This post is the first in a series I plan to write on Strategic Living. Keep an eye on the the front page of The Tao of Derek for updates, or sign up for the feed!

I want to start here with a definition. It won't do us any good to talk about strategic living unless it is clear what I mean when I use that term. Strategic Living is a method of organizing your life in such a way as to maximize your ability to reach your stated objectives. In other words, you need to have an objective, figure out what things you need to do to attain that objective, and then do those things.

Step 1: Have an objective
The first step you need to take in order to start living strategically, is to define your objective. This is more than goal-setting, though goal-setting is obviously involved. When we talk about objectives here, this is more than the standard goals you hear about all the time - 'buy a house', 'get a raise', 'finish my degree', etc. Those are all fine goals, but they aren't objectives - they don't drive you in the same way a real objective would. What I am talking about here is finding purpose. You need to define what you want out of your life, at the most primal level. Now, I've told some people this in the past, and by far the most common answer is 'I want to be happy'. That's a copout, and we all know it. Of course you want to be happy. When I tell you that you need to define your purpose, don't respond with the restated equivalent of 'I am a human being'. This is a huge, and vital, topic. Let's break it down.

Goals, Roles, and Moles
Imagine with me for a moment. Tomorrow morning you wake up and walk into the bathroom. You wash your face, and as the fingers of your right hand pass your cheekbone, you feel a large lump. You look in the mirror to discover a large mole has grown on your face, miraculously, overnight. Does this change who you are? Of course not. As a society, we like to believe we are beyond judging people by their looks, though that is obviously not completely the case. In fact, it is likely that as you go to work, some of your co-workers or clients might treat you differently than they would have if you didn't have the large mole on your face. Nevertheless, you are the same. You are still you - it is only what the world sees that has changed.

The roles you play in life are both like and unlike the mole in the previous paragraph. Imagine your 1st grade teacher. Now imagine your 1st grade teacher passionately kissing his/her first love. Never thought about your teacher like that, right? You know that your 1st grade teacher very likely did have that experience, but you've likely never even considered thinking about him or her in that kind of environment. Your perception of your teacher is colored by your view of the role he or she was inhabiting, regardless of your feelings on the teacher as an individual (if you even have impressions about him or her as an individual). The fact that your teacher likely had a social life, a love life, human fears and passions and needs, was not at all changed by the fact that his or her chosen profession was 'teacher'.

Of course, the roles you play do have an affect on you. Tom Wolfe, in his book The Bonfire of the Vanities, wrote the following: "Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could... adopted a role called 'Being a Father' so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life." Certainly, Sherman's father changed as a man because of the role he took upon himself.

Similarly, your goals may not change you, but if you inhabit a mindset long enough, it can have an effect on who you are. Eventually, your goals and thoughts become your actions...and your actions determine your legacy.

So, after all that, let's come back around to the point - what does this have to do with strategic living? Remember that the first thing you have to have to live a strategic life is an objective. I've shown you what a role is, and how a goal can affect who you are. Now let's compare and contrast those things with a life objective.

The Objective: Your purpose/mission/destiny
Your objective in life is referred to by some people as your purpose in life. Others prefer the term mission, and others still refer to it as your 'destiny'. I'm not a big fan of the word destiny, because it implies that you have no control over the end-result, I have similar feelings about the concept of fate. I believe it is possible to screw things up. I believe you can have a mission or purpose and blow it. That's really a topic for another article, though. For now, let's talk about your purpose.

What do you believe your purpose is? What do you think you are here for? Let's assume that there is a benevolent creator watching over the Earth, and that this creator has placed every single human being here on this planet with a mission in mind for them. What is yours?

Let me ask you something while you think. Consider a modern police officer. Let's say this police officer is retired, but while on duty, was one of the best police officers who ever lived. This officer served his community for 30 years before retiring, and once retired, advocated for safer streets to the city council, organized neighborhood watch programs, etc. Some would say that this officer's purpose in life was to be this great police officer - that's who he is.

Now, let's imagine our great police officer was born in 1567 - 100 years before the creation of the first police force that a modern person would recognize as a police force. Is our police officer a different person now? Would his nature be changed? Probably not. He would likely still find a way to serve his community, to protect the weak, to be a force for good in the world. This is because his purpose in life was not to be a police officer - that was just a role he assumed to facilitate his purpose.

In the next installment of this series on strategic living, I'll talk more about purpose, and some archetypes we can use when discussing our missions in life. In the meantime, examine your life. Discover your purpose. Imagine what your life would be like if you were born 500 years ago. What parts of your life would be similar? What parts of your life would be different? How would you make a living?