Goal Setting Success: A Complete Blueprint for Life Planning
- 5 hours on-demand video
- 91 downloadable resources
- Full lifetime access
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- Certificate of Completion
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Try Udemy for Business- Gain a Grounded Understanding of Who You Are
- Understand Your Core Intelligence Preferences
- Discover all the Crucial Factors for Successful Goal Setting
- Define all of your Long-Term, Milestone, and Short-Term Goals
- Develop the Relevant Skills Required for Effective Action Planning
- Follow Goal Setting guidelines designed for achievement and success
- Understand Why S.M.A.R.T. Goal Setting Just Doesn't Quite 'Cut It'
- Learn How to Achieve Greater Life Balance Throughout your Full Range of Life Area’s
- Understand that increased productivity is not the result of working longer hours, but the result of making better decisions about utilising your time.
- Have access to a computer, laptop or tablet.
- Students will need a printer to print off many of the course worksheets and exercises.
- Students would be encouraged to have identified at least one area in their life in need of improvement prior to enrolment in the course.
The most basic question that everyone faces in life is Why am I here? What is my purpose? While most self-help programmes suggest that people should create a plan for the future, not many programmes provide a complete blueprint for ‘filling in the blancs’.
Goal setting is a comprehensive planning process that will help you to clearly identify what you want to achieve throughout your priority life areas; including your career, relationships, finances, health, personal development and your degree of contribution back into the world.
‘Goal Setting Made Easy: A Blueprint for Goal Setting Success’ is a results orientated online course that will allow you to leave indecisiveness and indecision behind, to move forward into a future of heightened significance, clarity and success.
What else you can expect from this course...
- An Easy to Follow Guide for Goal Setting & Life Planning Success
- Discover the most Crucial Factors for Effective Goal Setting
- Define Your 2017 Long-Term, Medium-Term & Short-Term Goals
- Establish a Healthy Balance Throughout Your Full Range of Life Area’s
- Develop Key Skills in Personal Focus & Prioritising Goals
- Gain a Grounded Understanding of Who You Are
- Understand Your Core Intelligence Preferences
- See why S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Goal Setting Just Isn't Enough!
- A Full 130 Page Goal Setting & Life Planning Workbook
- And Much, Much More...
Throughout the course, you'll be shown how to implement a range of tools for setting specific long-term, medium-term & short-term goals. You'll receive an easy to follow framework for defining your priorities and the action steps that you'll need to take to fulfil the goals you set.
Upon completion of the course, you'll have created a comprehensive life plan for your immediate and long term futures, with genuine confidence in your ability to determine and design how the rest of your life goes.
With over 60 high-impact video lectures that span over 5.5 hours, the course also contains a 130-page Life Planning Workbook, and 17 bonus worksheets so that you can gain maximum benefit from each lesson in the course.
Partnered with a 100% money back guarantee, join Dynamic Goal Setting today to discover the actionable steps you can take, to define your goals, plan your life & design a future that you're passionate about living.
- ENTREPRENEURS: Those who are committed to building a business or ministry without sacrificing their health, values and relationships.
- CEO'S AND MANAGERS: Men and women who want to succeed professionally, and maximise both their productivity and personal effectiveness.
- STUDENTS: Including graduates and even young professionals who want to get clear about their priorities as they consider making a mark in the world.
- MUMS AND DADS: Parents who are exhausted from the daily grind of life, but want to create a meaningful plan for their family’s future.
- RETIREES: Or those in unfulfilling careers who want to put aside regrets, make the most of each day, and leave a significant legacy.
- ANYONE: Men and women who need a perspective of what's important, to stay on track and remain faithful to their values and priorities.
“If you don't invest time into designing a plan for your life, you'll be more than likely to fall into someone else's plan – and it's likely that they'll have not too much planned for you!”
Most people are just observers of their lives. Although they will invest time into planning for their retirements, their annual holidays and possibly even their careers, not many people consider investing time into developing a plan for the entirety of their lives.
As we journey through life, it can be easy to get caught in the mundane 'rat race' of existence. We are all guilty at times of becoming so consumed by our immediate problems and concerns that we sacrifice the things that matter to us the most.
Unless there's a God, no one else will ever make a plan for our lives. So unless we get serious about goal setting, and plan how we'll spend the remainder of our days, months and years, there's a good chance that we'll end up helping someone else to fulfill their goals instead.
'He who fails to plan is unknowingly planning to fail.'
“If you don't invest time into goal setting and designing a plan for your life, you'll be more than likely to fall into someone else's plan – and it's likely that they'll have not too much planned for you!”
We’ve all had times in life when things haven’t worked out the way we hoped they would. Most people don’t have a problem when it comes to planning their holidays, their careers, weekends away or how they’ll spend their spare time.But when it comes to planning out our lives, life planning and goal setting are often left as a last minute resort.
Because this is how people get ahead in life, they get clear on what they want; they define the practical next steps that’s going to help them to get to where they want to be, to fulfil their goals, and begin living a quality life that genuinely stands for something.
Most people don’t have a problem working hard, especially when it comes to building their lives, but just working hard without an accurate plan of action is kind of like navigating your way through the Australian outback without a map, a GPS or even a compass. Because when people live like this, it doesn’t matter how hard they work, they’ll be unlikely to ever reach their ideal destination, anyway
To begin this goal setting and life planning journey: it can be useful to establish exactly where you are at this precise moment in life.
In this short video, I ask you to define yourself by how it is that you’ve set and actioned your goals throughout life until now. All of us will fall into one of the following seven categories:
- You’re an underachiever. You have many ambitions but haven’t achieved any of them yet.
