I recently spent some time revising my personal vision/mission statement. While doing this, it occurred to me that the vision I have for my work is closely related to my personal vision. Having a job that reflects my personal vision is powerful because it has allowed me to create a business life for myself that truly reflects who I am. Companies know all about vision and mission statements and getting their employees on board. Vision and mission statements propel the company in the direction that they want, and ultimately towards success. Many of us have spent countless hours working on these statements for our employers, and doing our part to contribute to their vision as a part of the team.
Much like a business, we, as human beings have a purpose or mission in life. What if we spent as much time getting to know who we are and what we want for ourselves? A personal vision/mission statement is the framework for creating a powerful life. Unlike a goal, a vision or mission rarely changes. It is a reason for our existence. It guides us in the decisions we make and the directions we take.
Your Personal Vision
Close your eyes and picture yourself in the future. It may be a few months or years from today. See the person you are; what you are doing, who you are with, what you have accomplished, what is important to you, and how people relate to you. How does it feel to be you? Feel the person you are, your true self. Now, open your eyes and see your life and yourself in the present, through those eyes. You will begin to notice the changes you need to make to honour this vision and lead a powerful life.
A Personal Vision is a picture of your True Self in the future. An effective personal vision includes all the important elements of your life and career; it is who you want to be, what you want to do, how you want to feel, what you want to own, and who you want to associate with. Although your personal vision helps you to see into the future, it must be grounded in the present. It is a statement of who you are, and who you are becoming. It is the framework for the process of creating your life.
Your vision is where you are headed, how you get there is your mission statement.
Your Personal Mission Statement
A Personal Mission Statement is how you will manifest your Personal Vision in your daily life. It may be a few words or several pages, but it is not a “to do” list. It reflects your uniqueness and must speak to you powerfully about the person you are and the person you are becoming. Remember, it’s okay to be where you are, while heading somewhere else. In fact, the only place you can start, is where you are right now. Having a personal vision does not mean your life changes overnight. But it will change. Your personal mission statement provides the steps to get you there.
Your Personal Mission Statement should answer three questions:
1. What is my life about (Purpose)?
2. What do I stand for (Values)?
3. What actions do I take to manifest my Purpose and my Values?
Stephen Covey writes that "an empowering Mission Statement…
• Represents the deepest and best within you. It comes out of a solid connection with your deep inner life.
• Is the fulfillment of your own unique gifts. It's the expression of your unique capacity to contribute.
• Addresses and integrates the four fundamental human needs and capacities in the physical, social/emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions.
• Deals with all the significant roles in your life. It represents a lifetime balance of personal, family, work, community-whatever roles you feel are yours to fill.
• Is written to inspire you-not to impress anyone else. It communicates to you and inspires you on the most essential level."
“Creating a Personal Mission Statement will be, without question, one of the most powerful and significant things you will ever do to take leadership of you life. In it you will identify the most important roles, relationships, and things in your life – who you want to be, what you want to do, to whom and what you want of give your life, the principles you want to anchor your life to, the legacy you want to leave. All the goals and decisions you will make in the future will be based upon it. It’s like deciding first which wall you want to lean your ladder of life against, and then beginning to climb. It will compass – a strong source of guidance amid the stormy seas and pressing, pulling currents of you life.”Stephen Covey, author or The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
A Personal Vision/Mission can help propel you into a new job, or make your present job work better for you. The more connected your Personal Vision/Mission is to yourself, the better it can guide your career and your life.
Every Month A Million and the Daily Dose Of Good
Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Why You Must Bring Congruency Into Your Life
When you look at your life, how do you feel about it? Does it appear to be chaotic, confusing, overwhelming at times? Or does it appear to be a unified, continuous, joyful whole, progressing triumphantly towards your life goals?
Most of us live somewhere between these two extremes. Some days we’re “on a roll”, full of confidence and unstoppable. Some days we just seem to be running round in circles, burning all our energy, full of doubt and apprehension and getting nowhere.
So how to we get to spend more time in unstoppable mode, building our self esteem?
One key thing that we need to do is to live our lives congruently…
Lack of congruency is bad for your health!
Do you tend to compartmentalise your life – maybe you break it up so that your work life you do what has to be done to earn a living, in your home life you do what you enjoy and from time to time you try to make sense of it. And your health just gets a back seat.
Or maybe you break your life down in other ways – You're this person to your family and another person to your friends, someone else to your boss and so on…
When you live this way life gets complicated and stressful. You are constantly rushing from A to B, juggling different balls, trying to be different people in different contexts – and what happens when inevitably when two compartments that you have so carefully created overlap - your family meets your friends or your boss!!! Very stressful.
Trying to maintain all these different compartments burns a tremendous amount of mental and even physical energy. When you spend too long in one of your compartments the others start to feel neglected and your only solution is work even harder to juggle all the balls and keep them all in the air. Inevitably one gets dropped, all too often it’s your health or your personal relationships, and then you have real problems.
There has to be a better way to live
Luckily there is a better way to live – make sure you live your life congruently.
What if you only had 1 ball to juggle instead of 10 – you’d have no problem keep it in the air would you? That would be so easy – you could do it confidently, your self esteem would rise as you mastered the skill and you could even learn a few fancy tricks:-).
Carrying that analogy over to your life then, congruency is simply the decision to stop compartmentalizing your life and to start treating it as one unified whole. Making sure you live your life by one simple set of rules where everything fits together is the best form of mental self help.
