The DRAWING You must DRAW :

“You are not too old and it is not too late.” ~Unknown

In less than two months, I’ll be hitting a major “milestone” 42nd birthday. I quit my full-time job six years ago, ending a twenty-plus-year career in engineering, and have spent time thinking about what I want the next chapter of my life to look like. I found myself thinking back to a drawing exercise I did a few years ago that has made such an impact on my being willing to make major changes in my life.

Entering my early-forties, I had come to a point where something just felt “off.” I wasn’t sleeping well, often waking at 3 am with anxiety about real or imagined catastrophes. I was often stressed and short-tempered. I was gaining weight and my health wasn’t in the top-notch condition the way it had always been. I felt directionless and unmotivated, but I wasn’t sure what I would rather be doing.

I recalled a TED talk I had seen in which Patti Dobrowolski discussed the power of “drawing your future.” While the concept seemed a little silly to me at first, I decided to give it a go one evening while writing.

The end result is a poorly drawn stick figure of myself in the lotus position (which I can’t actually do) and a few notes in the margins. My goal was to draw and describe myself twelve years in the future. What kind of “older man” did I want to be? What were my activities? Had I conquered anything that currently plagued me?

The stick figure I drew has salt-and-pepper hair, as he no longer feels any need to waste his time and money trying to look younger. He instead proudly wears his silvers as a testament to his experience.

He is slim…maybe even younger. He practices yoga and meditation daily…possibly is a gym guy. He owns his own business, makes a six-figure income, and has a healthy nest egg for retirement.

Most importantly, he is completely at peace with himself and his place in the world.

That fifty-five-year-old stick figure was so far removed from the forty-two-year-old me who drew his.

I was still spending exorbitant amounts of money every eight weeks coloring my hair.. I practiced meditation every now and then, but not seriously, and I never do yoga.

 Within weeks of drawing that picture, I stopped eating unhealthy food. Within just a few months, I had cut out dairy and sugar as well. Six months later, I dyed my hair for the last time. I do at least a few minutes of meditation every morning. Most recently, I stopped drinking cold drinks and said “goodbye” to those fried foods.

The biggest change was the confidence to make all of these decisions and to realize this is a thrilling and fulfilling future awaited me.

I still haven’t accomplished everything that the stick figure has. My nest egg is tiny, but I still have a way to go before I consider myself comfortably “financially independent.” Yes, I do have my own business, and I’m still working on trying to meditate more regularly. But having this vision of the future has helped me to set manageable goals about what’s important to me.

None of this has been done easily. It has required vast amounts of reading, educating myself, learning new techniques, and discovering that green tea or a soup in a fancy glass makes me just as happy (actually more so) than a glass of cold drink.

I’m blown away by how inspiring that little stick figure has been and how the simple exercise of drawing my future helped me to get clarity about what I want out of life.

Research shows that the odds of anyone making a change in their life are nine to one. If you want to beat those odds, according to Dobrowolski, you need to see your ideal future, believe it’s possible, and then ask and train your brain to help you bring it to life.

That’s why a picture can be so powerful. When we draw, we utilize our creativity and imagination. This gets us away from our inner critic which often runs the show and tries to keep us safe from harm.

Once we have our picture, we’re able to close our eyes and connect the dots from the present to the future, factoring in all our life experiences and imagining the steps that would help us get from A to B.

If you're finding it difficult to envision your future path, you might want to watch Dobrowolski's video. He suggests starting by honestly sketching your current situation and your desired new outcome. Enhance the new vision with vibrant colors to make it stand out. Create something that captivates you and ignites your enthusiasm. Then, map out the necessary steps to turn your new reality into a possibility. You might be amazed by the clarity that emerges! Sketch the version of "you" that you aspire to become.

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