The Master Plan – Do YOU have one?

Did you know that most people do not have a master plan? Do you have one?

If not, it might be a good idea to a) learn what a master plan is, and b) make one for yourself!

Master Plan – The Definiton

The broad but focused(!) line you want to follow to reach your goals. This is like a recipee for your personal fulfillment and happyness. It’s your road to success.

How to build a master plan for yourself:

I tend to do things in a quite structured way, maybe you have a different approach, for me this works quite fine:

Step one: Create a list of your personal, spiritual, physical, emotional and financial goals for the next year – i.e. for 2008.

Step two: Now assign priorities for each goal, start with number 1 for the most important goal, and increase the number as the priority decreases. You can assign the same number to no more than two items!

Step three: Now predict by what date you will have achieved the goal with the highest priority, then do the same for all your other goals.

OK, this is it, you now have your own Master Plan.

Question: How will you achieve your goals, now that you have written them down?

Answer: I suggest you read through this blog, it’s a good starting point, I’ve touched many subjects related to reaching your goals already. You also should – correct my self- MUST listen to a few audio books to understand how much energy you have and how you positively CAN reach any goal you set yourself.

Start off with The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Rhonda Byrne) and then go on listening to Law of Attraction by Michael Losier .

Once you have listened to these two, I suggest you also download 50 self help classics a great audio book that brings you fifty more authors who all have very valid arguments for your success. By listening to these AND following their advice, you’ll be reaching your goals much faster than what you ever believed possible!

 

Fear of Failure – Loose Your Fear!

Some People tend to procrastinate because they are paralyzed with fear of failure, loss, pain and some even with fear of success!

What we fear becomes our reality! So it’s time to do away with fear of anything!

Here are few facts about fear and how it affects your life. Do you really want that?

• Fear is ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’.
• Over 90% of what we fear never becomes reality.
• The best way to overcome fear is to do what you fear.
• It helps if you visualize the worst case scenario and accept it as a possibility and realize it will probably never come to pass.
• Our imagination exaggerates negative fears out of proportion even though what you fear in most cases never occurs!

To overcome this fear and to turn your energies to more positive thoughts, I recommend you listen to the audio book ‘Fear and Other Uninvited Guests‘ by Harriet Lerner. She has written a great manual that will help you see and guide you step by step to a more happy and relaxed life.

Unhappiness, says bestselling author Harriet Lerner, is fueled by three key emotions: anxiety, fear, and shame. They are the uninvited guests in our lives. When tragedy or hardship hit, they may become our constant companions.

With stories that are sometimes hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking, Lerner takes us from “fear-lite” to the most difficult lessons the universe sends us.

No one signs up for anxiety, fear and shame, but we can’t avoid them, either. As we learn to respond to these three key emotions in new ways, we can live more fully and move into the future with courage, clarity, humor, and hope.

 

Discipline – 30 Days To Form A New Habit

Discipline is a word that, for many, carries a slightly negative air. It’s associated with pressure, with things you don’t want to do but have to do anyhow, with having to give up things etc.

Discipline can, however, be associated with plenty of great positive terms: Discipline allows you to reach your goals. By doing what is necessary at the times its necessary, you will see results in a relatively short time. By staying disciplined, you are also sure not to waste the efforts you make. If you loose discipline after a while and start to abandon your activities, you could just as well not have started, because often the initial efforts go to waste and will lead nowhere.

So if you think about it: Discipline is a good thing! Also remember, that if you want to learn a new habit or break an old one, it takes about 30 days until it’s established. So you need to repeat something new every day for 30 days, if you want it to stick and to become a new habit.

Here are a few hints that will help you build these new habits and make them stick:

• Write your new habit on a piece of cardboard, use bullet points and short descriptions of the actions that you want to make a habit of. Don’t try to achieve too much at the time, go step by step and build on your success after the first 30 days.

• Make two or three more copies of this cardboard. Now place these cardboard notes in strategic places where you are boudn to see them several times a day. Start wit the bathroom mirror in the morning, then maybe the kitchen, your desk, and finish with the bedroom to see the note once more before going to sleep.

This will keep on reminding you on what you want to achieve.

• Also keep a record of the times you actually completed the action, prepare the sheet for the next 60 days (changing the habit will take 30 days, re-affirming it further for an other 30 days will definitely fix it and you’ll have no problem to continue from there on). Every time you actually completed the task, you’ll check if off. Looking at this sheet will further motivate you as you see that you’re actually achieving what you decided to do and that you’re making progress towards your goal.