It may well take you some time to rearrange yourself and your life to get into the state of congruency, but when you do, all the different areas of your life will fit together perfectly and mutually support each other. Your work will fit in with your own beliefs, your family and friends will fit together perfectly, your health and wealth will go hand in hand.
It’s time to review your life
To some extent we are all living lives that are out of balance, so take the time today to think about your life – where are the fault lines? Where are the incongruousness's? You may be a very lucky person and already have a well balanced life, but there is still room for improvement.
Then think about how you can rearrange things so that you can bring your life back into balance. What are the common themes and threads running through all areas that you can strengthen to make your life more congruent?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Manifest Desires Freely by Having No Expectations
It is a most liberating experience when you are able to live life with an attitude of no expectations. When you have expectations, you have preconceived ideas of how things should be that you are attached to. Expectation creates fear because you think what you desire may or may not happen. Free of expectations, you can just go with the flow of the universe and not be affected by the outcomes that you encounter. Every outcome can serve to move you towards greater realization of your desires.
When you are attached to an outcome, you expect things to happen at a certain time in a certain way. But when it does not happen at the expected time or in the expected manner, then what results is a feeling of fear. Having expectations about how your desires should manifest will produce negative feelings when your expectations are not met. That is why it is better to act on your intention without expectations about the when and how it manifests.
Fear, doubt and worry are the last things you want to experience in the process of manifesting desires. That is why the best way to create what you want is through detachment. Act on your desires with a detached involvement. You do what you are guided to do by your heart but you do not judge the rightness of your actions by the results that you get. As long as your actions are based on purpose, you have done what you were meant to do regardless of what seems to happen from it.
When the universe is in the process of working things out for the realization of your intention, there might be things that happen which make it seem as though things are not working out. It is your expectation of how things should happen that makes you think that things are not working out. But actually you are not seeing the whole picture, because what you are seeing is only a piece of the larger scheme of events where everything is really working out the way it should.
Expectation colors your perception of things. You don’t see how things are really happening when you expect them to happen a certain way. This prevents you from recognizing the good that comes your way and causes you to push it away thinking that it is evil. Without preconceived ideas to limit your perception, you are able to accept what comes your way as part of the solution to realizing what you truly desire in life. You are able to receive and not resist truth and love.
Many times we feel discouraged when things are not happening the way we want them to happen. We might even lose hope thinking that it’s not meant to be, and even give up pursuing it altogether because our actions are in vain. But we do not realize that we are right in the process of it all coming to pass, and we turn away when we are closer than we ever were before. Let go of expectations so that you can surrender to the process and let the outcome fall in place in the right way at the right time.
When we do not know how things will really turn out, we have to trust. There is no need for hope when we already know how the outcome will be like. Hope is confident expectation of good. The only expectation you need is the expectation that everything is happening for good and not evil in your life. You can expect good no matter what the outcome seems to be.
The best way to live life is to be like a little child, having no cares and expectations. You are just doing what brings you joy and expressing yourself fearlessly in every moment. You completely accept yourself and whatever is happening without judgment. You are trusting that you are always provided for and there is nothing that is stopping you from attaining all that you truly desire. You are free to live fully in the moment without worrying about the future.
Live with an attitude of no expectations and you will experience more freedom than you can imagine. Failure does not stop you anymore because it doesn’t exist in your perception. You can keep doing what you believe in simply because you are not expecting a particular outcome but you are just expressing the truth that is in you. You are able to let go of anything negative and nothing holds you back from going on in the direction of your desires.
When you hold no expectations, you are committing the outcome. You can always experience much more from a place of no expectations than from having expectations because the universe is able to do above and beyond all that you can ask and even think of. Leave the outcome in the hands of the universe, while you continue acting on your desires. Surrender to the process and know that good things come to you when you least expect them.
About the author:
James Boehm aims to help people achieve greater awareness in living and experiencing life. To evolve human consciousness to higher levels. To change lives and transform the universe. To revolutionize the way we understand the mind and reality. Because that is what governs every area of life and destiny.
Every Month A Million and the Daily Dose Of Good
When you are attached to an outcome, you expect things to happen at a certain time in a certain way. But when it does not happen at the expected time or in the expected manner, then what results is a feeling of fear. Having expectations about how your desires should manifest will produce negative feelings when your expectations are not met. That is why it is better to act on your intention without expectations about the when and how it manifests.
Fear, doubt and worry are the last things you want to experience in the process of manifesting desires. That is why the best way to create what you want is through detachment. Act on your desires with a detached involvement. You do what you are guided to do by your heart but you do not judge the rightness of your actions by the results that you get. As long as your actions are based on purpose, you have done what you were meant to do regardless of what seems to happen from it.
When the universe is in the process of working things out for the realization of your intention, there might be things that happen which make it seem as though things are not working out. It is your expectation of how things should happen that makes you think that things are not working out. But actually you are not seeing the whole picture, because what you are seeing is only a piece of the larger scheme of events where everything is really working out the way it should.
Expectation colors your perception of things. You don’t see how things are really happening when you expect them to happen a certain way. This prevents you from recognizing the good that comes your way and causes you to push it away thinking that it is evil. Without preconceived ideas to limit your perception, you are able to accept what comes your way as part of the solution to realizing what you truly desire in life. You are able to receive and not resist truth and love.
Many times we feel discouraged when things are not happening the way we want them to happen. We might even lose hope thinking that it’s not meant to be, and even give up pursuing it altogether because our actions are in vain. But we do not realize that we are right in the process of it all coming to pass, and we turn away when we are closer than we ever were before. Let go of expectations so that you can surrender to the process and let the outcome fall in place in the right way at the right time.
