Assessing Your Life Progress!

“…it is killing me, but very slowly!”

Helen sat in my office looking kind of smugly self satisfied as she told me about her important job, her large salary, the great employee benefit package she had, the substantial number of people reporting to her, and so on and so on.

When I asked her why she wanted to see me her face dropped like a large rock in a deep pond. Her expression quickly bottomed out and disappeared. Her eyes flushed with emotion as she said, “ I don’t know what is wrong with me!”

“What do you think is wrong?” I asked.

“I have so many reasons to be grateful…and not just my job…I have a great family, good health and close friends.”

Jokingly I said, “So what is missing is this paradise of yours?”

She looked me straight in the eye, “Ken, I don’t think I am progressing in the way I expected to…I don’t think I am any closer to what I wanted for me in life.”

Then as an after thought she said with the tears returning in full force, “I am bored, unfulfilled and have no clear purpose…and at times I feel like it is killing me, but very slowly!”

A common situation

Helen was clearly in crisis and she went on to resolve it. However, her situation is very common. Do you set personal goals you have yet to achieve? Do you feel overburdened by the pressure of poor decision making? Do you doubt ever accomplishing your dreams? Do you get side tracked with other people’s priorities instead of your own. Do you repeatedly postpone the actions required to work towards your goals? There are 13 easy ways to ensure you don’t get in Helen’s situation.

Three keys to designing your destiny.

You need to remind yourself and use three keys to getting you on the track to your own future.

First, to be or not to be, on purpose consciously.

You are always on your life purpose unconsciously, as is everyone else. You have never been off your purpose. Being unmotivated simply means not being clearly connected to your purpose and value system.

Because our universe has been able to sustain itself for billions of years everything in it has some function, some purpose in this sustainability. So every person is part of this sustained system and so has a special purpose to serve within it.

Knowing your purpose creates motivation.

Most people don’t make the time to find out what their purpose is while others do. Those who have found out have a high level of self motivation noticeable to others. What you need to do is simply move from an unconscious awareness of your purpose to a conscious one. By doing this you create the conscious motivation to take the risks involved.

You will notice right away when you are consciously purposeful. You have much more energy for what you are doing. You have more energy because you are linking your value system with your energy system. When they are linked more closely you experience more drive to move towards your goals.

Knowing your purpose creates Presence

People who know their purpose project Presence. Presence has three components: a Gratitude for your life; a Certainty of who you are and a Love of both the ups and downs of life. With Presence a person projects: ICE – Inspiration, Commitment and Energy – an inspired life; a commitment to it and an infinite energy for it.

Public examples of purposeful people include Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa and Stephen Lewis. There are purposeful people everywhere. They tend to describe their work and life with words which suggest a love for what they are doing. They seem inspired at times and to be tireless.

(Note: A simple process to uncover your purpose is available in our last newsletter’s Take Away Tool)

Second, to be able to articulate your values.

The second principle is know your values and be able to articulate them clearly. You have a collection of life experiences whose essence becomes your values. It is your version of what is good and bad in the world. It is very subjective but it makes sense to you. When you know your values you can use them consciously to make decisions about your future. Being decisive is critical to planning and manifesting your future.

Third, to be able to control your self talk.

The third principle is controlling what you say to yourself, your self talk. Everyone talks to themselves regularly. Self talk is one of our most important tools to build up or break down our self worth. Most importantly we control our self talk…no one else does…unless we agree to let them. So to create your own destiny demands you monitor and take control of what you say to yourself about yourself. Nobody beats us up as well as we do. In the same way no one can empower us like we can.

Setting and achieving goals is a three key system requiring you to understand and control yourself. This gives you the ability to ask yourself questions that link your goals to what is truly most important to you. Any goal you set aligned to your highest values will begin to unfold.

Check out our Take Away Tool below for the 13 questions which will help you achieve this today.

POINTS TO PONDER AND REMEMBER are:

Many people feel off purpose in their life.
You are on your life purpose unconsciously at all times.
You can be on your life purposely consciously if you uncover it.
It is vital to be consciously on purpose to create self motivation.
Being on purpose creates presence.
Presence creates gratitude, certainty and appreciation for who you are, what you do and what you have.
Presence requires monitoring and controlling your self talk.
Presence creates an inspired, committed and energetic life.

YOUR TAKE AWAY TOOL: “You Self Evaluation Questions for designing your destiny!”

Here are 13 questions to determine how skilled you are at designing your destiny.

1. Do you know the most valued areas of your life and if so list them right now?
2. Do you live each day knowing you are doing what you truly love doing?
3. When you set goals, do you see their links to areas of life most important to you?
4. Can you see your goals clearly in your mind?
5. Do you take consistent action steps towards your goals?
6. Can you see the incremental steps required to achieve your goals?
7. Can you see the realistic time frames required to achieve your goals?
8. Can you verbally articulate your goals with clarity and conciseness?
9. Are you seeing evidence your goals are coming true?
10. Do you feel inspired and enthused about the work to achieve your goals?
11. Do you have a written, detailed plan and strategy to achieve your goals?
12. Do you regularly evaluate and record the progress to your goals?
13. Do you ensure your self talk reflects your goals such as: “I love doing this! Or “I know how to do this!” or “I can do it!”

If you answered no to more than 3 of the questions above then it would be wise to make the time to learn the art of goal setting which enable you to design your own destiny.

Take action today and check out the resources available on my websites, sign up for our newsletter or attend one of our webinars or seminars. Transform your lack of focus into clear, disciplined and inspired drive, your hesitancy into certainty, your procrastinations into powerful actions and goal achievement.

Namaste,

Ken