Monitoring Your Determined Life Journey

Creating Your Weekly Solitude Hour

As the first weekend of 2016 comes to a close, many people are working on their New Year's Resolutions and other lists of goals and objectives for this brand new year. 

Others may be thinking longer-term, and creating their Project You Life Journey paths for the next 3-5 years, or perhaps even longer.

Either way, once you have outlined your goals and action plans, do not cast these in stone or think that they cannot be modified or amended. 

As unforeseen opportunities and unexpected hurdles come your way, your path will need to be occasionally (and sometimes frequently) altered and revised.

A person who rigidly sticks to an initial Project You Life Journey road map is likely to miss out on the benefits for self development and growth that result from such unplanned opportunities. For instance, an unexpected job opportunity in another location or country might offer both tremendous career advancement and personal development opportunities. To reject the job offer solely because it is not in one's road map would be foolish (although rejecting it for other reasons would be valid).

Similarly, a person may find it a struggle to surmount obstacles blocking their path. The wrong approach would be to abandon their goals simply because their road map dictates only one direction to proceed. As an example, if someone is unsuccessful at auditioning for a role in a community play, they could see this as a key obstacle. On the other hand, if they volunteer to be the stage manager for the production, they can still retain some involvement in the play, enabling them to perhaps learn more about the craft of acting through listening to the instructions of the director and watching more skillful actors rehearse and perform.

Perhaps the best methodology for monitoring your Project You Life Journey progress is to allocate time on a biweekly or weekly basis for a personal Solitude Hour. 

This would be a dedicated time of reflection devoted strictly to monitoring your Project You Life Journey.

In effect, your Solitude Hour would be an internal conversation with your spirit, doing a "gut check" on your progress and validating how well your actions, activities, thoughts, emotions, and feelings in the intervening time period have been aligned with both your path and your long-term dreams, hopes, desires and goals. 

All thoughts not associated with your Project Your Life Journey should be pushed aside during your Solitude Hour.

You should consider your Solitude Hour to be a regular appointment with your soul, a regularly scheduled chat session that has greater importance than any other engagement or meeting on your calendar. 

And speaking of being scheduled, put your Solitude Hour onto your schedule, just like any other appointment or call you schedule. Let nothing interfere with it. This is YOUR TIME for YOU. Hence block your schedule accordingly. 

Whatever your plans or goals are for this new year, we hope that you will begin to Live A Determined Life and have your best year ever. 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in Kindle and paperback formats at Amazon. 

Commitment Means Commitment To Action

Learn Commitment From Michael Jordan 

One of the things that made Michael Jordan such a fierce competitor is evident from one of his most famous quotes: "I can accept failure, but I cannot accept not trying."

Part of what Jordan is talking about in that quote is having a commitment to commitment ─ the commitment to try, to act, to overcome hurdles and blips encountered on the way, to go after your goals and dreams no matter what.

Commitment is what transforms dreams, hopes, goals, and desires into reality.

Here's another quote from Jordan about commitment: "I have always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don't do things half-heartedly because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results."

This level of commitment means doing the daily things you need to do to accomplish your goals and bring your dreams to reality, even when you do not feel like it (perhaps especially when you don't feel like it).

The key is to keep your goals in mind and understand that your daily activities are a means to an end. 

For instance, if your goal is to build your upper body strength, you will need to lift weights three times a week. Now, lifting weights three times a week is not your goal (building your upper body strength is), but merely the steps required to achieve your goal. So on days you feel too tired to lift weights, you have to tell yourself "in order to achieve my goal I must do my weights workout" and "I am not too tired to pursue my goals." That is what Jordan means about putting in whole-hearted work.

Commitment requires a commitment to action. You cannot become a howling success merely by howling!

A New Year is upon us. Make a commitment to being committed and 2016 will be a year you long remember. 

This article is excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon. 

Evaluating Your Life Satisfaction

Creating Your Determined Life Road Map 

There are seven aspects to a Project You Life (Your Personal Life, Your Professional Life, Your Family Life, Your Health and Fitness Life, Your Emotional and Mental Health Life, Your Spiritual Life, and Your Interconnected Life). 

