Category: Purpose

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Last week’s blog post (Do you have inspiring goals?) triggered a wonderful response in emails and comments. I had many questions. A common question was about how to begin to find a purpose and define a vision for your life.

This video shares a tool I found 8 years ago that had a major impact on my life over the 2 months after I first did the exercise:

If you are reading this via email, check out the video on the blog here: How to find your Purpose

Did you do the exercise?  How did that work for you?  Let me know how this goes…

Download a quick template for this Purpose tool…

Continue with this line of ideas by reading Meaningful Contribution or Start with the End in Mind or What do you want? 

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Here’s a simple idea:

Plan a life you would like to have.

If you love your life now, stick to what is working. If you don’t love your life right now, change something.

Use your Imagination first

Are you aiming at the right thing (or at any thing)?

Start by describing in detail the life you would like to have. How is your health? How is your social life? How are your relationships with family, friends, mentors, colleagues? How are you contributing to the universe? How much are you earning? How are you finding meaning for your life?

I’m not everything I could be and I know it. There is a better way that I could be and act in this world.  I can imagine a better way.  It is best to be inspired by living in your imagination for a while before you decide to give the next 20 to 30 years of your life to pursuing the goals.

Nobody reaches the top of Everest by surprise

Nobody who climbs Everest reaches the summit by accident. It has been a plan in their life for years. They have worked on their fitness, their skills, their finances for years to reach this moment on the summit of the mountain.

It takes disciplined effort to succeed in life. It is hard to find the motivation to maintain disciplined effort (especially when I have netflix, facebook, twitter, newspapers etc to compete for my attention).

Where can I find the motivation to maintain this disciplined effort?

Write your goals down.

That is it.

If you are not excited by these written goals, then they are not your goals. You have written them down in the hope that someone else might be impressed by your goals. There are not your goals and you are a moron to try to live your life in the hope that someone else pays attention and is impressed by what you say you would like to achieve. You will fail.

If you are happy to show your goals to everyone on the internet, they are not your goals. They are written to impress.

If you are embarrassed about your goals, but deeply excited by the tiniest idea that you could actually achieve them – now we are moving towards goals that come from inside of you.

How to begin Writing down your Goals

Who is it that I want to be in 3 years? If you can define this and you really want to be this person, then you are going to find quite a bit of the motivation to maintain disciplined effort.

If you keep your objectives all vague and foggy you can guarantee not to fail in a specific way. A lot of people do not write down specific future goals in a clear way because they are scared of having to actually do the work or face the possibility of clearly failing.

If a game is not fun, do you keep playing?  Are your goals and the process by which you pursue these goals fun?  If yes, keep playing.  If no, change the goals or change the process…  but write down the aims and the rules by which you decide to play.

Start with the Small Things

Start with little things that you can fix.

If your desk isn’t tidy and it is slightly irritating, tidy your desk.  If your computer is dirty and the screen is covered in guck, clean it.  If the room that you are in is a mess, throw out the rubbish.  These little things constitute 50% of your life.  The objects and rooms you interact with every day are important.  Get the rubbish out of the way.

Tell your head: “I’m going to make this place better for 5 minutes”.  Go.

Continue with this line of ideas with Meaningful Contribution or Start with the End in Mind or What do you want? 

PS Thanks for sticking with my rant today…  it was a reflection for myself after spending a day spinning my wheels and avoiding difficult tasks 😉

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This weeks video is inspired by a book: The Road Less Travelled, by M. Scott Peck.

The book begins with the statement “Life is difficult”. It is my failure to understand this, believing that my life should be easy and problem-free that is the root of suffering.

Life is not meant to be easy, and is a series of problems which can either be handled or ignored.

Discipline is required to solve life’s problems rather than ignore them.  Discipline is made up of 4 aspects of how we chose to live our lives.

The 4 Aspects of Discipline:

  • Delaying gratification: Sacrificing present comfort for future gains.
  • Acceptance of responsibility: Accepting responsibility for one’s own decisions.
  • Dedication to truth: Honesty, both in word and deed.
  • Balancing: Handling conflicting requirements. Scott Peck writes of an important skill to prioritize between different requirements – bracketing.

Carl Jung, said “neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.” Neurotics make themselves miserable; those with character disorders make everyone else miserable. Everyone is neurotic or character-disordered at some time in their life, and the balance is to have a structure and relationships in your life than can help you see your lack of balance before you hurt yourself (or others).

Dedication to the truth represents the capacity of an individual to modify and update their worldview when exposed to new information discordant with the old view. Dedication to truth implies a life of genuine self-examination, a willingness to be personally challenged by others, and honesty to oneself and others.

