This is a follow up from the previous post about developing a personal life plan. This has been one of the most exciting steps I have ever taken. Too many times we try to wrap life around our work. A life plan will cause you to plan work around your life. It shows you what you value and how big of a gap there is with the life you are currently living.

Today, I want to share with you two additional steps along the path to creating a plan for your life. So far you should have your basic life accounts in order. If not, see the previous post. Today’s first step is going to require you to get right down on the runway of life. Establishing your life accounts is like viewing your life from 20,000 feet. It gives you the big perspective. It can show you just how far out of alignment you are as well. This step is designed to get you to take action.

I want to share a basic formula that I have adpated after reading Simple Life by Thom Rainer. He shares in the book four steps that are necessary if you are going to make changes in your life and accomplish your goals. They are:

Clarity —-> Movement —-> Alignment —-> Focus

Here are my simple definitions of each:

• Clarity – a mission or a vision of seeing clearly where you want to go in an area of your life.
• Movement – putting some action steps to your talk that you can start taking today
• Alignment – stop doing the bad habits that are pulling you in the wrong direction
• Focus – stop doing some good things that are keeping you from doing great things. Also, deciding what is most important and eliminating the rest.  

What I do is take the life accounts and run them through this filter. For example, take the Health Account. Here is what I would work on.

1. What do I specifically want to accomplish?
2. What action can I start taking right away?
3. Which bad habits do I need to stop doing?
4. Which good habits are stealing my time and keeping me from the “great” habits.

To make it even simpler you could have four headings under each account:

• Vision
• Key Scriptures (I like attaching everything to a Bible verse)
• Specific Commitments (These are the action steps)
• Stop Doing List (Can include bad and good habits)
• Great New Habits (Great habits you want to start – remember don’t start too many at once – just one at a time)

I hope these last two post have inspired you to take the leap. you can get really creative with your life plan. I have a friend who wrote his more as a narrative. I also added pictures on every page of my life plan. I review it several times a week and it helps me to stay connected and focused on what is most important to me in my life.

Related posts

• How to Develop a Life Plan – Part 1 (0)

Besides Habit Gravity another reason most people fail with their goals in the beginning of the year is because they do not connect their goals to a vision that they have for their life. All they see is the struggle. They have not cast a vision statement for that particular area of their life and so they live uninspired lives. When you create a life plan, you create vision statements for all the important areas of your life.

Also, most people fail because they do not review their goals on a regular basis. After creating my life plan, I took a notebok and created a Life Compass book. I won’t go into all the details in this post, but I have tabs for DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY, QUARTERLY, and YEARLY. I have certain items that I want to review on a regular basis to keep me inpired and motivated about life. My Life Plan is in the front of this notebook and I review it on a regular basis.

So, how do you go about creating a Life Plan? Life planning does take work, but you will be rewarded richly for the process. I want to share with you a four step process or you could call it a life plan template on how you can create a Life Plan that will inspire you on a regular basis.

1. Find a place of solitude. I cannot express the importance of this first point. Life planning is about looking deep within and that is difficult to do if there is a lot of noise in your head. I would even strongly encourage you to leave your home to do this exercise. Spend the night in a hotel nearby and just reflect on the major accounts of your life. Go to a park, hike into the woods or just find a quiet place to reflect. My first life plan took me between 5-6 hours. You will need at least that if not longer.

2. Develop your accounts. What are the major areas of your life that you would like to focus on? I call them accounts and I believe that you should have between 4-7 accounts. I wouldn’t recommend going beyond 7 as it can be too many to juggle. What you will find once you develop your accounts is that 1 or 2 of them you have been neglecting big time. The Life Plan will assist you in getting these back into your life and make room for them. I would encourage you to develop your own but here are mine:

1. God (Spiritual)
2. Self Development
3. Family
4. Career
5. Health
6. Finances
7. Social

For me these cover the major areas of my life one way or the other. Reading my vision in each of these areas on a regular basis inspire me. In my next post I am going to show you how to fully develop the content of your Life Plan. Some of these items include mission statement, ultimate vision, and specific commitments that you want to keep. Please seriously consider creating a Life Plan it will be one of the most rewarding things you have ever done.

