The
Life Project
Everybody lives life as they please; people can choose an organized
or chaotic life. Adults are familiarized with carrying out work projects.
Children are used to carrying out school projects. However, nobody
usually teaches us the importance of developing a personal life project.
Speaking about creating a life project can be difficult, as some individuals
believe that their life is mapped out for them, determined by their
family, place where they grew up and their social economic level.
All of the above limits a person’s possibility to plan for the
future.
On the other hand, you have teenagers that are interested in living
life to the maximum. They don’t have a great perception of risk.
However, this is the stage when they should plan and carry out certain
actions that could influence their future economic, family and social
life. Therefore, we have to make teenagers aware of the importance
of decision making as a vital element in the creation of their life
projects. We have to support them and encourage them to take the reigns
of their personal life and assume the consequences of their decisions.
In general terms, a life project gives them a reason to live.
Adopting a life project as a model of prevention, it allows a person
to consider certain personal and social issues, for example, the abuse
of alcohol.
The life project helps a person to know who they are, what they are
like and create short, medium and long term goals in the different
areas of life.
A human being at any time in its life, needs to build the possibilities
of his future, channel his efforts and establish where he wants to
go, through a group of internal and external requirements with which
he can evaluate the importance of being, doing and having. “What
will I study?” “What career do I want to follow?”
“Where will I study?” “Do I want a partner?”
“What type of partner do I want?” “Where do I want
to live?” “What obligations and responsibilities do I
want if….?” “Should I start my sex life now or wait?”
“Do I want to know what it is like to feel drunk?” “Should
I take drugs?” These are some of the questions that adults and
youths should consider.
In order for the youths to find the answers to these questions for
their life project, it is necessary to look for the answers deep within
themselves, where everyone is able to listen to and analyze their
choice, where their freedom is present and then analyze the questions
from the perspective of “need”.
The life project is a range of possibilities which give a person the
opportunity to open new routes, experience alternatives and different
situations that lead to internal growth.
The life project is carried out during adolescence.
The life project acts as way to organize in a gradual way, the interior
and external world of an individual.
Whilst a person is independently building their life project, he has
the opportunity to update it and continue with the process and also
change it so that it matches the reality. The advances in the elaboration
of the project is not always lineal nor in the same direction.
When someone doesn’t have a life project he is sad and bitter
because he is sad about past events and is scared about the uncertainty
of the future.
It is important, for the majority of human beings, to occupy a place,
to do something for yourself and those around you.