- You’re an underachiever in comparison to other people that You know and admire!
- You’re achieving but would like to achieve more than what you current are.
- You want to become the best version of You that You can be!
- You’re an experienced life planner who wants to improve your current performance.
- You set goals, but often forget about them or quit too early – because you don’t see things.
- None of the above – you’re 100% unique.
“Teacher, teach us to realize the shortness of life so that we may grow in appreciation of life, and of wisdom.” - Ancient Chinese Proverb
If you were to translate this old proverb more literally, you might come up with: “So teach us to number our days, that we might make wiser decisions about how we spend our time.”
What does it mean to number our days? It’s not the ability to count how many days we have lived or to predict how many days we have left. Numbering our days means realizing the brevity of life. It means knowing that we only have so many days on this earth, and therefore, we want to “seize the day,” living each day to the fullest.
However, to develop this life perspective, it can be useful to grasp a rough idea about how many days we might (roughly) have left to live?
As children, we learn is by watching and mimicking others. First, we learn to do physical skills like walk and talk. Then we develop social skills by observing and imitating our peers around us.
Finally, in late childhood, we learn to adapt to our culture by following the rules and norms around us and trying to behave in such a way that is considered acceptable by society.
The goal of our learning years is to teach us how to function within society so that we can be autonomous, self-sufficient adults. The idea is that the adults in the community around us help us to reach this point through supporting our ability to make decisions and take action ourselves.
However, our learning years are just our first stage of life in consideration of the bigger picture. In this lecture, my aim is to give a structure for life that'll enable you to number your years.
“If we would only give the same amount of reflection to what we want out of life that we give to the question of what to do with two weeks vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.” Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Dynamic Goal Setting and life planning are about creating a vision of your ideal future and managing your actions towards that expectancy. It's an efficient process for aligning your short-term decisions with your long-term goals.
The primary questions that we'll be answering over the next three sections of this course are:
- Where am I today?
- Where do I want to be in the future?
- What should I focus on today to reach where I want to be in the future?
In this video, I’d just like to make you aware of the pitfalls that many people face as they begin moving forward, and I’d like to call these the “seven deadly sins of life planning.”
Sin 1. Not Writing Goals Down — ‘Out of sight, out of mind.'
Sin 2. Unclear Motivations — Not being clear on the ‘WHY.'
Sin 3. Setting Unrealistic Goals — The difference between short, medium & long term goals
Sin 4. Not Having An Effective Plan — He who fails to plan plans to fail
Sin 5. Not Taking Appropriate Action — Good intentions are never enough!
Sin 6. Losing Focus — Daily problems always arise!
Sin 7. No Follow-through — Life Planning and goal setting is a lifelong process.
It is pointless having a well-structured and personalized set of goals (even with supporting action plans) if it sits in your drawer and never sees daylight again.
Your life plan is your road map, your life guide and needs to be referred to, to make sure you keep heading in the right direction.
So, now that were aware of all the potential pitfalls, and of how many days we’ve (roughly) got left, we’ll spend the next section looking at you: who you are, what your personality type is, what it is that drives you, motivates you and what it is that really makes you tick?
It’s important that we understand these things because if you’re not 100% of what’s important to you in life, how will you ever know once you’ve got whatever it is that you want?
In case you're not yet convinced on the importance and value in life planning, here are a few great quotes, which may urge you to reconsider.
- “A plan is a list of actions arranged in whatever sequence is thought likely to achieve an objective.” John Argenti
- “A man who does not plan long ahead will find trouble at his door.” Confucius
- “Always plan ahead. It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.” Richard Cushing
- “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin
- “There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” Douglas H. Everett
- “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.” Peter Drucker
- “It's not the plan that's important, it's the planning.” Dr. Gramme Edwards
- “Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” Antoine de Saint Exupery
- “To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream. Not only plan but also believe.” Anatole France
- “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin
- “A good plan is like a road map: it shows the final destination and usually the best way to get there.” H. Stanely Judd
- “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.” Abraham Lincoln
- “It's easy to come up with new ideas; the hard part is letting go of what worked for you two years ago, but will soon be out of date.” Roger von Oech
- “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” George S. Patton
- “If you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail.” Tariq Siddique
- “Planning ahead is a measure of class. The rich and even the middle class plan for generations, but the poor can plan ahead only a few weeks or days.” Gloria Steinam
- “Planning is a process of choosing among those many options. If we do not choose to plan, then we choose to have others plan for us.” Richard I. Winwood
- “Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” Napoleon Hill
Most people want their identity to be compatible with those around them so that they don't stand out and so that they don't end up ostracised in the company of others.
They shape their character concerning others, not themselves. How many genuine “individuals” are there i.e. people who define themselves by their standards, rules, and values? In today's modern culture, unfortunately, the answer is; not many!
So ... if I was to ask you the question, 'Who are You?'
What would you say?
The following two Quizzes by Visual DNA are some of the most compelling quizzes that you might ever take!
They'll help you to explore the different areas of your personality, your mindset, your attitudes towards money (and why they are the way they are), your relationships and so much more!
Follow the links in the external resources section and spend around 5 minutes on each quiz. You might be surprised at just how accurate they are??
Did you know that there are two very different states of human existence? The first state of existence is our 'being' (who we are), and the second state is our 'doing' (what we do).
Now I'm no mathematician, but in this lesson, I'd like to offer you two equations. One of which you'll already be living by, and only one of them you won't. These are:
a) What I do + How well I do what I do = Who I am,
b) Who I am + How I am who I am = What I do
One of these equations will keep you in the prison of 'not being good enough yet', and the other will allow you to live a full, vibrant, exciting and fulfilling life of purpose. My friends, the choice, is yours!
