You may have heard me talk about my spiritual daughter, Isa, who came to us as a very wounded young lady almost 8 years ago. Today, she is just the most beautiful, shining, amazing woman of great talent, character, and healing. She is a phenomenally gifted singer and songwriter. If you have been to First Steps to Success, you have seen her perform. She’s known all over the world, so you’ve probably heard her music somewhere.

Isa really is like a daughter to me. We are very close, and she is very close to our kids. She is getting married this year, so we are going through all the same emotions we went through last year in planning Arika’s wedding. We are working through all the details – the dress, the flowers, the food, the whole thing.

Something occurred to me during all of this planning. Most people spend more time planning their wedding than they do their life together. As soon as I had this revelation, I knew I was going to have this talk with Isa and her fiancé, Peter. People get so excited and lose sleep over planning a wedding because of the newness and the exhilaration and romance of this big special day. But so few people put that much time and energy into planning their life.

Isn’t that scary? We put all this time, effort, energy, and money into planning a single day, instead of putting it into planning a life of fulfillment, harmony, peace, financial independence, memories, travel, and how we want to live.

My friend, it’s time to get to the drawing board and think about how you want to live the rest of your life. You have to ask yourself, "How do I want to live? Who do I want around me? Who do I want to be? What kind of spouse do I want to be? What kind of parent do I want to be? What kind of business person or career person do I want to be? What do I want my life to be about?"

These are some very simple questions, and I urge you to take some time to answer them today, as soon as you finish reading this Daily Fix. (And this goes for everyone, whether you are engaged, married, or single. We ALL must plan our lives

Aren’t these questions more important than, "What kind of flowers do I want at my wedding? What colors do I want at my wedding? What should the bridesmaids and groomsmen wear? What food should we have at the reception?" Aren’t the LIFE questions more defining than these little things that are actually totally insignificant in the grand scheme of things?

I know, in your mind you may be thinking, "Dani, it’s a little overwhelming to try to think about all this at once." But it doesn’t have to be. Just because you come up with a plan right now doesn’t mean it won’t be fine-tuned in the future. You may not be able to think of everything you want to be as a husband or wife, or father or mother. That will be defined in time, as you see other examples and your vision gets crystalized and more focused.

If you do not know what the role of a husband or a wife is, then you will become a product of your environment. By default, you will become like those who are around you. So you have to ask yourself – do you want your marriage to be like those around you? In most cases, the answer is probably no.

So if you don’t define your future and invest in a skill set to learn how to become that, you will end up a default husband and father or wife and mother. You will become a default busienss person, a default employee, with default relationships and default children. And guess what the default is – the 98% of the population who ends up dead or dead broke by the age of 65, dependent on their family, friends, or the federal government as their main source of income. That’s the default. And I know that’s not the life you want.

You are here at DaniJohnson.com, plugging into our training calls and radio shows, and reading The Daily Fix every day because you want more out of life than what the masses are doing. You want different memories, you want to travel, you want your kids to see the world and experience things most kids never get to experience. Maybe, instead of just reading a geography or history book, you want to take your kids to experience the geography and history for themselves. Maybe you want to see the most beautiful beaches on earth with your spouse.

Remember, nothing becomes dynamic until it becomes specific. If you aim at nothing, you’re surely going to hit it. And that’s how most people live their lives. That’s how most people raise their children. They give birth and hope for the best. But you cannot succeed if that’s your plan.

So it’s time to chart your course. Figure out what skills you need to learn in order to reach your destination. It’s time to get more excited about planning your life than you did about planning your wedding. The details of your life are so much more important than one silly party day.

I would highly encourage you to go ahead and pass this around to your friends, family, co-workers, and community members. Pass this along, share this link on Facebook and Twitter, and even print it out and read it tonight at the dinner table. It’s so important to really think about these things and take the time to plan our futures so we don’t live our lives by default.

In great faith,

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