Identify where you want to be five years from now, not just in business, but in other areas of life as well. Try one of three strategies to identify what you truly want:

1. Identify your personal passions.

“Find your passion” is a popular phrase gurus love to throw around. That said, there is something to be said about doing what you truly love. Sadly, though, many people aren’t even aware of what they want from life.

Instead, they’ve allowed the drudgery of a 9-to-5 existence to dull their desire to do anything of significance. You can’t figure out what you want from life with a simple exercise. It’s a process that often takes weeks— even months— to complete. One of Steve’s friends (Barrie Davenport) has an interesting book on this subject called The 52-Week Life Passion Project. While you don’t necessarily need a whole year to figure out what you want from life, you can use the multitude of exercises in this book to unlock what you truly want.

2. Create S.M.A.R.T. goals.

We get it—“ finding your passion” might be too woo-woo for you. Perhaps you’re someone who likes turning life goals into measurable daily actions. If that’s the case, then another option is to create a series of S.M.A.R.T. goals. S.M.A.R.T is an acronym for: Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time-bound Now we purposely avoided the topic of S.M.A.R.T. goals until the end of this book, because most people create goals that are focused purely on work-related tasks. While setting work-related goals is important, it pales in comparison to using them to improve the quality of your life. We suggest that you set a series of goals in seven different areas: health, relationships, business, finance, leisure, spirituality and community. If you get stuck, ask yourself these questions:

• What are your heartfelt desires for you and your family?
• What have you always dreamed of doing?
• What activities make you feel inspired and driven?
• What thoughts give you goose bumps while imagining them?
• What things have you always wanted to own?
• What uplifts you spiritually?

The key to these questions is to take action. Don’t just write down an idea and say you’ll do it someday. As  you probably know, when you say “someday,” it often turns into “never.” The best way to achieve a goal is to treat it like a project and turn it into a series of steps. For instance, if you have a goal to take a two-week trip around Italy, you should break it down into a series of actions:

• Create a sample itinerary of the places you’d like to visit.
• Determine how much the trip would cost.
• Look for travel discounts and potential trip packages.
• Set up an automatic savings plan for this trip.
• Use a site (like Kayak.com) to get the cheapest available flight.
• Book the hotel rooms.

The point here is that we all have dreams, but not many people will take the time to figure out how to make them happen. The simplest way to do what you want is to create a goal and turn it into a step-by-step action plan.

3. Add bucket list items to your daily plans.

You’ve probably heard people talk about their bucket lists. These are the high-level experiences and challenges they’d like do before… you know… they kick the bucket. Sometimes the best way to spend your time isn’t looking for personal passions or achieving small goals. Instead, you might want to spend your time pursing those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

It might sound trite, but the simplest way to identify what you want is to imagine your future self lying on your deathbed. What are the things you’d regret not being able to do? What are the things you’d be most proud to have achieved? What relationships did you most enjoy? What experiences gave meaning to your daily existence? What lives did you improve through your actions and efforts? The point behind this exercise is to reverse-engineer the rest of your life. The “death bed analogy” is the simplest way to know what’s really important and what will ultimately be a waste of your time. The items you write down from this experience will become your bucket list.

Bucket lists provide an opportunity to do amazing things in your life, but you don’t have to fly to a different continent or get chased down a street by a pack of angry bulls to find meaning. Instead, you could slow down and learn to appreciate the world around you.

No matter what, schedule time to work on those goals and consider how you can incorporate small steps toward accomplishing them into your daily routines.