Focus for 2010

As 2009 comes to a close, many of us reflect on our lives over the past year. We ask ourselves the same age old question “Where did the time go?” We go over the list of goals that were or weren’t achieved, we pat ourselves on the back and say good job or hang our head in disappointment that we let ourselves down…again!
But with the arrival of January comes new hope for improvement and change. We forgive ourselves and join the masses with New Years Resolutions.

Having a Master Plan

I know I myself do better when I have tools to keep me on track and give my thoughts a positive direction to go in. Recently a friend of mine told me of this ladder of logical thinking. I took one look at it and realized it was exactly what I had been doing over the last three years. The only problem was I was doing it in some jumbled up order. I’d been to Timbuktu and back, God knows how many times, wondering what my problem was, and lets not forget the oh so popular song What’s Wrong With Me? that drones constantly in my head. I let out a big sigh of relief when I learned that what I had been doing was normal, but it sure would have saved me a lot of time and energy had I had a blueprint instead of aimlessly wondering though the mud and the muck.

The Blueprint!

Most ladders are meant to be climbed from the bottom to the top. But in this case it is not important which level you address first, but it is imperative that you understand that changes made on a higher level will ultimately change and impact any level below it, but changes on a lower level will not change or affect higher levels.

Having said that lets start at the bottom.

Environment

Change, or the thought of change starts for most people from pain of our current situation, or environment. We hate our job, our financial situation, our mate, our family, the city we live in, the size and shape of our body, etc.. We blame them for our unhappiness and lack of success.

We must make changes in our environment if we hope to stop the blame and take responsibility for the out come of our lives. Example: It would be almost impossible for an alcoholic to remain sober if he was bartender. We need to remove ourselves from toxic environments if we want to be successful at what ever change we desire to make.

Behaviors

Our behaviors are driven by our experience of our environment. Every time our problem is activated we behave a certain way. We can hear that auto tape go off in our head that says the same old things that keep us stuck.

We must change that tape to play solutions and ideas that will help us to get unstuck and move us forward towards the outcome we desire.

Capabilities and Skills

We need to Identify the capabilities and skills we have that might assist us in making the changes we want. We also need to identify the ones we need to acquire. Make a list and take action everyday towards developing the skills that will help you reach your goals.

Values and Beliefs

I think of values as fundamental policies that define who we are. They govern our lives even though we often are not even aware of them. What you and I believe to be true may differ, it is these differences that cause discord in families, marriages, friendships and in the work place. These differences can also serve a tool to help us look more closely at what we “think” are our values. Values are the things that ignite our passion.

Because values vary greatly among individuals, it makes it is impossible to implement one approach when trying to motivate people. We respond differently to stimulation based on our values.

Beliefs are combined on the level with values because it is impossible to separate the two. But in fact we have beliefs about all the levels. Our beliefs have been apart us from an early age and they gain momentum with every experience we have that confirms they are right. The philosophy behind this is that we actually create those experiences in order to prove that are beliefs are right. We can create any experience we want but unconsciously we choose to create ones that confirm our beliefs.

Idnentity

Identity might be looked at as a personal report card. It is a representation of how well we are implementing our values and beliefs. Do our live, our action accurately depict our true values and beliefs? It is quite possible that it does not.

We choose behaviors all the time that do not support our values – the barometer is called guilt. We feel guilt when we behave in a manner that is not in harmony with our values and beliefs. There is a great example of this in the movie You’ve Got Mail. Meg Ryan wishes she could zing a person when they crossed her values and belief boundary. But when she actually flings that very first zing she feels terrible…why, you might ask did she want to zing in the first place if it was against her core value system. Well the answer is simple, she was just unaware that that particular behavior would be in discord with her values. We try things all the time, some we can justify by telling ourselves little white lies because we want the behavior to be okay. An the more little white lies we tell the farther away from our true identity we get. Sometimes it can become hardly recognizable. In Megs case she knew the moment the words left her mouth that she was not acting in accordance with her true values and beliefs.

Spirituality

The diagram uses the word vision instead of spirituality, but they represent the same thing…the bigger picture, our existence, our purpose, our “why” for being here.

Many personal development leaders use an exercise to write your obituary as a tool for finding your “why” or “purpose”. What would people say about you when you die? What do you want them to say about you when you die?
Write it out and be as honest as you can. It is very telling of the course we are on.

Don’t beat yourself up if what you write is not what you want it to be. All of us have wounds that have caused us to create three different identities – an invented self, a false self and a true self. Change should always be about heading back to our true self…our north star.

2010

One of my gifts for Christmas was Jim Rohn’s book 7 Strategies for WEALTH & HAPPINESS. He says it’s a good idea before setting new objectives is to ask “What are the half-dozen things that will make the most difference in the outcome?” Stay tune in January, I will be writing more on Jim’s book.