What do you want to do with the rest of your life?
What’s your purpose, your dream?
Who do you want to be and how will you be remembered?
Step 1. Defining goals and visualizing the end result
Using a timer, take 20’ to brainstorm and write down any personal goal, without limitations, even the most impossible dreams. You can select goals from the following categories:
1. Family and personal: marriage, kids, parents, friends,
2. Physical and health: exercise, nutrition, sleep
3. Mental, intellectual and personal development: learning, reading, teaching, writing
4. Career and work
5. Financial and material
6. Inner development and spiritual health
After your brainstorming session, select 2 – 3 goals within each of the 6 categories and one major, long term goal. Select short term (90 days) up to long term (5 years) goals.
Make sure to write out your goals according to the smart principle:
- Specific: well defined, showing what you expect when you achieve your goal.
- Measurable: use numbers and quantities. Exception can be made for qualitative goals such as becoming a more patient or compassionate person.
- Acceptable: not too easy
- Realistic: not too hard
- Time-bound
Close your eyes and picture your situation as if each goal would already be accomplished. Try to bring as many details as possible into your mind.
I use posters, photos and my journal to visualize my goals. Others write them down on small cards that they can look at every day.
Step 2. Write down your affirmations
Affirmations are a great way to program your subconscious mind on a desired condition.
Repeating your affirmations 2 to 3 times a day, with conviction, is a powerful way to build up confidence and transform towards a desired state.
Affirmations should be positive (don’t say “I don’t want to smoke” but rather “I’m a non-smoker), present tense (don’t say “I’m not going to smoke anymore”) and personal.
Affirmations work best when repeated out loud, in front of a mirror.
You can find useful examples of affirmations on https://youtu.be/5fQv1kHCAC4
Personally, I use my values for daily affirmations and made an acronym for easy usage:
R E S P E C T : Respect people – planet – property, Energize myself and others, Seek first to understand, then to be understood, Positive mindset, Excel at everything I do, Congratulate regularly and thank mildly, always do the right Thing.
Step 3. Find an example and follow it
Think of someone in your life who inspired you, a teacher, family member, friend, boss …
What about this person gave you this special feeling? Results, the way he/she talked to people, the ideas, … ?Many successful people indicate that a mentor played a crucial role in their life.
So what is a mentor?
Originating from the Greek mythology where Mentor was a friend of Ulysses who educated his son Telemachus during the long Trojan War, a mentor is someone who guides you to find your own answers, based on great listening skills, experience, trust and a commitment to help you succeed.
A mentor is not a second manager, being a non-judgmental observer with experience, forcing the mentee to make progress by himself.
A mentor is not a career advisor or a guardian, looking after somebody new for several years.
A mentor is not a coach who’s delivering specific, performance driven support around defined tasks.
A mentor’s role evolves as the needs of his/her mentees change over time. In most instances, mentoring relationships are informal, while at times such relationships could be more formal. In formal mentoring relationships, mentors follow a structured approach to set realistic expectations and gain mutual benefits.
Good mentors are always willing to share their skills and knowledge with their mentees. A mentor’s role is to inspire and build trust and confidence, possessing a positive and can-do attitude. These qualities make it easier for the mentees to discuss their professional goals and concerns with them.
My mentoring approach consists of a 12 month process with monthly sessions of 1,5 hrs.
The process starts with a mentee self-assessment and a personal development plan which will be the basis for the entire program.
The mentor and mentee sign a mentoring agreement, outlining the area’s of work and objectives as well as a clear statement that the relationship is based on confidentiality, honesty and transparency.
Each mentoring session will include a short opening to break the ice, a discussion on operational issues, a discussion on strategic topics (both prepared by the mentee a couple of days before), a review of the personal development plan, an exercise based on the mentee’s needs and a review of the mentee’s notes from previous sessions.
Step 4. Make a detailed plan
Once you have defined your goals, created a burning motivation and a solid belief within yourself to achieve them, it’s time to make your detailed plan, your roadmap to success:
Write your goals in a notebook as clearly as possible.
This will override your failure mechanism which wants to protect you from the disappointment of under-achievement.
List all the reasons why you’ll benefit from achieving your goal.
If you have no more than 2 to 3 arguments, your motivation will be medium. If you have twenty, your goal will be irresistible.
Determine your position: where am I now?
If you want to sail to your dream island, the first thing to determine is where you are.
Fix a deadline.
This will lock the goal in your mind and activate your subconscious forcing system. Use this for measurable goals like loosing x kg of weight or writing y pages per day, not for intangible goals such as forgiveness, kindness, compassion. Break your long term goals down into 3 month sub goals.
List the obstacles.