When we do not know how things will really turn out, we have to trust. There is no need for hope when we already know how the outcome will be like. Hope is confident expectation of good. The only expectation you need is the expectation that everything is happening for good and not evil in your life. You can expect good no matter what the outcome seems to be.
The best way to live life is to be like a little child, having no cares and expectations. You are just doing what brings you joy and expressing yourself fearlessly in every moment. You completely accept yourself and whatever is happening without judgment. You are trusting that you are always provided for and there is nothing that is stopping you from attaining all that you truly desire. You are free to live fully in the moment without worrying about the future.
Live with an attitude of no expectations and you will experience more freedom than you can imagine. Failure does not stop you anymore because it doesn’t exist in your perception. You can keep doing what you believe in simply because you are not expecting a particular outcome but you are just expressing the truth that is in you. You are able to let go of anything negative and nothing holds you back from going on in the direction of your desires.
When you hold no expectations, you are committing the outcome. You can always experience much more from a place of no expectations than from having expectations because the universe is able to do above and beyond all that you can ask and even think of. Leave the outcome in the hands of the universe, while you continue acting on your desires. Surrender to the process and know that good things come to you when you least expect them.
About the author:
James Boehm aims to help people achieve greater awareness in living and experiencing life. To evolve human consciousness to higher levels. To change lives and transform the universe. To revolutionize the way we understand the mind and reality. Because that is what governs every area of life and destiny.
Every Month A Million and the Daily Dose Of Good
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Are Your Personal Values Aligned With Your Path to Success?
Having a clear understanding of your personal values is critical to your success. Without this knowledge you won’t know what really matters to you, what motivates you and why you are doing what you are doing. You’ll be in conflict with what you really want and your life will be unfulfilling and stressful.
If you want to be successful you need to make sure your personal values and your goals in life are aligned. If they aren’t you will struggle to find motivation and sustain the enthusiasm and energy you need to travel the road to success!
You also use your personal values to evaluate your actions, or other peoples actions, after they have taken place. When you use values in this way they can have a profound effect on your feelings. For example, if you do something that is in direct conflict with your personal core values it will leave you feeling bad about yourself.
Define Personal Values for me?
Personal values are those things that are most important to you, those things that must be true for you to lead a happy and fulfilled life. Your values are also those things that really motivate you. When you are living in accord with your personal values you find life fulfilling and satisfying.
Values are not set in stone, they usually don’t change rapidly like beliefs can, but if you think back over your life, you will be able to trace the development of personal values.
Think back to your childhood – are exactly the same things that were important to you as a child also as important to you now as an adult? How about 5 years ago, 10 years ago?
When you were a child your values probably came from parents or other significant adults. Later on, you picked up values from your peers, your social environment, and other influences you allowed in to your life. As an adult the development of personal values continues for you. However if you have values that are not serving you well, it is possible to change them!
How to List personal Values
Your personal values can be in many different areas: your values in life, work, family…
The best place to start to list personal values for you is to look at your values in life, you can look at other, more specific areas later on. Examples of life values are things like: honesty, integrity, family, freedom…
You have already seen that the definition of personal core values is simple – but discovering your personal values is much harder.
It’s so easy to confuse values with other things like beliefs. It is also very common to feel you should value something as a result of pressure from your parents and your friends when in fact it is just not a value for you.
The key is to remember that you define personal values as the things that are important to YOU…
So just sit down quietly with a piece of paper and repeatedly ask yourself the question:
“What is really important about life for me?”
Just keep asking and answering as honestly as you can – don’t answer as you think you ought to. Write down your answers.
Once you’ve written down your answers then you can try a second exercise:
Think back to a time when you were really motivated to do something, anything – go on a journey somewhere, propose to your spouse, help someone who was in difficulty, climb a mountain…
Think back into that time, imagine where you were and how you felt as you became motivated until you can discover the feeling you had at the moment you were motivated – maybe it was a desire to discover something new, love for your future spouse…
That initial emotion is almost certainly one of your core values… Write it down!
Go through these two exercises a few times until you have 10-20 values written down. Then look at them carefully. Are these really your personal values, do they represent who you really are?
Now compare them with each other, ask yourself “is this value more important to me than that value”. By doing this you will be able to arrange them into an order of importance.
Do your personal values align with your path to success?
Now you’ll know both what is really important to you in life and where your priorities are!
This puts you streets ahead of anyone who has never taken the time to do this exercise:-)
Finally ask yourself
"Am I living my life according to my values and priorities?"
If you answer "no", you need to work out what you are going to do to make sure you are living congruently?
PS … You can read more about congruency in future post here on my Daily Dose of Good my article: Why You Must Bring Congruency Into Your Life.
Every Month A Million
If you want to be successful you need to make sure your personal values and your goals in life are aligned. If they aren’t you will struggle to find motivation and sustain the enthusiasm and energy you need to travel the road to success!
You also use your personal values to evaluate your actions, or other peoples actions, after they have taken place. When you use values in this way they can have a profound effect on your feelings. For example, if you do something that is in direct conflict with your personal core values it will leave you feeling bad about yourself.
Define Personal Values for me?
Personal values are those things that are most important to you, those things that must be true for you to lead a happy and fulfilled life. Your values are also those things that really motivate you. When you are living in accord with your personal values you find life fulfilling and satisfying.
Values are not set in stone, they usually don’t change rapidly like beliefs can, but if you think back over your life, you will be able to trace the development of personal values.
