Go with the flow 
I recently took the Red Sea Company cruise and saw beautiful places in my beloved country Saudi Arabia that I never knew existed.
I went to see Ras Al-Abyadh (Oryx beach), near the city of Yanbu, and saw the beautiful crystal-clear waters. I also managed to see an island near NEOM called Sindalah, which is just as beautiful as Oryx beach, if not more so.
I inhaled the sea breeze, filled my sight with clear, blue waters, listened to the waves that the ship made tearing its way through the deep blue waters of the Red Sea and witnessed breathtaking sunsets.
To top this off, I fueled my body with unlimited food and drinks, as is tradition on any cruise — eating beyond your normal consumption. My hope was to return home from this cruise with a clear mind to start writing again and thinking outside the box to solve obstacles at work, but most importantly to come back to reality with the least amount of weight gain possible.
Toward the end of the cruise, I woke up one day and saw a message on my phone that was thought-provoking. The message was a video talking about strategy in business and how Apple managed to create a great strategy. While I was watching the video, I looked up toward my balcony and saw the beautiful blue waters and wandered off with a thought: What is my life strategy?
Of course, my next question to myself was: Do I even have one? Many questions started to come to mind, but my analysis came when I was sipping my coffee on my room’s balcony, listening to the waves.
In the business world, we work hard to create strategies, but what about our personal life? Should we even have a life strategy?
We know in business it’s not enough to have a strategy. You must continue to develop a plan in order to achieve this strategy of life. So what should the plan contain, and in what order should we put them in? What are the short-term life plans, and what are the long-term life plans?
I strongly recommend that we all start writing up a “rough draft” of a plan to execute our life strategy. I emphasize the word rough draft, because in life you have to be flexible and go with the flow, but pay attention that it’s going in the right direction.
• Dr. Taghreed Al-Saraj is a best-selling Saudi author, an international public speaker and an entrepreneurship mentor.