Start by working on the main obstacle and once you remove it, the others will fall like dominos.
List all resources you need.
This can be information, external support, skills, habits, experience and then plan to get these resources as soon as possible.
List all people you need cooperation from.
This can include your spouse, family, colleagues or friends. Remember, they will ask the WIIFM question: What’s in it for me? You need to have a “giving” habit, the more you put in, the more your will eventually get out.
List all activities resulting from the above, starting with the highest priority.
Get started!
Don’t worry if your roadmap isn’t perfect, accept changes but keep working. You can visualize your goals as if they were already accomplished, using mental images, pictures or drawings.
Most of all, keep going and never give up.
Every day, I write my daily activities in a note on the iPhone and look at them several times a day to focus my attention to what really matters. I also use a whiteboard to write my goals in a matrix showing 4 quadrants: urgent – not urgent, important – not important.
Step 5. Start, take action and stay focused
In order to perform at your very best, it’s important to find balance between the 4 elements of human nature: physical, social/emotional, spiritual and mental.
- The physical element: sleep, nutrition and exercise.
o Taking care of your physical element starts by making sure you get good sleep. Selecting the most suitable matrass, pillow, cover and linen is where it starts.
Next step is optimizing your sleeping environment: eliminate noise as much as possible, total darkness, room temperature around 18°C, no radiation (WIFI, Bluetooth, … ), then your sleeping routine: fix your sleep timing (I go to sleep at 9pm and wake up at 5am every single day), nutrition and exercise.
Make sure to catch sufficient sunlight outside to get your melatonin (sleep hormone) production going!
o Healthy nutrition is one of the major challenges of our time, given the abundance of harmful, sugar loaded, processed foods with very high calorie/nutrient ratios. Once you realize that your gut is responsible for the majority of essential hormone production and that unhealthy food is a major contributor to inflammation in your body, the first step to a healthy body is made.
By avoiding toxins, your body and mind will be able to function at their highest performance. Intermittent fasting, low carb diet (think bread, pasta, potato, rice … ), removing all harmful foods from your kitchen and filling your fridge with fresh vegetables, fruits and whole foods are some of the changes I made to find the right balance between healthy nutrients and calories in my diet.
o Exercise grows your brain capacity, helps increase insulin sensitivity, reduces cardiac risk, burns off stress and stimulates all vital processes in your body.
To reap maximum benefit from exercise, it needs to be consistent (daily habit!), fun, not too long but with sufficient intensity.
After many years of long distance running resulting in a long term heel injury, I decided to change to strength and flexibility training and never regretted the change. Training 2 to 3 muscle groups per day, walking at least one hour every day (dogs are amazing motivators) and taking a HIIT (high intensity interval training) session on a regular basis helped me to transform my body from a comfortable 90kg weight to a lean 77kg. She loves it :-)
- The social/emotional dimension: The majority of your success and happiness in life will be determined by your ability to interact positively and effectively with others.
The most sustainable form of happiness comes from making someone else happy.
Practice kindness, remove any destructive criticism from your vocabulary, build people up, and don’t complain. Improving your relationships is based on simply being agreeable (Is it more important to be right or to have a good relationship?), being positive (Put a smile on your face before you get out of bed!), practicing gratitude (Writing 3 things you’re grateful for in your morning journal will bring miracles!), congratulating effectively (immediate, specific and as public as possible), giving attention to people by listening carefully (eye contact, don’t interrupt, leave a 5 second pause before you reply, ask open questions for clarification).
- The spiritual dimension: This is the center of your being, to source of your peace of mind. I search for peace of mind through mindfulness, yoga, and reading from spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama, Thich Nath Hanh, Eckhart Tolle or more accessible teachers like Robin Sharma, Jay Shetty.
Writing down my personal values and reminding them every day, asking questions like “Who am I?”, or “What do I want to hear from my spouse, kids, family, friends and colleagues at my funeral?”, “What can I do to make a difference?” or “What can I do today to make this an amazing day?” , … can prime your brain to a positive, happy and successful moments.
- The mental dimension: Never stop learning!
A couple of years ago, I put a target of reading at least 25 books per year, mainly non-fiction and my Kindle was probably the greatest gift I ever received. Nothing is better than reading inspiring books to expand your mind. A good book can change your life, I’m certain that books have changed mine.
Another powerful habit to keep a sharp mind is to journal. Writing in a notebook, writing letters or blogging will force you to focus, plan, analyse, remember, summarize or expand on anything your mind is wondering about.
Practice these 5 steps to become the master of your mind and live a happy, loving, exceptional life.
Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly - Paulo Coelho
Take care & stay safe,
Jürgen
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