Really coming to terms with oneself is very hard and painful work. Most people prefer to complain about their pain and continue their self-destructive patterns than to take up the challenging task of constructing a self and a life they could really live with.

 

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This is the detailed guide to boring others. In this video from Portugal, I share the 5 best ways that you can develop an ability to bore the people around you.

The 5 Specific Areas to Develop to Be Boring

  1. Negative Attitude
  2. No Interest in Others
  3. Stay in your Comfort Zone
  4. Be a People Pleaser
  5. No Social Awareness

The 4 Areas to Develop to be Deeply Interesting

  1. Find a Cause to Support
  2. Take Courageous Leaps of Faith (help others)
  3. Get out and Explore this World
  4. Cultivate Weirdness 

 

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This video is about Sequoia Capital and their 3 rules for success in leading a business.  They make leadership feel very simple.. but it works. They have 30 years of track record of successfully taking on and turning around businesses.

Their rules are:

  1. 30/30
  2. 80/20 &
  3. the golden rule: 90/10.

More on Leadership

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“The people in the market for boring are spoiled for choice” Rich Mulholland

“All the good shit is reserved for those who put their hands up.” Rich Mulholland

All the good stuff is just beyond the rejection, the looking like a fool, the bad first impression, the being laughed at…  if you censor yourself, you close off access to the good stuff.

Here’s Rich Mulholland’s Passion Direct via Video…

I am a fan of Rich Mulholland. He shares passion, some f**-bombs and some great personal stories as he tells you to take the risk that you know you need to take but are waiting for a better moment. The lesson: that moment will never come.

Let’s celebrate fall-forward risks, let’s celebrate epic fails and people who test the limits. A little bit of self-delusion and self-belief might just lead you to create your dream.

Keep Up with Rich

You should follow Rich on his YouTube Channel the Get Rich Quick show.

Here’s a video of me hanging out with Rich at the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation Global Leadership Conference:

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with Rich Mulholland at EO GLC 2017

This guy is going to be big.  Rich is an entrepreneur, author and keynote speaker.  He tells powerful short little stories with impact though his videos.  I had a chance to do a short interview with Rich during the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation Global Leadership Conference in Frankfurt recently.

PS I think you really should subscribe to Rich’s YouTube Channel, you will lose out on lots of lessons if you don’t!

Here’s our 11 minute interview from Frankfurt…

 

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Jim Rohn had a wonderful saying: “Success is a few good habits repeated every day, Failure is a few bad decisions repeated every day”

If you are reading this via email, the video is here Success is a Few Good Habits Repeated Every Day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. This is old wisdom but relates to success in our lives. What are your apples? Your daily positive habits? Let me know in the comments below 😉

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This week’s video is about Steven Covey’s 7th Habit of Highly Effective People: Sharpen the Saw.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint.

Burning yourself out is no service to anyone.  Running your car without changing the oil will destroy the engine.  Running at 100% all day and all night will destroy your own personal engine.

Feeling good doesn’t just happen.

Living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself.  You know what to do, but do you make the time for renewal?

Sharpen the Saw means taking care of the greatest asset you have: you.  Here are some examples of activities:

  • Physical: Beneficial eating, exercising, and resting
  • Social: Making social and meaningful connections with others
  • Mental: Learning, reading, writing, and teaching
  • Spiritual: Spending time in nature, meditation, music, art

As you renew yourself in each of the four areas, you create growth and change in your life. Without this renewal, the body becomes weak, the mind mechanical, the emotions raw, the spirit insensitive, and the person selfish.  Not a good life.

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You are at one of these 5 places in your life…

If you are reading this post via email, you can watch the video here: The 5 States of Human Performance (From the Coaches Perspective)

The 5 States of Human Performance

The 9 minute video shares a tip for how to move forward from each of these 5 states.  I share my story of 2009, of coming back from bankruptcy and loss of family and how I moved out of stage 5 (starting at minute 5:24 in the video).

  1. You know your goal and you’re going after it: Enjoy it.  (Find someone you can help.)
  2. You know your goal and you’re stuck and can’t find your way there: Find a Mentor. Ask someone who has already had success about how they overcame this obstacle.
  3. You know your goal and you are letting distractions win: Use the Pomodoro Method.
  4. You don’t know your goal and you’re miserable: Ask a few friends (not the cynical ones) what they think you are good at and what they think you should work on
  5. You’ve given up on your goals and you’re miserable: Move your body: Go for a walk. Set one tiny goal to help one other person.

 

PS if you can’t decide which state you are it, you in state 4.

Find a goal. Aim at it.

Let me know a) which place you are at and b) the goal you choose in the comments below 😉