Whether we are consciously aware of them or not, we all have reference points in life.
These points dictate what we do in our life and who we become. We have reference points for every area of our existence. They are what we look up to and what guides us.
These reference points are often what influence the decisions we make, and ultimately, whether we fulfil the goals that we set, or whether we don't!
Most who have experienced an education, have done by studying a particular subject\s. The classroom setting is one of the most common forms of education in a public setting, where students gather to receive instruction from their teacher about a particular topic that interests them.
When forming personal beliefs, we often interpret facts through the filter of our values, feelings, preferences, and past experiences. Hence, most statements we make when communicating with others are assertions of fact, opinion, belief, or prejudice. The usefulness of a statement can be approved or diminished by the nature of the statement, depending on which of the following categories it falls into:
A fact is verifiable. We can determine whether it is true by researching the evidence. This may involve numbers, dates or even someone else's testimony. However, facts by themselves are worthless unless we put them in context, draw conclusions, and, thus, give them meaning.
An opinion is a judgment based on the best of the facts that we have. They are an honest attempt to draw a conclusion from the information we have been given. Opinions are often changeable, and by themselves, opinions have little power to convince other people.
Unlike an opinion, belief is a conviction based on our cultural or personal faith, morality, or values. Beliefs cannot be disproved or even contested in a rational or logical manner. Since beliefs are inarguable, they cannot serve as the basis for any healthy discussion.
What would happen and what do you think that the outcomes would be if you spent the rest of your life becoming a student of truth, instead of a student of theory, opinion, and general information?
Truth alone beats theory, opinion and intelligence 'hands down'! So, let's begin getting grounded in the TRUTH about who we actually are!
"What we do does not define who we are. What defines us is how well we rise after falling." - Batman
There is a secret relationship between who we believe that we are and how we relate to others!
What we do in life is often determined by who we think we are, therefore, how we see ourselves will often determine how we conduct ourselves about others.
Growing to become secure in our identity will influence the way we behave and conduct ourselves with others. For example, if we see ourselves as Catholic, then we will act and behave in a way that compliments our beliefs as to how a Catholic should act and behave.
However, the danger is that if we choose to underscore and place a higher value in what we do rather than who we are, we might find our identity through what we produce, create, or our results.
We find our identity in our results; we might see ourselves as a Ph.D. degree holder or as a CEO, manager, leader, etc. We stand at risk of giving more emphasis to the role that we have that that of who we are.
There is only one set of foundations that you can build your life upon which is strong enough to sustain you, and this is the truth of who you are.
All of us have a public self that others see as well as our private thoughts and feelings, but we also have a deeper self which could be called the “core self.” Many people waste a lot of time and energy worrying about what others think or say about them. Some even try to control what others think or say about them, even though this is impossible to do and wastes a lot of energy!
Take, for example, Nelson Mandela, who spent 26 years in prison for trying to bring freedom to his people. He was beaten and mistreated by his jailers, but instead of reacting in anger or with resentment, Nelson Mandela treated his captors with respect and concern for their lives.
Why? Because he understood his core value, his core self, and was fundamentally secure in who he was.
If Mandela was able to do it, we are also able to do it too!
You know that feeling you have after a big meal? Where you’re so full that you actively don’t want anything more? Ever wonder what that would feel like in other parts of your life?
We do so many things for the attention, to feel important or praised. But what if you had so much acceptance and so much praise that you couldn’t possibly want any more?
What would you do then? What would you stop doing?
We commit so much time in our lives to pursuing money, the approval of other people, and praise. It’s built so deeply into our western culture that it takes a real effort to realize it’s the reason behind so many of our actions. But what if you had so much money that you couldn’t possibly want any more?
What would you do then? What would you stop doing?
Yes, we need money to live. We need attention to live, too.
But I find it healthy to make sure they are just side effects of doing good work or living an abundant life.
Answer the questions in the attached worksheet to see how you would begin living differantly if you were to no longer needed money, the approval of other people, or praise. You might be surprised about what your answers will be!
(Also, make sure to follow the external link: What Would You Do If You Weren't Afraid?)
About twenty-five years ago, Dr. Howard Gardner came up with a new theory about intelligence. He proposed that people were much more complex than what could be revealed in a basic IQ test. He argued that different people have different strengths (i.e. intelligence types).
Before this time, it was believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited. Today, most researchers believe the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences that are quite independent of each other. It is also now believed that each of these intelligence types comes with its own unique strengths and limitations.
Dr. Gardner built a model of nine different intelligence types which included the following:
Linguistic and Verbal Intelligence: A person active in this area is good with words. They are often good at writing, reading, and talking about things. This group often includes writers, poets, lawyers and public speakers.
Logical and Mathematical Intelligence: A person strong in this area is good with math and logic problems. They often enjoy solving mysteries, reading about scientific discoveries, and like to figure out how things work. They are also usually good with computers and a variety of other gadgets.
Spatial Intelligence: A person strong in this area is good with pictures and images. They are often good at putting puzzles together. They appreciate art and photography, like to draw or doodle, notice details, prefer geometry over algebra and are good at directions.
Body and Movement Intelligence: A person strong in this area is good with sports and movement. They often talk with their hands, like to build things, clown around in class, have great balance, and are good at a variety of sports.
Musical Intelligence: A person strong in this area is good with music and rhythm. They can often read music, remember old songs, notice patterns, and can naturally figure out how to play a tune on an instrument.