Think back to your childhood – are exactly the same things that were important to you as a child also as important to you now as an adult? How about 5 years ago, 10 years ago?
When you were a child your values probably came from parents or other significant adults. Later on, you picked up values from your peers, your social environment, and other influences you allowed in to your life. As an adult the development of personal values continues for you. However if you have values that are not serving you well, it is possible to change them!
How to List personal Values
Your personal values can be in many different areas: your values in life, work, family…
The best place to start to list personal values for you is to look at your values in life, you can look at other, more specific areas later on. Examples of life values are things like: honesty, integrity, family, freedom…
You have already seen that the definition of personal core values is simple – but discovering your personal values is much harder.
It’s so easy to confuse values with other things like beliefs. It is also very common to feel you should value something as a result of pressure from your parents and your friends when in fact it is just not a value for you.
The key is to remember that you define personal values as the things that are important to YOU…
So just sit down quietly with a piece of paper and repeatedly ask yourself the question:
“What is really important about life for me?”
Just keep asking and answering as honestly as you can – don’t answer as you think you ought to. Write down your answers.
Once you’ve written down your answers then you can try a second exercise:
Think back to a time when you were really motivated to do something, anything – go on a journey somewhere, propose to your spouse, help someone who was in difficulty, climb a mountain…
Think back into that time, imagine where you were and how you felt as you became motivated until you can discover the feeling you had at the moment you were motivated – maybe it was a desire to discover something new, love for your future spouse…
That initial emotion is almost certainly one of your core values… Write it down!
Go through these two exercises a few times until you have 10-20 values written down. Then look at them carefully. Are these really your personal values, do they represent who you really are?
Now compare them with each other, ask yourself “is this value more important to me than that value”. By doing this you will be able to arrange them into an order of importance.
Do your personal values align with your path to success?
Now you’ll know both what is really important to you in life and where your priorities are!
This puts you streets ahead of anyone who has never taken the time to do this exercise:-)
Finally ask yourself
"Am I living my life according to my values and priorities?"
If you answer "no", you need to work out what you are going to do to make sure you are living congruently?
PS … You can read more about congruency in future post here on my Daily Dose of Good my article: Why You Must Bring Congruency Into Your Life.
Every Month A Million
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Change your Perception
The mere fact that you are here with us on this site with my Daily Dose Of Good means that you are searching and there is a reason you are here. It's not a mistake you ended up here. You can begin to make different choices in your life today. We believe you are here for a reason. You are ready to know more and "see" more.
The one thing that is consistant in our lives is our belief about ourselves. When we are in full flight of an addiction or compulsion, we have lost a fundamental hold on the positive and true beliefs about who we really are and cannot see past the lies we are telling ourselves. -About ourselves.
When we pick up a drink, drug or engage in a compulsion, we are abandoning the fact that we all are perfect, spiritual beings inside, and getting caught up in the ego part of ourselves which always leads us astray. We are, as many great spiritual leaders have stated, a "double edged sword" or "a spritual being having a human experience", or as eastern philosophy understands, -we have a dual nature inside. There cannot be light without the darkness. All of nature is dual, including ourselves and the way we think about ourselves.
Everyone has struggles
There are chemical addictions and then there are compulsions, what some people want to call "personality quirks" and obsessions. We usually refer to these as alternative compulsions, and can include the obvious addictions such as gambling, sex addiction, compulsive shopping, workaholism, tobacco, weight - eating and not eating -as they say- pick your poison. We also include compulsions like reltationship addicts, people who sabotage themselves in relationships and even people who are addicted to "not enough" in both ways, -either they never have enough or they can never seem to get ahead no matter what they do. This is a person living in a consciousness of lack.
All of these are behaviors which have manifested themselves in different ways but lead back to the same core problem - what you believe about yourself, and how you react to the things that happen to you in life, whether your choice or not. It is always your choice to decide what your reaction will be.
Inner Talk
We argue inside on a daily basis. Minute to minute, you are talking inside, and the words and thoughts you have are forming YOU. The ego part of ourselves is in charge, and the real part of ourselves, our true identity -who we really are, is being buried by the part of us who is agressive, "right", fearful, apprehensive, "in charge", passive agressive, -all the extremes of our behavior which leave us "unbalanced" and looking to fill up our emptiness with something outside of ourselves.
Inside, we all want to be whole, and every cell in our being is crying out for this "rightness" within you to come to the surface and live an effective, fully functioning life that you can be happy about. Yes, you can. You CAN start to change your mind about yourself, regardless of the circumstances that are presenting themselves to you right now.
It is hard to see it when we are "in it" but if you can hang on to that little ray of positive energy that is waiting right there for you to tap into it, you can do it.
Is it all as simple as understanding and then doing? Yes. Changing your mind can begin today. Affirmations work, changing our limited negative self talk works. As you think, you are. As you think, you do. The concept is simple and at the heart of all succesful ways of thought, goal setting techniques and successful living. It is the basis of all of the books out now on "Intention". Meaning, that which we give our attention to, manifests in our lives. Really think about that statement and you will find it to be true. If you can begin to change your mind about YOU, and who you really are, you CAN change your life, and you can begin to do it today. You only have to want to.
