Write now, right now!

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”
― Peter F. Drucker

It’s that time to get out the pen and write down a few New Year’s resolutions or maybe just think about doing something different pretty soon not that there is any rush to changing anything yet. What do you really want?   For some people it is more “stuff” and for some it is just a better life.   What most people want is the ability to use their time in a way that allows them to have time with their friends and family and they try to buy their way to more time only to find they have less of it. It is all about making choices.   What is important to you?

This is your gift to you, to create a plan for action.  To take the vital step of writing down your goals for this next year and really pursue beneficial change.  Will you do that?

Make the choice.  (Look at the video)

You have choices to make about your future and about each day.

What would you like to do in 2013?

Now take that goal and make it bigger and more aggressive.

What are you willing to commit on doing and then start doing.

Write down your goals and commit to working on them on every day.

I _________   commit to ______________  in 2013.

What will it be?   Is it big enough to change your life for the better?

your goal is to …

“The life which is unexamined is not worth living” Socrates

“A goal is the ongoing pursuit of a worthy objective until accomplished” Canfield, Hansen, Hewitt

Examine your life. Are you setting goals that are big enough to make a difference in your life?
Do you have an exciting vision for your future? When do you work on the vision? Making the vision come true is one goal you can work on.

Feed forward

Focusing on solutions, rather than mistakes, on the future, rather than the past, will enhance your self-image, enabling you to become more of who you desire to be.

Here is an exercise that you can try.  Find someone you know fairly well and ask them to help you with an area that you’d like to get better at.   Ask them to give you some suggestions that might help you get better in that area.

Before you begin record in a journal your experience and the goal you are trying to achieve and write in the suggestions they provided.  Work on following their suggestions.   Are those suggestions working for you?  Track your results in the journal.  

Try using feed-forward with others and focus on what is ahead of you.

“Every day is my best day; this is my life; I’m not going to have this moment again.
Bernie Siegel, “Love: The work of the soul, handbook of the soul.”

defining personal success factors

Where are the keys?

What is success?

What is personal success?  What does it mean?   How do you get it?   Where do you find it?

How long does it take to get there?

You have a key in your hand.  Behind one of many doors is your future, a future that is filled with the things your heart desires.   What your heart desires.   The key fits the lock that matches the desires of your heart. 

Finding the desire of the heart is the goal.  

Find the who in you.

Are you one that:

            Acts boldly
            Takes risks
            Acts implusively
            Seeks adventure
            Assertive and to the point
            Physical

OR

 

 

            Enjoys task and structure
            has a serious attitude
            is a helper
            Cares for body and health
            is Direct but cautious
            follows rules
            respects authority

OR

 

 

            Questions and explores ideas
            considers the ideas of other’s
            highly independent
            lives in imagination
            desires competency
            expectations are set high

OR

            Thanks others
            Integrity matters
            likes to make things better
            likes to brighten the day of others
            a team player
            clam – peacemaker – harmony

 

 

Which category fits you best?  Are you living at your best?

Inspired change

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” J.K. Rowling June 2008 Harvard Commencement Speech

“I like to think about the hero’s journey in other terms. I like to think about a little boy who is being encouraged to leave a safe, known and desirable place to journey to a place that he has only been told about. I like to think of those blue-collar laborer who, after an agonizing deliberation, decides to risk the job rather than follow an unethical behavior. I like to think about the hero’s journey in terms of you and me and our continual search for meaning and definition in life. “ R. E. Quinn “Deep Change”

Inspiration, risk and failure and come together when we decide we need to change. Fear inhibits us from being all that we can be. Inspiration informs of us of what we could be. Risk is the step we must take to become all that we can be.

How often do we operate in pretense? We have to know who we are and what we can do and that can be frightening if we hold doubt in our hands and let it overtake what we know and want to be true. It is so easy to talk ourselves out of change. It is so easy to quit the race.

When we set the goals, create the plan and begin to execute the plan we should have someone who is willing to hold us to those goals.

Read these words by Kierkegaard, “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.”

Seek the passion of the plan. Seek the passion of the goals. Seek the passion of realizing a dream. Begin now!

Freedom and light

Today we start with the words of the Sufi poet
Hafiz,

“We have not come here to take prisoners, but to surrender ever more deeply to freedom and joy… Run my dear from anything that may not strengthen Your precious budding wings… For we have not come here to take prisoners Or to confine our wondrous spirits But to experience ever and ever more deeply Our divine courage, freedom and Light!”

What are the desires of our heart? Is it to seek out and find freedom and joy?

I think that experiencing both trials and success brings to us a sense of joy and contentment. Contentment is momentary and calls us to the next challenge, the next struggle and the next climb we must make. Moments of happiness are interspersed into our journey and like precious gems hanging in the sky they beckon us onward, happiness blossoms along the way encouraging us to take the next step.

Joy is a reward that comes to us as a result of the struggles and the battles we are engaged with. Our deepest longing is to find joy in what we do and in life. At times we are stuck in the vastness of a giant maze wondering which path will lead us to joy. It is when we are stuck that having a guide to help us find our way is of so much value.

Make today a WOW day

What are your plans going forward?

Do you have plans? Are you preparing for a brighter and more joyful future?

It is so easy to get trapped into a mode of complacency where the joy in life just seems to evaporate. One morning you wake up and there is no incentive to much of anything. In some cases it is the onset of what some call a mid-life crisis. Where is the desire? Has everything become so routine that the excitement of life has drifted away?

Rebuild the excitement by setting some goals for the week, month, year and the years ahead. Make them challenging enough that it takes work to achieve the goals. Start working on those goals using inch pebble measurements. Take small steps and record those steps somewhere so it is easy to monitor the progress you are making. At large milestones celebrate those successes.

Make today a WOW day.

Goals drive results

What are your personal goals?

What are your professional goals?

Have you written them down? If you have do you know where they are?

Goals! These if written down, meditated upon, acted upon, and dreamed about can become reality. In many cases our goals are but momentary thoughts – yeah, I ought to do this or that. You’ll talk about it for a few days and eventually it will get pushed aside by the immediacy of every day life. Goals will become softer and quieter as the days go by and eventually slip from the tide of consciousness.

Goals alive! Yes, keep those goals right in front of you, work on them bit by bit, day by day, week after week until you reach a point that you can say, “I’ve done it!” . Celebrate that achievement and immediately reach higher.

Do you have your goals written down? Do you review them? Do you take action on them? If not maybe you need a coach to help you get over those hurdles.