Personal Development;Life Enhancement;Achievement
Posts tagged des moines consulting
Your Vision of the Future Part Nine
Jan 30th
“Talk doesn’t cook rice.” ~Chinese Proverb
Now that you have a great motivating vision for the coming year, it is time to write your longer term vision – a vision that talks about what you life is going to be about for the next five to fifty years. It was important to get the smaller vision, the one year vision, down on paper and learn the process before beginning the bigger vision.
Remember all of those goals that you wrote down that talked about things more than one year in the future? Keep this list, I would recommend forever, and use it to create a vision for the next ten years. Ten years is a great length of time to consider for your next vision. Here you can dream the really big dreams – and have the time to make them happen. Most people, myself included, will tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and massively underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. In ten years, you can do almost anything that you desire. Your homework for this – build a ten year vision. Go through the exact same steps that I showed you for a one year vision. There is tremendous power in a one year vision combined with a ten year vision and I think you deserve to have this energy at your command.
Creating a Shared Vision with Partners or a Team:
How do you create a shared vision with a life or business partner or a team of individuals? You do it the same basic way that you created your personal vision – by starting with unlimited dreaming and working down to the five most important goals for the coming year. This is a wonderful exercise to do with your team or your life or business partner. In my many years of consulting and coaching, it is extremely rare that I see this actually done and that is a shame. Yes, it takes time – a significant amount of time if more than a few individuals are involved. But you get so much for the invested time!
- You find out what others really want and incorporate these things when possible
- You get rid of hidden agendas that can waste so much time
- You end up with everyone working towards the same goals and knowing why
- You end up with a highly and personally motivated team
- You handle problems, concerns and mixed goals upfront – before you waste lots of time and money
- You get more ideas – more feedback – more information that can make the vision even more powerful
Action. Ultimately, you create a vision to help you take action. Without action nothing happens. Without a vision to guide and power that action, you waste time and money taking the wrong actions.
I hope you enjoyed this mini-series on creating a vision and I hope you use it. I will end this series of articles with a question that I asked myself years ago and it is still motivating: “Haven’t Your Dreams Waited Long Enough?”
Till next time…Jack
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” ~Calvin Coolidge
New Year’s Resolutions Part Four
Jan 8th
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.” ~Abraham Lincoln
Did you choose 5 marvelous goals for 2009? Great! Take a minute and review them against these questions.
- Are these goals really exciting? If they aren’t then change them until they are.
- Are these goals spread across all the areas of your life? Make sure that they are not all focusing on just one or two topics. Balance!
- Are these goals big enough to excite you when you think about them actually being completed?
- Are these goals small enough, or realistic enough, that you can believe that is truly possible to accomplish them before the end of the coming year? If you don’t believe it, you won’t achieve it.
There are many other great questions that can be used to fine tune goals. Those four are enough for this entry. Here is the last thing I will ask you to do today with your five goals: write each one of them, individually, on the front of a three by five index card. Then keep these five cards with you all of the time. We will cover shortly why this matters and what you will do with the cards to actually ensure that you achieve the goals that are written on them.
Till next time…Jack
“My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.” ~Elaine Maxwell
What You Should Do Right Away!
Jan 7th
“All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
You should find a local writing group that feels right and then you should join it! I am speaking now to the many readers of mine that are small business owners or coaches or consultants of some kind. As I have talked about before, it is wonderful to have some product or service for sale that is yours and yours alone. A product or service that you created, a product or service that adds credibility to your business, a product or service that you offer that makes you different than all of the others out there doing basically what you do; this is a critical piece in this highly competitive business market.
As I have also talked about before, I have never worked with a client that did not have at least one book or seminar or downloadable mp3 worth of unique knowledge. In fact, after a few probing questions, most every one of my clients actually has a number of books worth of material rolling around in their heads! How about you?
Now I am speaking to me. I have gotten away with not having a book for sale for years. I have gotten away with it because I am a great speaker. I have gotten away with it because I am a great coach. But have I really gotten away with it? More >