Interpersonal Intelligence: A person strong in this area is good with people. They are good listeners, can read body language, hate injustice, can see through people who aren’t being honest, hurt when others hurt, enjoy deep conversations, and often reach out to others who are hurting. Educators, counsellors, salespeople, religious and political leaders all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.
Interpersonal Intelligence: A person strong in this area is good at analysing things. They often think a lot and are highly aware of their strengths and weaknesses. They also often keep a journal and think deeply about life.
Naturalist Intelligence: A person strong in this area is good at understanding nature. They enjoy the wilderness and like to read about life. They also categorise things, collect things, and enjoy studying plant parts.
Schools often favor verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence. This is because most schools are centered around verbal lectures and a core curriculum that puts a lot of importance in science and math.
To cater to all types of learners, schools must strive to find a balance that incorporates the arts, self-awareness, communication, and physical education. So, after reviewing this list, which areas are you strongest in?
Please feel free to share them in the comments section
Our element is something that we must invest time into exploring, what is it that we love, what is it we're actually good at and what it is we enjoy doing so much that we can't help but share it with others.
This thing, whatever it is - we would do for sheer pleasure, whether we're paid for it or not - this thing is our direction, this is our purpose, THIS IS OUR ELEMENT!
Our element is what we're naturally good at, and it's what we also love doing! Our element paints a picture of HOW IT IS that we're 'intelligent'!
A great way to discover what you want in life (and also what’s holding you back) is by asking yourself a series of profound self-reflection questions.
To find your passion in life, you've got to be willing to become intimately familiar with yourself. You must know what drives you, what inspires you, what excites you, what engages you, what scares you, what you do naturally well, what you pretend to like but don’t, and what lies you're saying to yourself!
As you become more familiar with yourself, you’ll be able to determine what’s most important in the limited time you have in a day, a year, and even throughout your lifetime. On doing this, you can maximize your time doing more of what you love and less of what you don’t love.
Most of us are so busy reacting to events in our current lives that we don’t allow the time to examine what’s not working well and why. We certainly don’t take the time to ask ourselves those deeper, probing questions that unearth our authenticity and buried longings.
Any spare time that you're willing to make offers you the perfect opportunity to do this inner reflection and self-investigation.
Print off this workbook, and answer the following questions to begin getting absolute clarity about the steps that you can start taking today towards a life and career that you'll be fully passionate about living.
“Procrastination, quite frankly, is an epidemic,” declares Jeffery Combs, the author of “The Procrastination Cure,” just one in a vast industry of self-help books selling ways to crush the beast.
The American Psychological Association estimates that 20 percent of American men and women are “chronic procrastinators.” Figures place the amount of money lost in the United States to procrastinating employees at trillions of dollars a year.
We are where we are today because of the choices we have made so far. Unwise choices repeated over and over lead to failure. Wise choices regularly repeated result in success. It's pretty much that simple.
But what do we do with the unwise decisions we've made in the past? And more importantly, what do we do with the rash decisions we might make in the future? Do rash decisions mean our future is destined to hit a dead end?
In most cases, success is the result of wisdom and sound judgment. Wisdom and good judgment come from experience and experience are often the result of mistakes we have made in the past because of poor judgment. As Will Rogers said, “Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
What all of this means to you and me is that the experience gained from all our bad judgment and mistakes is unbelievable valuable. In fact, our greatest teacher is the failure!
So, if you have made a mistake recently and you're wondering how to be successful in the midst of it all, don't waste time beating yourself up. Instead, put on your learning cap and do what successful people do. Use the power of choice!
Everyone moves either towards what they want or away from what they don't want.
For example, you might say you value wealth – it may be that you do indeed value money and move towards it, or you might be running away from your fear of poverty. You might say that you value love – again you might move towards love and are motivated by it, or you may just be running away from a fear of loneliness or abandonment.
Whether you move towards or away depends on your values. Values are what are important to us (not necessarily the things that we like).
Our values drive the motivation behind our actions and then help us judge what we have done. Our values determine our behaviour and what we choose to do with our time.
Our values are the things that we are constantly working towards meeting in life.
After watching this video lecture, refer to pages 50, 51 in your Life Planning workbook, and also download and print off the additional worksheet that I've created for you in the additional materials section of this lecture.
Few facts about daily social life are quite as troubling as this one: very few of us have the faintest idea about how we’re coming across to others.
An iceberg can serve as a useful metaphor to understand how much of ourselves we choose to reveal to other people. As an iceberg floats in the water, the huge mass of it remains below the surface.
Only a small percentage of the whole iceberg is visible above the surface, and the largest and most influential part remains unseen below the surface. In the same way, each of us will often have a part of ourselves that we reveal to others, with the larger part of ourselves being deeply submerged that no-one ever gets to see.
Complete this exercise to explore the parts of you that can be seen and experienced by others, the parts that can't, and the parts that you'd like others to see if you were to show them.
Section 2 Overview: Understanding Yourself
Have you achieved all of the Outcomes at the start of this section?
a) You understand how your personality will influence your future goal setting endeavours
b) You understand how 'what you believe about yourself' can influence your decision making
c) You understand you natural 'intelligences' and have an idea of what you main passions are
d) You understand what your core values are and how they influence every decision that we make
It is important to note that none of the exercises in this programme are intended to pigeonhole you into any particular category of person, or, tell you how you should behave or feel in relation to your current circumstances. They are however, intended to help you grasp a better understand of yourself, which is a crucial learning if one of goals is to make effective progress in life.
It will do you no harm to explore as many personality profile tests as you can find (either online or offline) to help you further on this journey of self-discovery and life planning.
