Personal Development;Life Enhancement;Achievement
Posts tagged self-improvement
Vision Review and a Question
Jan 20th
“Change always comes bearing gifts.” ~Price Pritchett
America is very excited today. Barack Obama will shortly become the president of the United States – a monumental occasion for many reasons. Mr. Obama was not my choice for president; my choice did not make it through the primary process. Still, I wish him the absolute best. He is taking over a country with many serious issues and we need some new ideas and a strong leader. May that be Barack Obama!
Now, to Your Vision - I thought it would be useful to recap what I have talked about so far regarding creating a life vision before we move forward on the process.
1) Having a clear and exciting and compelling vision of your future is a critical element for success. With the right vision, you can become fearless. With the right vision, you are naturally focused. With the right vision, stress disappears and you are pulled towards your dreams by great positive feeling of anticipation. You create this vision with smart questions and self analysis.
2) Answer this question for yourself: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? What would you attempt to become or achieve or do, if you knew that it was impossible to fail?
3) Create an inventory of your dreams. I want you to pretend that it is Christmas Eve and you have been very good indeed – Santa is going to bring you whatever you wish. This should be a comprehensive list that looks from today all the way forward to 20 or more years from now. I don’t want you to worry at all about how you will accomplish any of these goals. I don’t want you to put any limits on these goals. I just want you to dream, across all categories of your life, and write these things down.
I’ll give you some categories to help your creativity. Try to end up with at least a dozen notes in each of the following categories of goals. Spend anywhere from a minimum of 5 minutes to whatever amount of time feels right to you.
Goal Setting Categories:
- Your Physical Body Goal
- Personal Development Goals
- Family Goals
- Relationship Goals
- Business Goals
- Spiritual Goals
- Financial Goals
- Fun / Delight Goals
- Possessions
- Emotional Goals
For those of you that have taken one of my annual goal setting workshops, you will notice that this process is very similar so far. The process of creating your goals for a year and creating your life vision are closely connected. When you create compelling goals for yourself, you are creating parts of your life vision.
Here is the question for today: Really, it is more of a task than a question. Take all of these goals, hopefully a long list of things, and put a timeline on each of them. How soon do you expect to complete each of your goals? 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years, 20 years – whatever it is, write your estimated completion time next to each of your goals. Simple enough huh?
Till next time…Jack
“Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” ~Christopher Reeve
What’s Your Vision Like?
Jan 13th
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” ~Audre Lorde
So, what is your vision like? I don’t mean the eye doctor kind of vision. (Although since I brought it up, how come “they” decided to make print smaller and fuzzier a few years ago? I had to go get these things called reading glasses – most inconvenient for an avid reader!) What I do mean is how is your vision – your picture of how your life is going to be? So, how is it?
I think having a clear and exciting and compelling vision of your future is a critical element for success. With the right vision, you can become fearless. With the right vision, you are naturally focused. With the right vision, stress disappears and you are pulled towards your dreams by great positive feeling of anticipation.
So how do you create an effective vision if you don’t already have one? The answer is in using questions and self analysis. Over the next few entries I am going to go over how I coach my clients towards creating effective visions for themselves and for their companies. You won’t want to miss it.
Till next time…Jack
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” ~Carl Jung
New Year’s Resolutions Part Three
Jan 5th
“Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past.” ~Henry Ward Beecher
Happy 2009! Is this going to be a wonderful year for you and yours? I hope so. I certainly intend that this be the best year that I have experienced so far. How about you? What are your intentions? What are your goals? Would you like to make this your best year ever? Would you more than like it – would you love it – do you want it so much that you can taste it? Then read on (and make a habit of reading this blog. We are going to go on some great adventures together this year!)
Last time I shared my blogging goal. I must tell you that sharing that goal made me a little uneasy. When it was a private goal, I could easily make excuses to myself. But I am tired of making excuses to myself – I want to see my dreams living and breathing right in front of me and accomplishing that will take action and lots of it! So, I made a public commitment. I can feel the power of that commitment even as I write these words.
So, here are all of my Top Five Commitments for 2009
Health: I will return to my optimal bodyweight before the end of 2009.
Family: My wife and I will take our family to New York for a great vacation to celebrate my elder daughter’s completion of her graduate program.
Business: I will blog 5 days per week – every week of 2009.
Finances: I will earn more in 2009 than I ever have before – at least 25% more.
Fun: I will run in the USA’s largest cross-country race: The Living History Farms Seven Miler.
By the way, each of these resolutions or goals is what one of my old bosses called a “bhag” Bhag: a big hairy audacious goal – a goal of tremendous importance that a first may seem daunting or impossible, but upon reflect is realized to be so desirable that you will do whatever it takes to make it happen. I just love that term.
Are these all of my goals for 2009? Not even close. But these are the drivers – these are the goals that will ensure that all of the other ones get done. Next time, I will talk about how I will use these on a daily basis to make sure that I accomplish my goals for 2009 (and have a great time along the way!).
Bye for now…Jack
“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” ~Victor Frankl
Lead the Pack by Using “Dead Time”
Mar 10th
“Life is like a dog sled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” ~Lewis Grizzard
How would it improve your business and your life if you were considered to be one of absolute “experts” in your field? Let me ask that another way: If you were a known and acknowledged expert in some field, what would be the positive results of achieving that status? I expect you can think of lots of great results. I know I have experienced lots of magic in my life, business and otherwise, from my expertise in coaching and consulting. So what would it be like to be a known and acknowledged expert? There are 3 components to my question and the results that are waiting for you.
1) Becoming and expert 2) being acknowledged as an expert by others 3) being “known” as an expert
Today I am going to talk about becoming that expert. More >