You may not know the details of each of these seven core life aspects until you have read our book Project You: Living A Determined Life. So for know just use your intuition on what these seven aspects of life mean to you.

Rate how satisfied you are with each of these seven life aspects on the following scale using your own preconceived notions of what these aspects entail:

7 -- Highly Satisfied

6 -- Fairly or Moderately Satisfied

5 -- Satisfied

4 -- Neither Satisfied nor Dissatisfied

3 -- Dissatisfied

2 -- Fairly or Moderately Dissatisfied

1 -- Highly Dissatisfied

Next, review the vision you previously created (see previous blog post on Planning Your Determined Life Journey). 

Evaluate whether your vision incorporates all seven elements of a Project You Life. If any are missing, ask yourself why. Then decide whether the missing element or elements should be added to your overall vision and how.

After you have reviewed your vision for missing elements, assess the gaps between your vision and your current situation. Key areas to identify include:

Which gaps are the most important?

Which gaps will be critical for you to close?

Which gaps should be given priority? Why?

Which gaps will require assistance from others to close?

You are now ready to create a road map from your current situation to your desired state. Defining some parts of your path will come easy. Others will require more thought and effort. It is best not to shortchange yourself by trying to create your path too quickly.

As you write down your draft ideas on how to create your path, be sensitive to how your gut and heart feel as you record each one. This will be your spirit communicating with you and giving you an indication as to how aligned each option is to your spiritual needs. 

For the next three days, take 30-60 minutes in solitude to continue your reflection and thinking. What emotions are you feeling about your Determined Life Road Map? How strong are these feelings? Remember, the stronger the feelings, the more certain you can be that you are embarking on the right path and journey for you. 

This article is partially excerpted from the best-selling book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available in paperback and Kindle formats at Amazon. 

Planning Your Determined Life Journey

Questions to ask of yourself

One method to help your create and maintain responsibility and ownership for your actions is to proactively plan them. After all, if you plan your actions and activities, then you are certainly accountable for them.

Planning your Project You Life Journey is also important. For achieving your dreams, hopes, desires, and goals is unlikely to happen arbitrarily or randomly.

Additionally, planning a Project You Life Journey helps you to overcome the concerns, fears and anxieties you have about your personal hopes, dreams, desires, and goals.

The key step in planning your Project You Life Journey is to start with your hopes, dreams, desires, and goals in mind first.

Many people start their self-development planning process by painting a picture of where they currently are and then deciding which area or areas of improvement to tackle first. This is the wrong approach, especially when you look at life-long goals and desired outcomes.

You must start with a clear vision (or at least a semi-clear one) of what your dreams, desires and hopes look and feel like. What will bring you authentic happiness? What will achievement and success feel like to you?

Answering the several questions on your unique personal gifts and talents (see earlier post on Key Questions for Identifying and Understanding the Purpose of Your Life) is the first place to start. Then record any others that spring to mind.

Writing down what you believe to be your unique personal gift and individual talents will help you formulate a tangible view of your visions. Doing so also helps to provide clarity and understanding to what you believe to be your life's purpose.

Only after you have your personal vision firmly figured out is it time to make an assessment of where you are at the moment in your life's journey. The key questions to ask yourself for this stage are:

What are the positive aspects of your life that you can leverage going forward?

What are the negative aspects of your life that need jettisoning?

Who can you rely on for support?

Who is holding you back?

Which areas of your life need fine-tuning?

Which areas of your life need strengthening?

Which areas of your life need a major overhaul? 

You are now almost ready to create a road map from your current situation to your desired state. Defining some parts of your path will come easy. Others will require more thought and effort. It is best not to shortchange yourself by trying to create your path too quickly.

That is why the next step will be to rate your personal satisfaction with seven aspects of your life. We will discuss this step in the next Project You Life blog post.

In the meantime, reflect upon the vision you have for yourself. How does thinking about this make you feel? Excited? Nervous? Motivated? The stronger the feelings, the more you will know that you are on the right path to understanding how you want to Live A Determined Life. 

This article is partially excerpted from the book Project You: Living A Determined Life, available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.