It can be a good idea to create a 'key messages list' and add to it as you continue to work your way throughout the rest of the course. Keep this list somewhere that you can see it and review the messages regularly to reinforce them thoroughly in your mind.
Now that the first two sections are complete, it's time to evolve these new insights into something practical that can become the basis for your future goal setting and life planning.
Section Outcomes: At the end of this Section, you will be able to:
a) Define 'success' and what it means to you
b) List the life areas that are most important to you
c) Describe the 'greatest life vision' you have for your most important life areas.
This section determines your 'greatest life vision', so therefore sets the end target or destination for your Life Planning. Take the time to get to the bottom of your Greatest Life Vision – you'll appreciate the effort spent when you know your life is heading in the right direction!
Make sure to download and print off the Life Planning workbook section (Stage 1: Your Greatest Life Vision) which is attached in the additional resources section of this lecture.
Most people want it, most people are driven by it, and most people also have a theoretical understanding of exactly what success is - or more importantly, how to be successful!
One of the primary social pursuits that need to be outgrown (in my experience) is the search for success.
Many people's rampant drive to be successful and prove themselves can be blinding in so many ways. It blinds us to the waste products of our endeavours as we relentlessly do whatever it is we can to achieve and be recognised.
Because that is what success is, it is a measure against something. At its most damaging it is a measure against other people, that for us to be successful others have to fail at success.
We can’t all be successful, can we?
In April 1991, Lynn Hirshberg wrote an article called 'The Misfit' for Vanity Fair about pop legend Madonna who described the seduction of success in her very own words:
“I have an iron will, and all of my will has been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy … I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and think I'm mediocre and uninteresting … again and again.
My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that's always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I've become Somebody, I still have to prove that I'm somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.”
In similarity to Madonna, many of us can find ourselves caught in the trap of striving for success. Success being with similarity to a chemical or substance that gives us a quick fix of confidence and self-worth, with the high that quickly wears off leaving us desperate for another repeat dose.
In 1991 when this article was written, could it be possible that the main driving force behind Madonna's Global success was not passion or joy, but a deep-rooted fear of not being 'good enough'?
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be recognised. Make big plans, aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.”
What is Your Greatest Life Vision? This is one of those 'BIG' questions that fall into the same category as other questions such as; What is the purpose of life? Why are we here? And why am I the way that I am?
If you are willing to define this for yourself, this definition can become the guiding principle that forms the basis for all your future decisions, your attitudes and the actions for the remainder of your life. If you were a company, your 'Greatest Vision' would be the vision or mission Statement.
So, it is a statement outlining an ideal description of your final life's outcome. This statement will inspire you, motivate and drive you towards creating your future targets – and auctioning them! This statement might apply to the different areas of your life, such as your family, your career, your health and even your finances. It will become the greatest vision for your life that you want to achieve, and where your future goal planning needs to guide you.
In order to get clear on exactly what your 'Greatest Life Vision' is, consider what is written on people's gravestones that have passed away.
Although this might sound like a strange thing to consider, a gravestone is simply an accurate summary of a person's life (who they ultimately were and how the people who attended the funeral remember them). The Greatest Life Vision you could ever have for your life could only ever be defined by the verbalization of the inscription upon your tombstone.
If your tombstone is the concise summary of your life, your obituary is the unabridged version of this and will essentially describe of who you were and how others have remembered you.
Q) So how can we balance the important areas of our life and still achieve what we want?
A) First, it's important to decide what the important areas in our life are. Second, we must ensure that we maintain this perspective without losing ourselves through focusing in only one life area (whilst turning our back to all the others).
Areas of Importance: There are certain areas in life that are important for every human being. These are mainly:
a) Our Social & Family Relationships
b) Our Career & Educational Aspirations
c) Our Money & Personal Finances
d) Our Physical Health, Recreation & Leisure
e) Our Life's Routine Responsibilities
f) Our Giving Back to Society & Contribution
g) Our Mental, Emotional & Inner Wellbeing
The degree of importance that different people will place on these life areas will differ, however, if we can become able to maintain an element of focus in all areas we will be more likely to achieve a healthy life balance.
When we define those areas of importance we create awareness within us of what areas in our lives need improved upon, whilst taking a huge step towards achieving a greater life balance.
A Vision Statement is simply an aspirational description of what you would like to achieve or accomplish in the mid-term or long-term future in each specific life area.
Page 81 in Stage 2 of your Life Planning Workbook will allow you to write a personal Vision Statement for each of your 7 primary life areas. These Vision Statements should combine to form your 'Greatest Vision' and form the basis for the future life planning we'll complete in the following Sections.
What quality differentiates high-potential people from ordinary people who float their way through life?
Continuously observe what is going on in the now (present) to see if you can find an opportunity to grow (future). Once you have highlighted the opportunity for growth, look at previous successes and failures (past) to help you begin to move forward.
This way of thinking helps you to be mindful of the present and what possibilities and opportunities surround you each minute of the day, but also keeps you learning from the past while simultaneously moving forward.
As we're now almost halfway through the course, it's time for a project that I know you'll find to be engaging!
Here is the 'Dynamic Goal Setting' 12 Month Challenge ... if you choose to accept it?
Imagine that you're sitting with a friend 12 months from now. You’re looking back fondly on the last year that you've lived well and comprehensively.
There are no rules or guidelines for this exercise. Don't let breakthrough just be a momentary thing for you. Consider and complete the following four projects over the next 12 months:
Stage 2: Defining What You Really Want (The 2nd of the 5 Stages)
You'll be relieved to know after the heavy soul searching of the last few Sections, that this one is a lot more enjoyable and focused on establishing the tangible things that you truly want from life.