It starts at the beginnning
Well, really? Might sound elementary, but a truer statement can't be found! The YOU that is here right now is the culmination of your experiences and beliefs about those experiences in your life. You are a sum total of not only what your life and experiences have made you, more importantly is that you are the person you are because of how your belief system has formed and what you believe to be true about those experiences, whether real or imagined, it doesn't matter. Siblings can grow up with the exact same parents and because they believe differently about the experiences growing up, they are completely different people. We have all seen this. We have also observed that there are trends, actions, abilities, ideas and lifestyles passed on from generation to generation to our parents from their parents, and to us. This is our family of origin and brings issues of its own to the table. This cannot be an "excuse" to act the way you do, but mighth be a parital reason why. Once we find this out, or realize this has happened, -it is time to stop the behavior with US, now...and rewrite the script of our lives. All the world is a stage, said a famous playwrite, and the movie or the play that are our lives have been orchestrated by us...whether we've been aware of it or not. Yes, there are certain circumstances that have occured that were beyond our control, BUT we chose the way we reacted to these events and circunstances, whether on our "auto pilot" or consciously...it has all been a choice. The good news is that WE CAN MAKE DIFFERENT CHOICES BEGINNING TODAY - no matter what the situation is right now.
What has happened is that those beliefs and ideas about what happens in our lives, determines our reactions to those events. And is the basic YOU that lives a certain way through them. People react differently to the same set of circumstances. How many times in our lives have we said that we "wouldn't be like that" and end up being exactly what we said we wouldn't be?
Who you really are - Live the life you were meant to live
Have you ever thought "I'm living someone else's life, not the life I thought I would lead". When we come here, we have a mission of growth that we really want to experience in life. When we get off track, we are unhappy and our real selves are doing all it can to imerge. Ego over-rides our lives like a virus in a computer. Pretty soon, you can't do anything with it that makes sense. We think that in order to cope with the pain and dissappointment that we've understood to be our experience, we need something to make us feel better. And the loop starts. We even argue for our limitations. "I can't help it, that's just the way I am"...Insert your own line. We all have something to work on in this life. We are all meant to live life as fully functioning, happy people being, and doing. Learning to change your mind, let go of all the things that are making us miserable, instead of hanging on to them can lead to the live you are really meant to live. Turn your "curse" into your blessing. You have an opportunity to turn a glaring obsession or disfunction into your greatest asset. You can live the life that YOU imagine.
Every Month A Million
The one thing that is consistant in our lives is our belief about ourselves. When we are in full flight of an addiction or compulsion, we have lost a fundamental hold on the positive and true beliefs about who we really are and cannot see past the lies we are telling ourselves. -About ourselves.
When we pick up a drink, drug or engage in a compulsion, we are abandoning the fact that we all are perfect, spiritual beings inside, and getting caught up in the ego part of ourselves which always leads us astray. We are, as many great spiritual leaders have stated, a "double edged sword" or "a spritual being having a human experience", or as eastern philosophy understands, -we have a dual nature inside. There cannot be light without the darkness. All of nature is dual, including ourselves and the way we think about ourselves.
Everyone has struggles
There are chemical addictions and then there are compulsions, what some people want to call "personality quirks" and obsessions. We usually refer to these as alternative compulsions, and can include the obvious addictions such as gambling, sex addiction, compulsive shopping, workaholism, tobacco, weight - eating and not eating -as they say- pick your poison. We also include compulsions like reltationship addicts, people who sabotage themselves in relationships and even people who are addicted to "not enough" in both ways, -either they never have enough or they can never seem to get ahead no matter what they do. This is a person living in a consciousness of lack.
All of these are behaviors which have manifested themselves in different ways but lead back to the same core problem - what you believe about yourself, and how you react to the things that happen to you in life, whether your choice or not. It is always your choice to decide what your reaction will be.
Inner Talk
We argue inside on a daily basis. Minute to minute, you are talking inside, and the words and thoughts you have are forming YOU. The ego part of ourselves is in charge, and the real part of ourselves, our true identity -who we really are, is being buried by the part of us who is agressive, "right", fearful, apprehensive, "in charge", passive agressive, -all the extremes of our behavior which leave us "unbalanced" and looking to fill up our emptiness with something outside of ourselves.
Inside, we all want to be whole, and every cell in our being is crying out for this "rightness" within you to come to the surface and live an effective, fully functioning life that you can be happy about. Yes, you can. You CAN start to change your mind about yourself, regardless of the circumstances that are presenting themselves to you right now.
It is hard to see it when we are "in it" but if you can hang on to that little ray of positive energy that is waiting right there for you to tap into it, you can do it.
Is it all as simple as understanding and then doing? Yes. Changing your mind can begin today. Affirmations work, changing our limited negative self talk works. As you think, you are. As you think, you do. The concept is simple and at the heart of all succesful ways of thought, goal setting techniques and successful living. It is the basis of all of the books out now on "Intention". Meaning, that which we give our attention to, manifests in our lives. Really think about that statement and you will find it to be true. If you can begin to change your mind about YOU, and who you really are, you CAN change your life, and you can begin to do it today. You only have to want to.
It starts at the beginnning
Well, really? Might sound elementary, but a truer statement can't be found! The YOU that is here right now is the culmination of your experiences and beliefs about those experiences in your life. You are a sum total of not only what your life and experiences have made you, more importantly is that you are the person you are because of how your belief system has formed and what you believe to be true about those experiences, whether real or imagined, it doesn't matter. Siblings can grow up with the exact same parents and because they believe differently about the experiences growing up, they are completely different people. We have all seen this. We have also observed that there are trends, actions, abilities, ideas and lifestyles passed on from generation to generation to our parents from their parents, and to us. This is our family of origin and brings issues of its own to the table. This cannot be an "excuse" to act the way you do, but mighth be a parital reason why. Once we find this out, or realize this has happened, -it is time to stop the behavior with US, now...and rewrite the script of our lives. All the world is a stage, said a famous playwrite, and the movie or the play that are our lives have been orchestrated by us...whether we've been aware of it or not. Yes, there are certain circumstances that have occured that were beyond our control, BUT we chose the way we reacted to these events and circunstances, whether on our "auto pilot" or consciously...it has all been a choice. The good news is that WE CAN MAKE DIFFERENT CHOICES BEGINNING TODAY - no matter what the situation is right now.