Related posts

• How to Develop a Life Plan – Part 2 (0)

One of the most creative things that I really enjoyed about this book was that John Maxwell allowed fans from his blog to contribute to the book. If you look on the front cover you will see pictures of many different people. Then, when you first open the book you will see many more pictures of people. All of the pictures represent people who contribute in one way or another with the book. I found this to be very innovative and I believe it helped to add credibility to the message. It is almost like a wikipedia book on communication. 

Overall, I found the book to be worth the read. It doesn’t present any earth shattering info, but very rooted principles that serve as good reminders.

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If you are looking to re-birth your devotional life then I challenge you to get this book. It will challenge you to see the “bigger picture” as to what God is saying instead of finding a small verse to claim for the day. Reading this book has challenged me like never before to read the Bible in bigger chunks instead of a verse or chapter a day. 66 Love Letters will also assist you in linking all of the books of the Bible into God’s bigger story. I highly recommend that you get this book and rekindle your devotional life!

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Here are three direct areas that I believe you can benefit from personal life coaching:

1. Clarity – Coaching can help to bring amazing clarity into your life. It is not always because the coach is lecturing you on a specific topic. Instead, good personal life coach knows how to ask the right questions that will reveal your true heart and desires. Anytime you can gain focus massive action is not to far behind.

2. Accountability – many of us in today’s world want to be our own person. We do not want anyone to tell us what to do. That kind of life ends up lonely, confused, and directionless. Only authenticity and accountability can help you to ultimately get you where you want to go. Personal Life Coaches will provide the support, encouragement, and accountability that you need to get things done. If you know that you have to get on a call with your coach in two days and have done nothing with the action plan that you laid out the week before, then you will be pushed to get as much done in those two days.

3. Confidence – I believe that something magical happens when you have clarity, accountability and an action plan. Everything seems to come into alignment for you. Some of us sit idle because we allow the fear of failure to keep us right where we are. That is a rut. Personal Life Coaches can help you to take action in areas where you might have been lazy before.

I hope you will consider taking a step and get some personal life coaching. The experience in and of itself will be worth the time and effort.

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The way I see it is that you really only have two options: give up or determine to keep trying. If giving up is not an option, then keep trying! I like to find ways to trick my mind in an effort to develop better life habits. For example, when I use to jog first thing in the morning I would pick out my clothes and strategically place my running shoes the night before (now, I do a morning walkabout that is much more spiritual and exercise later in the day). Another trick I would do is tell myself to just work out for 5 minutes. Everyone has 5 minutes right? The neat thing is that I would never end up working out for 5 minutes. Once I got started I wanted to go longer.

Sometimes there are even useful online apps that can help you develop healthy life habits. One such website is called Don’t Break the Chain. It is a simple online app that allows you to just color in the day once you have performed that daily habit. The goal then is to see how many days straight you can go without “breaking the chain.”

This idea actually originated with Jerry Seinfeld. He was asked what helped him to become a success as a stand up comedian when so many people have tried that route and been unsuccessful. He attributed it to always having fresh and new content to share. He would use a simple calendar and check off the days he would spend writing. His goal was to write everyday and see how many days in a row that he could check off of his calendar.

So, if you are struggling in developing those important life habits, then try out the Don’t Break the Chain Method for greater success.

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This devotional is ideal for those men who hold a high value to sports in general. Each day offers a real life sports hero as an example of the topic discussed. It will reveal to you the spiritual lives of some of sports most celebrated athletes. It will also display warnings by discussing those in the limelight who choose the wrong paths.

I believe this book is ideal for both the committed Christian and the one who is just leaving life on the fringes. With the discussion questions in the back, this book could easily be converted into a 40 day Men’s Bible Study as well. Living Life in the Zone can also be a useful tool to those who might struggle with taking part in regular devotions.  It would make a great Birthday gift!

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The problem is that it can be a complete time waster. All it takes is to see a message from a newsletter you subscribe to and then you click a link, and another, and another, and….you get the idea. You become lost in cyber space and several minutes have gone by. Here are 4 tips to help you get over your email addiction:

1. Turn off that email notification. The pop-up email notification reminds me of the dog on the Disney movie UP. He is going right along with life and all of a sudden turns his head and says “Squirrel!” We can be just like that when it comes to email. It is like we have EADD (Email Attention Deficit Disorder). It is not good for you to be constantly pulling away from the work at hand. Multi-tasking and focus don’t get along.