By the end of this Section, you will:
a) Have a Mind Map of what you want out of life.
b) Have a good understanding of how to achieve life balance.
c) Be able to use the Express Planning Model for achieving your specific goals.
This section offers you the foundational keystone of the goal setting and life planning process. Note: Remember to download and print off the Stage 2 workbook which you'll find in the additional resources section of this lecture.
If you'll remember back to the story earlier on, about Margaret's Bird - the little bird who choose security instead of freedom? Well, a commonality that we all share in life is that none of us like feeling limited, restricted, or told what we can and can't do - we're all natural born rule breakers at heart!
But if we were to consider what freedom would actually look like for you, how would you even begin to define it?
What makes you move forward? Which are the most powerful stimulus for you? Are you doing stuff only to avoid potential dangers, or are you just curious? In this lecture I'll discuss negative motivation versus positive motivation.
You may ask now: motivation is just the power which moves you to do stuff, are there anything like “negative” or “positive” to it? Isn’t this something related to what you do, not to what motivates you?
Well, in truth, your motivation will always determine and shape you actions. If you’re positively motivated, your action will most likely have a positive outcome. If you’re negatively motivated, your action will have an undesirable outcome.
Negative is rooted on fear, while positive is rooted in service. The main difference between negative and positive motivation is the difference between merely surviving and living life to it's full!
Visualising is a powerful tool because it creates for us a reality that is as real as it can be before becoming manifested in physical form.
The mind is an extremely powerful machine; it is what creates our understanding of the world outside of us. We receive input from our senses, which in turn affect our psyche by stimulating reactions of different emotions and triggering memories, always drawing links from our past.
The world that we know truly only exists in our minds. The physical world only exists to us as far as we can experience it. This is why visualization is so important.
By visualizing, we experience events without them occurring anywhere other than in our minds. If we can focus on one single event that we wish for ourselves and we focus on it intensely, we begin to experience the emotions and begin to feel what we would feel if the event were to genuinely transpire.
In a way, we are living that moment without it yet being a reality.
Brainstorming & Mind Mapping For Getting Clear On What You Want To Achieve:
The Mind Mapping process should help you to grasp a clear vision of what you really want. The aim of goal setting is to set achievable goals (even if that means taking a larger goal or dream and breaking it down into bite size chunks.)
Check out the two websites that I've included as external links, and see whether you might find either of these two online mind mapping tools useful.
Brainstorming For Getting Clear On What You Want To Achieve: The Mind Mapping process should give you an excellent idea of what you really want in life.
Download and print off the workbook I've created for you in the additional resources section and spend 30 minutes (or so) drafting out seven basic brainstorms for each of your 7 primary life areas.
The first step toward taking back your focus and achieving the Greatest Vision you have for your life is to ask the following three questions:
1) What's the particular outcome that I want?
(i.e: There's a big difference between “I want to lose some weight” and “I'm going to lose 20 pounds.”)
2) What's my Greatest Life Vision and what are my reasons for wanting what I want?
(Will getting what you want, get you closer towards fulfilling your greatest life vision?)
3) What are the practical next steps for getting me closer towards my greatest life vision?
(Consider all the possibilities from your Mind Mapping exercise and choose the most important ones to focus on first - then write these steps out in their most relevant order.)
The sequence of answering these three questions is crucial. If you don't know what you want, why you want it, or have an actionable plan for how to get these things; your actions can end up self-sabotaged as you quit too soon upon facing life's hurdles, obstacles, and challenges.
In this lecture, I'll share another excellent four questions that we can systematically ask ourselves in view of making significant progress in the context of any of our seven priority life areas.
1) Select one area in your life that you'd really like to get better results in and describe what this life area is currently like for you? (the goods, the bad’s, the positives and the negatives)
2) Describe how the actions (or lack of action) that you’re currently taking is influencing the results that you're currently getting in this specific life area?
3) State exactly what it is that you DO WANT to achieve in this specific life area?
4) What’s the very first step that you must take TODAY in order to start getting closer towards what it is that you DO WANT in this life area?
Note: Download and print off the additional worksheet that I've created for you in the additional materials section of this lecture.
At the end of this Section, you will be able to:
a) Categorize and structure all of your goals
b) Prepare Short Term Mini-Goals that lead you to your Greatest Life Vision
c) Understand and be able to implement SMARTER goals
d) Document your own personal goals
Now that the foundations of your life have been laid, this section will focus on documenting your goals in a structured format that will enable you to achieve them with greater efficiency and ease.
Until now, the focus of this course has been primarily concentrated on you – your personal characteristics, your motivations, needs, dreams and ultimate life goals.
In this section, we'll begin getting into the mechanics of creating a real target goal and fulfilling it. And in this video lecture, start structuring all of the goal's you've set so far into four separate categories:
- Your Greatest Life Vision Goal
- Your Long Term Main Goals
- Your Medium Term Milestone Goals, and
- Your Short Term Mini Goals
In this lesson, I'm going to go mathematical on you, because there's an equation: Stress = TIME + Limited Space.
TIME: there is never enough of time when in stress + Limited space is limited allowed time to accommodate the goals of others (or their personal wants - this also includes our desired achievements).
An interesting fact in Einstein's Law of Relativity E=mc2, time speeds up through motion, the more you speed up, the less time you have to complete the task. So do you slow down to complete the task? No, not at all, the Key is to plan and find the balance.
Over Time, there is no time for stress!
