Newsletter Issue 19
Thursday, January 14th, 2010If You Don’t Know Where you’re Going, You’ll End Up Somewhere Else.
As is traditional for this time of year, many of us are beginning to review our past year and to set goals and resolutions for the year ahead. I have created a wonderful tool for goal setting and for tracking progress towards goals, which contains a method for goal setting which commences by reviewing your current situation across different areas of your life. My method outlines a four step approach to achieving what you desire in your life. The process involves asking the right questions first, thinking and reflecting upon those answers, goal setting and finally the creation of your resolutions. If you’re an Inspiring Minds newsletter subscriber, please contact me on info@inspireyourmind.com and I will help you create your own personal plan at no charge. In order to get you started allow me to share a few key tips with you today.
To begin with I encourage you to ask some provocative questions to help you think about what is most important to you at this particular time in your life. With that objective in mind, these are your questions.
1. What are you most passionate about?
Passion is the force that sustains your interest, energy and enthusiasm, and allows you to perform at your peak on a sustained basis. The more passion you express in your professional and personal lives, the more rewarding and fulfilling your lives can be - and the more you can accomplish!
Ask yourself: “What am I most passionate about, both professionally and personally?” Grab a pen and paper, and make a list - brainstorm your passions! This simple activity fires your passions and imagination if you do it with heart. You might also find it useful to rank-order your list of passions. Which ones are most vitally important to you?
Next, ask: “To what extent do I express these passions in my day to day professional and personal life?” The more you can express and align with your passions in your day to day professional and personal activities, the more rewarding your life can be. Is there a way to express each of your most highly rated passions more in your life?
For example, if one of your passions was creative writing, could you spend some time each day (perhaps by waking up an hour earlier each morning) focused on creative writing - and hence fulfilling and developing this passion? You might not immediately leave your day job, but daily activity in your area of passion will leave you feeling empowered and creative at the beginning of each day, and who knows - may even develop into publishing short stories, a book, and perhaps develop into a new inspiring career. Alternatively, you may be able to bring your flair for creativity and writing into developing materials such as marketing copy in your work environment. Similarly, if your passion is people relationships and your job is primarily financial analysis, bringing more of a people focus component into your job can leave you feeling charged and empowered.
Getting clear about your passions is one of the most important activities you can undertake, as your passions can both inform the direction you choose and provide the emotional fuel to take you on the journey to fulfilling them.
2. What are your strengths, and which ones do you most like using?
Your strengths may include assets such as your educational qualifications, your financial position, your mastery of English, ownership of your house, and so forth. What is particularly useful is to be aware of your key skills you like using, as building on these is a powerful approach to realising your goals.
For example, does it make a difference if you are using the skill commercially for profit or with your friends because you care; with particular types of people such as perhaps professionals or perhaps the less well off; whether you perform this activity at the beginning of a project or after its completion; or whether the skill is applied in relation to nuclear physics, alternative sipitual paths, or mainstream economics.
3. Who Are You?
Each of us is a complex individual with many parts or aspects to whom we are. Spend some time at this time of year getting to know you. There are many tools for getting to know yourself, and some suggestions include:
Write an essay or story for yourself about who you are and who you want to be. Such an essay might cover where and how you grew up, the people and events and influences in your life that helped shape who you are, your values, commitments, aspirations, strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, style, and anything else that you may consider relevant. Talk about what makes you happy, your aspirations, regrets, beliefs. Be creative. Be honest. Let yourself give an answer that is different to yesterday or last month or last year - or feel free to write the same. Feel free to write something that might initially conflict with your values or other people’s expectations of you. Spend time with yourself. Go for long walks along the beach, or spend time in reflection and meditation.
Ask others. Ask other people in your life who they think you are. Get them to describe you. See yourself through others’ eyes. Is the ‘you’ they see the ‘you’ you think you are?
Challenge yourself. Put yourself in different situations - if you feel that your life has been rather boring , try something different this year - perhaps scuba diving, abseiling, snowboarding, debating, join a club, learn yoga, practice meditation, donate your time to charity, practice public speaking. Try anything to put yourself in a different situation, to let yourself see who you are in a different situation and circumstance.
The more you know and can say honestly about who you are and what makes you tick, the more you can effectively set goals that you can realise. For example, if you are reluctant to taking risk and value stability and certainty, then you might adopt a different approach towards your goals than someone who thrives on change. Knowing yourself gives you the power to choose paths that suit you perfectly.
These three questions are powerful and important at any time in our lives, and the more we know the answers to these the better the life choices we can make.
Don’t forget though that we are consistently growing and unfolding, and we CAN develop or discover new passions and strengths. Someone totally uninterested in reading or playing a musical instrument can discover a newfound delight in these activities, someone who was previously interested in global geopolitics might suddenly find the topic quite uninteresting. There are ebbs and flows in our lives as well as our passions and interests - and consequently checking in and asking ourselves what our strongest passions and most empowering strengths are on a regular basis can help us adjust and refocus our lives accordingly.
