lately “Odette, How do you do it all?” Yes, I agree, I have been up to a lot, even for my standards. But it’s all great stuff. Do I feel pressure? Absolutely. Do I feel like I am under the gun with these crazy deadlines? Oh my lord, you only know the half of it. So why do I do it?

I do it because I want to. I don’t have to do any of this. It’s a choice I am making based on my vision for my future.  How do I do it?

I have a motive. I have a plan. I have a strategy.

The single most important thing you need in your life and your business is a plan. A strategy to get from ‘you here now’, to ‘you over there’. Most people don’t have this and that’s why so many fail to get what they want out of their life or their business. Lots of people think they have a plan, but what they actually have is a bunch of ideas floating around in their head and a lot of wishing and hoping but no doing.

We all plan vacations, weddings, special events and even funerals. But so many of us don’t think we need to plan our business or our life. We just expect everything to happen without making a considerable effort. Yes our efforts need to be deliberate, consistent and often painful.

We are not gifted a whole lot of time from the day we are born and we certainly don’t know ‘how long we’ve got’, so it makes planning tricky, in the traditional sense of the word.

So here’s the quick and dirty on how I planned for my future. Other people may do it differently but this is my strategy that, so far, has worked for me.

Plan like you got a whole life to live…

Go to the end of your life then work backwards.

Write down what you WISH you could do with your life. Wishing is the unfiltered, raw dream before it gets dismissed by second guesses, the ‘not-good-enough-syndrome’, the ‘what-are-people-going-to-think’ influenza or the ‘thatwon’tmakeanymoneysowhybothertrying’ cancer.

Here’s mine: “I wish I could…. have the freedom to choose how I spend my time in the later years of my life, rather than HAVING to do something (that won’t make me happy)?”, “I wish I could…get my black belt in karate”. “I wish I could…. write a book”, “I wish that I can… make a difference in the lives of women across the globe so that they can have the freedom to choose how they spend their lives”, “I wish I can…live on a lake in the summer and on the ocean in the winter” and finally “I wish that I am…. a great role model for my daughters so that they will make choices in their life that will allow them to live their dream”. I have a bunch more wishes and will gladly share these with you in person.

This is my whole life plan cut up into bite size strategies: 1 year, 3 year, and 5 year. 10 year, 25 year, 50-year goals. I am well on my way and nothing will stop me, except death. So if death interrupts my plans, or my end goal, at least I tried. I have lived my today’s in the short-term strategy that make up the whole life plan. Kinda like making regular monthly deposits into my RRSP.

Oh, let’s not forget when life blind-sides us and we derail from our plan. That’s why you make regular deposits and have bite size pieces to chew on. You can tweak the plan here and there, but the end goal remains constant. I have one piece of advice and I have learned the lesson the hard way. This is YOUR life plan. It can include others of course, people can come along for the ride, you may have certain obligations or whatever, but when you live in your true want, others get to enjoy you at your best. How cool is that?

So before you get the Ya Buts, here’s Peter Rabbit’s and Snap Boogie’s say on the matter…

I was at the Port Credit Buskerfest with my kids over the weekend and one of the street performances was Bucket Drummer Peter Rabbit and dancer Snap Boogie.

Their performance and the entire evening was so great, it left me with “stars” in my eyes as you can see in this photo!

Not only were they fabulously funny, but also they left the audience with a very powerful message (paraphrasing Peter Rabbit and Snap Boogie): ‘we come from a place that does not encourage positive things in life; it encourages crime, jail and not succeeding. Succeeding comes from your dreams, from within. We have three things that don’t usually go together; Being young, being black and being positive. We over came barriers because we chose to. So if you have even the slightest chance to get what you want out of life, grab it and run like hell!”

I know I can make a difference in this world. They know they can make a difference in this world.

Do you know that you can too? Damn right you can.

All it takes is a motive, your reason why, lots of planning, a kick ass strategy, guts, belief in yourself and someone to show you how.