Section 4 asked you reflect upon the outcomes from the previous sections and prioritize your goals as being either:
PRIORITY 1: Must Do's 'Red Goals' (You must achieve these goals in order to move closer towards your greatest life vision. These are your highest priority goals.)
PRIORITY 2: Should Do's 'Orange Goals' (These goals should be achieved sometime in the future, but it's not essential that you complete them now in order to move forward.)
PRIORITY 3: Nice to Do's 'Green Goals' (This kind of goal should be quite self-explanatory.)
Knowing What's Important And What's Not! Imagine that your employer, colleague or co-worker has asked you to prepare an important presentation to present for the rest of the staff and your team. (This could also be a school project or a voluntary presentation.)
You only have three days to create it, your workload is already high, and you have many other urgent tasks to complete on your 'ever growing' To-Do List. Because of this, you end up becoming stressed, you can barely concentrate, and everything else in your life becomes a distraction.
Time stressors are some of the most pervasive sources of pressure in our lives, and they happen as a result of having too much to do, in too little time. So, how can you beat this stress, and fulfill all the most important goals in your life?
Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle helps you think about your priorities, and determine which of the actions you need to take are important and which are just simply, distractions. What Are "Urgent" and "Important" Activities?
In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower said: "I have two kinds of problems: the urgent ones and the important ones. The urgent ones are not important, and the important ones are never urgent."
This "Eisenhower Principle" is said to be how he organised his workload and priorities. Eisenhower recognised that great time management means being effective as well as efficient. In other words, we must spend our time on things that are important and not just the things that seem to be urgent.
To do this for your own life planning and goal setting, its important that we understand the difference between what's urgent and what's important:
As I mentioned in the last lecture, Eisenhower's Urgent/Important Principle helps you quickly identify the activities that you should focus on, as well as the ones you should ignore.
When you use this tool to prioritize your time, you can deal with truly urgent issues, at the same time as you work towards important, longer-term goals. To use the tool, list all of your tasks and activities, and put each into one of the following categories:
a) Important and urgent
b) Important but not urgent
c) Not important but urgent
d) Not important and not urgent
Scheduling tasks and activities based on their immediate importance and urgency is the very principle that I use to prioritise my goals and task lists on a day to day basis. In this lecture, I'll show you what I mean ...
In this lecture, I'll share an idea with you that's always worth considering, before we commit our time or our talents to anything! Because, there are some things that we do in life that are:
a) Good for us and good for others
b) Good for us but not good for others
c) Not good for us, but good for others
d) Not good for us, and not good for other people either!
Understanding this idea will always allow us to make well informed and wise decisions as we progress in life and continue to pursue our goals and visions.
“When you write down your ideas you automatically focus your full attention on them. Few if any of us can write one thought and think another at the same time. Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools.” - Michael Leboeuf
One of the simplest but most powerful habits I have established in my life in the past few years is to write things down. Why is it so important?
REASON 1. If your memory is anything like mine, it’s like a leaking bucket. The memory isn’t very reliable. Every time we remember something we recreate what happened rather than just replay a film from our mental archives. The recreation is directed by many things such our beliefs, our emotional state at the time and our self-image.
What you remember about an event may differ quite a bit from what someone else remembers. There is a wide variety of interpretations of reality. And then when you try to remember that interpretation of an event later on it can change even more. So we need some kind of system outside of ourselves.
REASON 2. Ideas don’t stay for long. Fine or awesome ideas can pop up at the strangest times, but they tend to not stay for long in your head. So you need to capture them fast or they are gone in the wind.
REASON 3. Written goals are very important. A written goal brings clarity and focus. It gives you a direction. And by rewriting your goals, you not only reaffirm what your goals are.You may also find new insights that bring more clarity and focus to your goal and life.
A written goal is also a powerful reminder that you can use to keep yourself on the right track when you feel stressed and may consider making hasty decisions.
REASON 4. To remind yourself of what to focus on. Often we get caught up in our everyday business and lose track of what is most important. To keep yourself on track – instead of just keeping yourself busy with low-priority tasks – simply write down a reminder that can stop your thoughts when you see it and guide you back on track again.
It can, for example, be your current primary goal. I also like reminders like: “is this useful?” and “what is the most important thing I can do right now?” Write down your reminder and put that reminder where you can’t avoid seeing throughout your day.
REASON 5. Unloading your mental RAM. When you don’t occupy your mind with having to remember every little thing – like how much milk to get – you become less stressed, and it becomes easier to think clearly.
Feeling calmer and more relaxed does not only improves your health but also makes life simpler and more effective.
REASON 6. Clearer thinking. You can’t hold that many thoughts in your head at once. If you want to solve a problem it can be helpful to write down your thoughts, facts and feelings about it.
Then you don’t have to use your for mind for remembering; you can instead use it to think more clearly. Having it all written down gives you an overview and makes it easier to find new connections that can help you solve the problem.
REASON 7. Get to know yourself and your life better and improve long-term focus on what’s important. You can use a journal as a way to keep an overview of your thinking over a longer time span and to recognise both positives and negatives in your thinking and actions.
By writing things down, you can help yourself to spot trouble and get yourself back on track and keep yourself there within a larger timeframe. Or your journal may tell you something that you haven’t paid much attention to about yourself and/or about your life. And so this can bring clarity.
So those are seven of the most important reasons why I write everything down. How to capture your thoughts? Well, that’s up to you.
The Structure we'll be using to set your goals is the S.M.A.R.T.E.R. Goals framework. This goal setting framework includes two additional elements than what S.M.A.R.T. goals do; this will allow you to ensure the goals you're setting are unique to you.