What has happened is that those beliefs and ideas about what happens in our lives, determines our reactions to those events. And is the basic YOU that lives a certain way through them. People react differently to the same set of circumstances. How many times in our lives have we said that we "wouldn't be like that" and end up being exactly what we said we wouldn't be?
Who you really are - Live the life you were meant to live
Have you ever thought "I'm living someone else's life, not the life I thought I would lead". When we come here, we have a mission of growth that we really want to experience in life. When we get off track, we are unhappy and our real selves are doing all it can to imerge. Ego over-rides our lives like a virus in a computer. Pretty soon, you can't do anything with it that makes sense. We think that in order to cope with the pain and dissappointment that we've understood to be our experience, we need something to make us feel better. And the loop starts. We even argue for our limitations. "I can't help it, that's just the way I am"...Insert your own line. We all have something to work on in this life. We are all meant to live life as fully functioning, happy people being, and doing. Learning to change your mind, let go of all the things that are making us miserable, instead of hanging on to them can lead to the live you are really meant to live. Turn your "curse" into your blessing. You have an opportunity to turn a glaring obsession or disfunction into your greatest asset. You can live the life that YOU imagine.
Every Month A Million
Monday, November 9, 2009
Paving it Forward – Put Yourself in The Passing Lane
This is another powerful lesson I learned from Lori Duff one of my mentors here at Every Month A Million with our Daily Dose Of Good. My life went from mediocre to phenomenal with this amazing technique of conscious creation.
People spend more time choosing what they are going to wear in the morning than they do choosing how they will connect with people, how they will feel, or what they will accomplish. Pre-paving is consciously choosing how you want to look, live and feel through every part of your day and every part of your life. You might say, “If only life were so simple.” I say, “Yes, it is”, and I will prove it to you.
Pre-paving is telling the Universe what you want before it happens. It is a form of intention that “lines up the energy” so that you can easily manifest what you desire. Whether you realize it or not, all day you are intending, and what you intend you create. You create with your thoughts.
People spend more time choosing what they are going to wear in the morning than they do choosing how they will connect with people, how they will feel, or what they will accomplish. Pre-paving is consciously choosing how you want to look, live and feel through every part of your day and every part of your life. You might say, “If only life were so simple.” I say, “Yes, it is”, and I will prove it to you.
Pre-paving is telling the Universe what you want before it happens. It is a form of intention that “lines up the energy” so that you can easily manifest what you desire. Whether you realize it or not, all day you are intending, and what you intend you create. You create with your thoughts.
In essence, you are already pre-paving, although sometimes you have been pre-paving positively and other times negatively. What you have attracted is the result of what you have consciously or unconsciously paved forward. In other words, whatever you are prepaving, you are creating. Suddenly the idea of pre-paving catches your attention.
Pre-paving is about setting your intention
I like to explain things in terms of energy. When you know the energy behind what thoughts do to your life, you get very motivated to make a change for the positive. Imagine that you have a field of energy immediately surrounding your body, about six inches around your body if you are picturing it.
Every thought you think enters this energy field. This energy field is called your vibration. It is the sum of the thoughts, feelings and intentions that you are currently holding. Your vibration works as a magnet, attracting to you all of the people, events and circumstances in your life.
Your goal is to raise your vibration so you begin attracting the good things in life that you have always wanted. The moment you begin positively pre-paving, your vibration rises immediately.
How it Works
Every thought you think is recorded in the ether and starts to manifest. It manifests according to the degree of energy, conviction and power you give it. When you pre-pave with conviction and belief, you make significant changes in your life in a short period of time. In other words, you change your destiny.
A pre-pave is a statement that tells the Universe what you will do, how you will feel, or what will happen. It is a statement that you can either say verbally (loudly or softly), or you can write it down, or think it mentally.
Whichever way feels right for you is fine, but know this; the more power you put into your pre-pave, the more powerful the result. Think of a hypnotist in action. A hypnotist puts the conscious mind to sleep and within thirty seconds can have you thinking you are a red fire engine. We hypnotize ourselves every moment of the day with the thoughts we choose to hold and the words we choose to speak.
Wish and Reality
The sub-conscious mind cannot distinguish between reality and a wish. It also cannot take a joke. When you think or say something, the sub-conscious mind says “Okay, let’s support this because it must be true”. Even when you are joking around, saying things in jest, you are creating what you are saying.
The sub-conscious mind carries within itself your entire belief system. It works on automatic pilot. It never stops, even when you are sleeping. It creates what has been programmed into it by your conscious mind. If you say things like “I can’t afford it” or “That’s the story of my life”, the subconscious mind takes this as reality and orchestrates everything around you to make it come true.
If you are joking around with your spouse and you say something to the effect of “I do everything around here”, the Universe will manifest more and more situations where you are doing more than your share around the house.