2. Decide ahead of time when to check your email. See if you can force yourself to only check your email once, twice, or three times a day. I know that might seem difficult at first, but it can be done. In fact, it makes it better because there is probably more exciting email to look at all at once if you only check it a few times a day.

3. Don’t check your email first thing in the morning. This one was a hard habit to break. The problem with checking it first thing is that you start your day down rabbit trails. Give yourself time to get things going by working on something meaningful first thing in the morning. The world will not fall apart.  I actually check mine 3 times daily (10:00, 2:00, 6:00). 10:00 allows me to tackle anything important before lunch. 2:00 gives me a chance to check in on what is going on. 6:00 (or usually before I finish work) allows me to check in and see if anything is important before the day concludes.

4. Narrow down your email inboxes. This used to be a problem for me. I had too many email addresses. You waste alot of time trying to go to each email address and login. Instead have everything funneled to one or two email addresses. Gmail allows you to select which email address you want your message to be sent from so it can look like it is coming from any email address that you want.

Get a handle on your email addiction and you will put several hours back into your life. Lastly, when you feel the urge to check your email, take a deep breath and get focused again at the task at hand.

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We all have different ways of managing our stuff and much of it is personality driven. However, there is one area that is critical regardless of what time management system that you use:

The Collection Habit

Having a central place to collect everything is the most valuable thing you can do. Otherwise, do you know what happens? Our email inbox has a few things, our physical to do list more things, and our calendar a few items as well. It is okay to have a few collection buckets but the purpose is for all of it to go to one place.

Many people make the mistake of trying to go from an unorganized state to super-organized. That is a recipe for failure. Instead focus on one small habit for 30 days or more and then add to it later. Challenge yourself for the next 30 days to collect everything that comes to mind. If you don’t then you live paralized becuase it only takes a few items in your head to immobilize you. When you get it out on paper (or collection bucket) then you no longer have to try to remember to remember what you need to remember (make sense?)

Here are my collection buckets:

• Physical Inbox (Basket for mail, files, and letters) – I empty this out daily
• Wallet with 3×5 Cards – I have a wallet with a small pen and I record things that come to mind when I am away from my computer
• Sony Digital Recorder - I use this when driving or during my morning walk as things come to mind. A great tool to use if you are not able to write anything down.
• Chandler Project Software – This is a free desktop application software where all the stuff above eventually goes. Find out more about the software here: The Chandler Project

I cannot tell you how much this has simplified my life. When anything comes to mind I put it into my trusted system (whatever basket is closer) and then I religiously take a moment to put everything into Chandler. This has cleared my mind and allowed me to focus on “my stuff” when I want instead of it nagging me all day.

What do you use for your collection habit?

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Why is it so hard to let go, and let God? The tricky part is learning the difference of being a manager and a control-freak.

A control freak…

• Wants to manipulate every outcome to their favor
• wants to know what is going on at all times
• never wants surprises or the unexpected to come visit
• wants a predictable outcome

A manager…..

• works with what he is given
• understands that things beyond his control will happen
• makes the wisest decision when the unexpected does come
• knows the results are out of his hands

Whether your burden today is physical, financial, relational, or business-related, you need to understand your limits. Limits provide freedom. The sooner that you believe that you are human and that you cannot possible control everything, the sooner you will be able to relax and take things as they come.

Controlling what you can is a constant habit and practice that you have to do on a regular basis. When you stress meter is getting high, 9 times out of 10 it is a direct result of you trying to control something.

Simple Exercise

The Bible tells us to worry about nothing and pray about everything.  Max Lucado in his book Fearless gives a great illustration about how to handle worry. If you looked down at your arm and saw a mosquito, what would you instinctively do?

That’s right, you would swat at it, crush it, and smack it. You should do the same with worry. Treat it like that mosquito that is being a nuisance. Don’t let it stay there. Swat at it and get rid of it now!

The simple truth is that when you are trying to control everything what you are really doing is worrying.  Stop worrying and let go.

By the way, if you are looking for a job the General Commander of the Universe is vacant again, but if I were you…I would keep on walking.

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