The Simple Disciplines must be executed every day, Monday-Friday, without fail. It's not what we do every once in a while that determines our results, it's what we do consistently. After seven years of personal development, I feel that I have the knowledge to design an effective strategy to manifest the vision I hold for me and my family. I've broken the vision down into a few main areas of my life....
- Personal Development(who you become)
- Health and fitness
- Business/Career/Financial
- Quality of Life/Things Goals
Balance is critical to live a good life. Too many times, I've focused all of my heart into one or two of these aspects and let others suffer. I carried laser focus into these endeavors, and I experienced a ton of success. The challenge is that while I succeeded in one or two areas, I failed miserably in the others....the richest man in the graveyard analogy. I was working my butt off, but I never got into the gym. It wasn't top of mind, it was secondary to building my business. Eventually, this caught up with me. I'll never be truly happy or free if I'm not in great physical shape, no matter how much financial abundance I've acquired. My rules, my standards tell me I must be fit as hell to be happy.
Point is, we must account for all of these areas when considering our vision. I recommend the following exercise to create your vision(I got this from a Tony Robbins program):
Write down one of the aspects I listed above. For the next five minutes, write down everything you'd like to have, do, or be in this category. Begin with the Personal Development category...
I'd like to offer a few examples, to help you get started:
- Learn a foreign language.
- Earn a master's degree in business.
- Run a marathon(could go in H&F)
- Write a book
- Become a professional writer/speaker/coach in sales & entreprenuership, h & f, etc
etc....
Write stuff for at least 5 minutes. The key is to NOT LIMIT YOURSELF. Far too many of us allow fear to creep in while doing this exercise. We don't call it fear, we call it being "realistic" or "down to earth". BS. It's fear. We don't want our friends, family, neighbors, whoever to laugh at us. Let that crap go. Dream, let your mind flow the way we used to when we were kids. Dream Big...
After the five minutes, go back and write down a number next to each dream/goal. This number represents the number of years you're willing to wait to have this particular goal. If you want to write a book in the next 10 years or so, write down a 10 next to that goal. If you want to write in now, write down a 1. Do this for every single goal. I'm hoping you get at least 15-20 goals down.
Next, take all of your goals that have a 1 next to them, and decide which two are most important. Which two of these, if accomplished this year, would make you feel like the year was well spent in this particular area of your life? Write down or circle your top two. Two is good, three is good. No more than three. It becomes too much, you'll spread yourself too thin.
Repeat this process in the remaining areas of your life...Health & Fitness, Biz/Career/Financial, Living Well/Things Goals, Contribution. Again, do not limit yourself. I'll offer a couple of examples, so we stay on the same page...
H&F
- Run a marathon
- Body to 165 pounds
- Less than 8% body fat
- Dunk a basketball
Biz/Career/Financial
- Earn $554,000 per year
- Earn $10,000,000 per year(whatever number you want to strive for, as long as it's specific)
- Lead a business with $100 Million in annual revenue
- Sell a business for $50 Million
- Take a company public
- Save $10,000 in cash or 10 million in cash
- Invest $10,000 per month
Living Well/Things
- Build a 8500 sf home in Sherwood Sub with Jim O'Neal
- Buy a house in Vale, Co
- Take whole family to Hawaii for two weeks
- Travel Europe for two months with immediate family, staying at best places
- Purchase an Astin Martin DBS with cash
Contribution Goals
- Donate $25000 per year to ISU
- Feed 1000 families every Christmas
- Give 100 people $1000 in cash at gas stations the week before Christmas.
Some of these are outrageous, I know. But the way I see it, there are thousands of individuals out there who have the resources to have, do, and be all of these things. Why not us?
Once you've done this for each area, you have all of your one year goals. These will be the driving force for your program.
This next step is the most important. Go through your list of one year goals, and articulate WHY you will have these goals, this year. Be descript. Explain why you need them, how it will feel when you've accomplished them. These emotional descriptions will provide the fuel for your fire throughout the year. If you find yourself not following through on your Simple Disciplines, then you have weak REASONS WHY. Go back and look at your reasons-they need to be strong, compelling reasons.
Next, go through the process of looking at each area and determine what activities drive the results you need in each category. Every area, every goal has a handful of activities that drive 90% of the positive results in each area. For example, working out hard with cardio and strength training, and eating right are the key fundamentals for building a good body. These few fundamentals, or Simple Disciplines, are the things we'll focus on for the next 90 days. The Simples Disciplines, when executed consistently with passion and laser focus, will launch us to our goals, this year! Cut out all of the crap we waste time on. We feel busy doing them, but they add no value toward building our vision.
Stay plugged in. Act as if this were already real. Get into peak state every day.
Flip the Switch
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