This is where pre-paving comes in. Prepaving is a conscious, positive programming of the sub-conscious mind. When you place a positive command into your sub-conscious mind, it starts working immediately toward making it happen. This is the power of your thought and spoken word.
This is the power of pre-paving. Positive pre-paving is consciously choosing your thoughts and words for a specific result. When you set a pre-pave in motion, it physically “lines up the energy” for its manifestation. What does it mean to “line up the energy”? Let’s look at the analogy of your daily commute to work. If you get in the car and pre-pave safety, the Universe will physically orchestrate circumstances around you in order to keep you safe.
On the other hand, if you do not pre-pave safety as you start your car, you personally may not have accident-consciousness, but the driver next to you may. The result is that you could wind up in an accident situation just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How many times have you found yourself there, “the wrong place at the wrong time”? This is not by chance These things can be avoided by positive pre-paving.
When you pre-pave, you are never in the wrong place at the wrong time, because the Universe “lines up the energy” for you to be in the right place at the right time.
A Few Tips
You do not need extra time in the day to pre-pave. You are already doing it. It is a matter of practicing it consciously, practicing it positively and choosing pre-paves to create specifically what you want.
The most powerful times to pre-pave are first thing in the morning and last thing at night. These are the times that your consciousness is most powerful for creating. It is when the consciousness is changing from the wakeful state to the sub-conscious state and back again.
Unfortunately, this tends to be the time that most people worry. Worry is a negative pre-pave. Worrying at this time of night and morning is the worst negative pre-pave of all. The comforting thing to know is that a positive thought is one hundred times more powerful than a negative one.
Don’t beat yourself up if you have a fleeting negative thought. The next time you have a negative thought, immediately turn it into the opposite, positive pre-pave. Know that in an instant, you can wipe out the negative thought, one hundred fold. Imagine your life if you could turn all of your worries into positive pre-paves.
There are times when you will want to pre-pave a specific outcome that you desire because you have so clearly etched into your mind what you want. In this case, the more clearly you picture it and know what you want, the better.
There will be other times, however, when you will want to pave forward an outcome that is open-ended, not to limit yourself. I have found my greatest achievement to be when I have left the results open, shooting for the stars and reaching the moon. You will understand more as you read on and begin to practice for yourself.
Pave it forward with conviction
Feel it and mean it. Your pre-pave will be as powerful as your passion and belief. My life has been dramatically changed with pre-paving which is why I have made it the focus of my teaching. I have personally recovered from addictions, moods and a string of self-sabotaging tendencies.
My life went from mediocre to phenomenal with this amazing technique of conscious creation. I have witnessed what it does for people. Pre-paving makes a shift in your consciousness, so much that if you could see energy, you would physically see your vibration change as you instigate each positive command.
People spend more time choosing what they are going to wear in the morning than they do choosing how they will connect with people, how they will feel, or what they will accomplish. Pre-paving is consciously choosing how you want to look, live and feel through every part of your day and every part of your life. You might say, “If only life were so simple.” I say, “Yes, it is”, and I will prove it to you.
Pre-paving is telling the Universe what you want before it happens. It is a form of intention that “lines up the energy” so that you can easily manifest what you desire. Whether you realize it or not, all day you are intending, and what you intend you create. You create with your thoughts.
People spend more time choosing what they are going to wear in the morning than they do choosing how they will connect with people, how they will feel, or what they will accomplish. Pre-paving is consciously choosing how you want to look, live and feel through every part of your day and every part of your life. You might say, “If only life were so simple.” I say, “Yes, it is”, and I will prove it to you.
Pre-paving is telling the Universe what you want before it happens. It is a form of intention that “lines up the energy” so that you can easily manifest what you desire. Whether you realize it or not, all day you are intending, and what you intend you create. You create with your thoughts.
In essence, you are already pre-paving, although sometimes you have been pre-paving positively and other times negatively. What you have attracted is the result of what you have consciously or unconsciously paved forward. In other words, whatever you are prepaving, you are creating. Suddenly the idea of pre-paving catches your attention.
Pre-paving is about setting your intention
I like to explain things in terms of energy. When you know the energy behind what thoughts do to your life, you get very motivated to make a change for the positive. Imagine that you have a field of energy immediately surrounding your body, about six inches around your body if you are picturing it.
Every thought you think enters this energy field. This energy field is called your vibration. It is the sum of the thoughts, feelings and intentions that you are currently holding. Your vibration works as a magnet, attracting to you all of the people, events and circumstances in your life.
Your goal is to raise your vibration so you begin attracting the good things in life that you have always wanted. The moment you begin positively pre-paving, your vibration rises immediately.
How it Works
Every thought you think is recorded in the ether and starts to manifest. It manifests according to the degree of energy, conviction and power you give it. When you pre-pave with conviction and belief, you make significant changes in your life in a short period of time. In other words, you change your destiny.
A pre-pave is a statement that tells the Universe what you will do, how you will feel, or what will happen. It is a statement that you can either say verbally (loudly or softly), or you can write it down, or think it mentally.
Whichever way feels right for you is fine, but know this; the more power you put into your pre-pave, the more powerful the result. Think of a hypnotist in action. A hypnotist puts the conscious mind to sleep and within thirty seconds can have you thinking you are a red fire engine. We hypnotize ourselves every moment of the day with the thoughts we choose to hold and the words we choose to speak.
Wish and Reality
The sub-conscious mind cannot distinguish between reality and a wish. It also cannot take a joke. When you think or say something, the sub-conscious mind says “Okay, let’s support this because it must be true”. Even when you are joking around, saying things in jest, you are creating what you are saying.
