Originally written 8 May 2018, updated 17 December 2019

In a spring cleaning in 2018 I found an old diary of mine with entries from 2005 and then again from 2008. Back then in May 2008, almost 10 years before to the day, I had taken stock of my life up to that point of time: where I was standing, what I had achieved, and what my medium and long term goals were for my future life.

I had got married to my wife Burcu in a lightning-fast action just five months earlier; she had meanwhile come to live with me in Germany and we were expecting our first baby. I had decided to quit my job in Düsseldorf a few weeks before in order to move with our small family to Munich before the baby was born to be closer to my parents.

Today I am no longer quite sure where the impulse had come from, anyway, I had drawn a mind map into the diary I kept sporadically back then to serve as an anchor point for positive thoughts and a positive outlook and attitude towards life.

When I found the diary again in 2018 and opened it, I was amazed what I had written a decade earlier as a goal for the future for Burcu and I and our family:

„Happy, healthy, satisfied“:

• Short- and mid-term
  • Learn Turkish
  • Health – no pain, happy, good sleeping habit and sufficient amount of the same
  • Regular habit of sports – weight: 75-80 kg (I weighed almost 100 at that time but managed to slim down to 69 in the year after)
  • Live and work in Turkey
  • Have a summer home in Istanbul
• long-term
  • Own a house with a garden
  • 3 or more children
  • Write a book
• Dreams
  • Dream holiday in Thailand
  • Certificate as a Life Coach or study psychology
  • Self-employed as a consultant and life coach for Leadership and individual enlightenment in Turkey

Well, the book project is in the planning stage. For the moment I am making writing exercises in my blog. And for most of the other points, … I am surprised. I had written this down and then forgotten about it and not pursued these points consciously like a checklist. But my own purpose, my “good cause” has become more clear to myself in the last few years and it’s partly reflected in my list from 2008.

Now, 11 years later, I feel I should write a list for the next decade. I think end of December 2019, at the end of the decade is a good time to dream up a vision for the next 10 years. Maybe, by 2030, I will have actually written my book.