Short-Term Thinking & Life Plans
One of the biggest reasons that long-term thinking isn’t as effective as short-term thinking when it comes to success in any area of your life is because you don’t get to control all the pieces of the situation.
Nothing ever stays the same. People will change their minds. What they believe today, they won’t next month. What they want this year, they won’t want next year. Couples get together and then break up in a matter of weeks, months and even after twenty or more years together.
The person who has his life in order can fall apart. Everything you wanted can collapse around you. You can work for years to get that job you wanted or to start that business only to discover it’s not what you thought you wanted and you’re absolutely miserable.
Of course, these are always things that happen to someone else. We don’t figure problems and changes into our long-term thinking. We only focus on the good that we think is going to happen.
The choices that you made today, you won’t make tomorrow because your thought process isn’t going to be the same. It won’t be the same because you won’t be the same.
That’s what makes long-term thinking less likely to increase your success than short-term thinking. When you focus on long-term thinking, you can begin a pattern of thinking that pushes aside all of your internal misgivings about what you’re doing.
Even if your long-term thinking is you striving toward something that you want that’s good for you to have, you can still fall short. You’ll fall short of having a job that you love – one that brings you a lot of happiness.
You can fall short of entering into a relationship with someone you care about because the timing doesn’t fit your long-term goals. Plenty of people do this in so many areas of life – especially when it comes to the type of career they want.
What happens with long-term thinking is they enter into a trade off and may not even realize what they’re giving up in the present to hopefully gain in the future. You will never get a guarantee that what you plan for is going to happen.
Take a hard look at what you’re doing. Are the things you’re doing now truly helping your life with no negative drawbacks? Are you the person who never gets to see his or her family because you’re trying to make connections that will help your career or will be beneficial as you build your business?
You have to take a step back, away from long-term thinking, to consider that maybe you’re not seeing things as you should see them. This can help you make choices that are beneficial for you in the here and now as well as in the future. You shouldn’t have to trade your present to gain your future.