The sub-conscious mind carries within itself your entire belief system. It works on automatic pilot. It never stops, even when you are sleeping. It creates what has been programmed into it by your conscious mind. If you say things like “I can’t afford it” or “That’s the story of my life”, the subconscious mind takes this as reality and orchestrates everything around you to make it come true.
If you are joking around with your spouse and you say something to the effect of “I do everything around here”, the Universe will manifest more and more situations where you are doing more than your share around the house.
This is where pre-paving comes in. Prepaving is a conscious, positive programming of the sub-conscious mind. When you place a positive command into your sub-conscious mind, it starts working immediately toward making it happen. This is the power of your thought and spoken word.
This is the power of pre-paving. Positive pre-paving is consciously choosing your thoughts and words for a specific result. When you set a pre-pave in motion, it physically “lines up the energy” for its manifestation. What does it mean to “line up the energy”? Let’s look at the analogy of your daily commute to work. If you get in the car and pre-pave safety, the Universe will physically orchestrate circumstances around you in order to keep you safe.
On the other hand, if you do not pre-pave safety as you start your car, you personally may not have accident-consciousness, but the driver next to you may. The result is that you could wind up in an accident situation just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How many times have you found yourself there, “the wrong place at the wrong time”? This is not by chance These things can be avoided by positive pre-paving.
When you pre-pave, you are never in the wrong place at the wrong time, because the Universe “lines up the energy” for you to be in the right place at the right time.
A Few Tips
You do not need extra time in the day to pre-pave. You are already doing it. It is a matter of practicing it consciously, practicing it positively and choosing pre-paves to create specifically what you want.
The most powerful times to pre-pave are first thing in the morning and last thing at night. These are the times that your consciousness is most powerful for creating. It is when the consciousness is changing from the wakeful state to the sub-conscious state and back again.
Unfortunately, this tends to be the time that most people worry. Worry is a negative pre-pave. Worrying at this time of night and morning is the worst negative pre-pave of all. The comforting thing to know is that a positive thought is one hundred times more powerful than a negative one.
Don’t beat yourself up if you have a fleeting negative thought. The next time you have a negative thought, immediately turn it into the opposite, positive pre-pave. Know that in an instant, you can wipe out the negative thought, one hundred fold. Imagine your life if you could turn all of your worries into positive pre-paves.
There are times when you will want to pre-pave a specific outcome that you desire because you have so clearly etched into your mind what you want. In this case, the more clearly you picture it and know what you want, the better.
There will be other times, however, when you will want to pave forward an outcome that is open-ended, not to limit yourself. I have found my greatest achievement to be when I have left the results open, shooting for the stars and reaching the moon. You will understand more as you read on and begin to practice for yourself.
Pave it forward with conviction
Feel it and mean it. Your pre-pave will be as powerful as your passion and belief. My life has been dramatically changed with pre-paving which is why I have made it the focus of my teaching. I have personally recovered from addictions, moods and a string of self-sabotaging tendencies.
My life went from mediocre to phenomenal with this amazing technique of conscious creation. I have witnessed what it does for people. Pre-paving makes a shift in your consciousness, so much that if you could see energy, you would physically see your vibration change as you instigate each positive command.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Personal Goal Setting - Find Direction. Live Your Life Your Way
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):
Artistic: Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
Attitude: Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
Career: What level do you want to reach in your career?
Education: Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
Family: Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent?
Financial: How much do you want to earn by what stage?
Physical: Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure: How do you want to enjoy yourself? - You should ensure that some of your life is for you!
Public Service:Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus. As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)
Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:
State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively – 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'
Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance. This is something we focus on in detail in our Daily Dose Of Good program, which not only helps you decide your goals, it then helps you set the vivid, compelling goals you need if you're to make a change in your life.
SMART Goals:A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:
S Specific
M Measurable
A Attainable
R Relevant
T Time-bound
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Gain a deeper understanding of SMART goal setting in future post.
Achieving Goals
When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve! With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.
Key Points
Goal setting is an important method of:
Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life.
Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction.
Motivating yourself.
Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and you'll wonder how you did without it!
These services and resources can help you set and achieve your goals more effectively:
Every Month A Million
The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You'll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.
More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you'll find that your self-confidence builds fast.
Achieving More With Focus
Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Starting to Set Personal Goals
Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your "big picture" of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.
We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.
Your Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):
Artistic: Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?
Attitude: Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
Career: What level do you want to reach in your career?
Education: Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
Family: Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent?
Financial: How much do you want to earn by what stage?
Physical: Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
Pleasure: How do you want to enjoy yourself? - You should ensure that some of your life is for you!
Public Service:Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?
Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus. As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)
Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.
Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.
Staying on Course
Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
Goal Setting Tips
The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:
State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively – 'Execute this technique well' is a much better goal than 'Don't make this stupid mistake.'
Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today's goals from larger ones.
Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.
Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance. This is something we focus on in detail in our Daily Dose Of Good program, which not only helps you decide your goals, it then helps you set the vivid, compelling goals you need if you're to make a change in your life.
SMART Goals:A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for:
S Specific
M Measurable
A Attainable
R Relevant
T Time-bound
For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!
Gain a deeper understanding of SMART goal setting in future post.
Achieving Goals
When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve! With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:
If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.
Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.
Key Points
Goal setting is an important method of:
Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life.
Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction.
Motivating yourself.
Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.
If you don't already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you'll find your career accelerating, and you'll wonder how you did without it!
These services and resources can help you set and achieve your goals more effectively:
Every Month A Million
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