A benefit of using this process is that your goals are written down in a structured and ordered way. The act of writing down your goal is to remove it from out of your thoughts and into your reality.
S.M.A.R.T.E.R. is an acronym used to describe the crucial elements of a goal:
- 'S' is for Specific
- 'M' is for Measurable
- 'A' is for Action Focused
- 'R' is for Relevant and Realistic
- 'T' is for Time Appropriate
- 'E' is for Ethical, Exciting and Enjoyable
- 'R' is for Revisited
There are many reasons why you should do your best in everything you do. You could do your best:
a) To assist you in your career
b) To inspire those around you
c) To win the plaudits of others
d) Because you work for a noble cause
e) So that you stand out from the mediocrity around you
f) To be a great role-model for your kids
g) Because you’re afraid of failure
h) To develop your skills for the future
But generally, you should want to do your best in life just because you can. If you’re not doing your best, then you’re operating at a lower level, you’re compromising your standards, and you’re setting yourself up to create bad habits and attitudes that accept consistently substandard performances.
Martin Luther King Jnr. said it best when he said: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”
Every day, in every aspect of our lives, we have the option of doing our best work or something less. At those moments, there may be numerous excuses swimming around in your head that tell you not to give it your all.
But there’s still a compelling reason why you should do your very best that overrides them all. And this is, simply because you can!
Action planning is the process that guides the day-to-day activities that will enable you to fulfil your life plan and achieve your greatest life vision. Your action plan will determine:
a) What needs to be done
b) When it needs to be done
c) By whom it needs to be done
d) What resources and inputs are needed to do it
Action planning is the process of operationalising each and every one of your goals.
Note: Download and print off the additional worksheet that I've created for you in the additional materials section of this lecture.
No matter what type of goals you set, you should always find something to track its progress. The benefit of doing this is that you will always know whether you are making progress or not.
If you are, you will feel encouraged and become confident that your goal is reachable.
If you aren't, you will know immediately that what you are doing isn't working for you, and it isn't moving you any closer to your goal!
None of us ever ask for a crisis to visit us. We don't go seeking out life-altering problems…they come find us!
Crisis comes to everyone. No one is exempt. Sooner or later we will all go through that moment that turns our world upside down. But we all handle crisis just a little bit differently. We may think we are at a place in our lives where everything is under control and then suddenly crisis comes our way. So the question is this…how are we able to develop ourselves when a crisis comes upon us?
Crisis exposes our limitations. But crisis also gives us an opportunity to grow. It has been said that a rubber band, once it is stretched, never returns to exactly the same size. So it is with crisis. Once we go through a crisis, it stretches us. It stretches our minds, our hearts, and our wills. And, it brings us to a point of decisive change.
Crisis has a way of clearing away the clutter in our lives that does not matter, and focusing our lives on that which matters most.
As a result, we grow…and we are never the same again.
Did you know that there's a series of stages that healthy people go through in their journeys through life.
At each stage (which we'll often experience as Crisis) we tend to reassess and re-balance our life values priorities. It's helpful to know what some of these stages are so that when we pass through them we can be aware of what's happening and know that problems in life are normal.
Addressed with the right mindset these are stages of personal growth, the movement between stages is a progression. As we pass from one stage to the next, often with some difficult periods of transition, we learn and mature in the process. If we acknowledge and work through the issues of each successive stage we become more balanced and mature human beings.
5 Reasons Why That Failure Can Be Better Than Success
It's a bold claim to make. But in essence our success is largely dependent upon how we fail, how we view our unsuccessful endeavors; and most importantly how we react to them afterwards.
Success is really the progressive realization of worthwhile pre-determined goals. It is this very journey that makes or breaks us. Here are ten excellent reasons how failure can, in fact be more beneficial for you than success.
1) Failure Encourages Lateral Thinking
As we all make mistakes it makes great sense to learn from these and look for other possible ways to resolve our situation. Failure encourages us to look for other solutions that we most likely wouldn't have considered if our goal had been easier to fulfill.
2) Failure Gives Us Experience And Wisdom
As we error and learn from our mistakes we tend to react accordingly making us a little more aware of what needs to be done in order to achieve our objectives. This wisdom is something of value that we can also share with others.
3) Failure Build Character
Upon failing in our endeavors, we can choose to take the easy option and quit, or we can learn from the experience, grow in confidence, build character and become more adamant in the pursuit of our goals.
4) Failure Encourages Further Self Development
Failing is simply a way of finding out that your methods haven't work. It's not a bad thing; it just requires a new approach. Through careful planning and observation, failure will drive you in the direction of success if you use it as the stepping-stone for simply getting closer to your goals.
9) Failure Reveals Your Weaknesses
Are you someone who passes on all the stuff you don't do very well or would you rather stick at it, making a few errors along the way to eventually master the art? Use failure as a chance to improve upon the areas that are letting you down. By better understanding your weaknesses, you can more easily convert them into strengths, as you know exactly what you need to be working on!
This video brings the course to a close (for now), and I can only thank you once again for enrolling in the first place, and also for putting your trust in me as your coach.
Moving forward, I will continue to develop the course by adding new resources and study materials (and please feel free to get in touch with me directly if there are topics that you'd like me to produce future videos on).
For now, though, if you'd be happy to take a few minutes to rate and review the course - I'd hugely appreciate it - this will allow other potential 'students of truth' to make a well-informed decision as to whether this is the kind of course that might benefit and help them.
But other that this, God bless, all the best and I'll look forward to hopefully seeing you again in one of my other courses!
Kain Ramsay
http://www.kainramsay.com