You’ll see that discipline is much easier to live than you ever thought.

… and if you think that it’s too tough, then I recommend you listen to this audiobook:

The Junction Boys – Jim Dent. The legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant is recognized nationwide as one of the greatest coaches ever. He drove a team of football players through the most gruelling training camp and forged them into a group that took this experience into their sport and that profited from it throughout their lifes. Paul Bryant drove home an extreme brand of blood-and-thunder discipline. In a calculated move that many consider the salvation of Texas A&M football, Bryant put his players through the most grueling workoutever imagined.

Once you have finished with this audiobook, you’ll feel that your small sacrifices to achieve a new habit are peanuts…. 🙂

 

Setting The Right Priorities – Eliminate Unimportant Things

Some people do not have a plan for the day or week, nor do they assign priorities. The result is shambles, things not done or not done in time, unhappy partners, family members  or clients etc. To have good intentions to do everything will end in disaster. Intentions are good, setting priorities is a lot better!

I’ve recently posted about goal setting and perfection. Both these disciplines come into play when setting the right priorities:

It’s not clever to plan the entire day or week and have every hour filled. If you do this you’ll start to overload and get into a pressure situation. Therefore when you do your “To Do” List, keep as much time as possible open, at least one third of a day should not be filled. Keep unassigned time for family, friends and yourself!

Take your Goals List and break it down into activities, add the dayly recurring activities and then look at the list again:

Ask yourself these questions:

• Does this task need to be done immediately, is it urgent?
• Is this task important?
• Is this urgent AND important?
• Is this task NOT important and NOT urgent?

Now order the tasks accordingly:

• URGENT AND IMPORTANT: Do these tasks first.
• IMPORTANT: Do these tasks next.

Eliminate the ‘not important’ tasks. They are time wasters and don’t bring you one step towards your goals. The 80 / 20 rules applies here too: Only 20% of all tasks are urgent and important. The other 80% don’t help you reach your goals!

It will take a bit of getting used to not doing everything you have on your initial list. But you’ll get better at this as you learn to select and judge what is really important to you. I can’t and don’t want to give examples here, because every person has his/her own priorities and goals. You’ll make mistakes at occasion, but that’s fine! We all make mistakes. So don’t let these mistakes stop you from making your “To Do” Lis.

Here’s an audiobook that might help you setting your own priorites better:

All of us are looking for practical ways to take control of our lives, whether in our personal relationships, our families, our work, our health, or our future plans. Daily challenges have a way of overwhelming us, making life harder than it needs to be. The good news is that the answers are out there. And they are Easier Than You Think: In the audiobook ‘Easier Than You Think’ Richard Carlson, Ph.D. tells you how to juggle the tasks without dropping the important ones.

 

Change The World By Changing Yourself

Maybe you have asked yourself what you can do to make this world a better place to live? Maybe you had even started to try to change the way others behave and live? Well, you’re up against a windmill…… Changing others is extremely difficult and and possibly frustrating. Why not start with yoruself?

“What I have learned is the only thing or person I can change…is ME. There is plenty of work to do right here and that requires a lot of energy and time and focus. I have learned that by changing me, by working every day to make myself a better person, I live a better life, and as my life becomes better….the world IS a better place. “

KathllenSue expresses exactly what personal development is all about.

This is also one of the central points that all of the people who have contributed to ‘The Secret’ say in one way or the other: Work on yourself and your environment will adapt.

 

Change Your Life with ‘The Secret’ by Rhond Byrne

Positive Thoughts and Focus does work: In ‘The Magic of Thinking Big‘, David Schwartz says: Believe you can succeed and you will: Cure Yourself of the Fear of Failure; Build Confidence and Destroy Fear; Use Goals to Help You Grow; Think Like a Leader.

In ‘Think and Grow Rich‘, Napoleon Hill reported the results of many years of intensive interviews with the most successful people of that time. Many of them believed that their thoughts physically changed the exterior world by opening the door to possibilities that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. Napoleon Hill presented the idea as expressed opinions, rather than as a proven fact. He also pointed to many other things that these people had done that helped them succeed. He reported that it takes more than just focusing on what you want: There are other steps involved such as working with a mastermind group.

Thus, what is suggested in ‘The Secret’ is correct, but it’s not just thoughts, it’s focus, determination and action that will bring along the final success. This does not mean that the book is wrong. As I mentioned earlier, one needs to listen to it with an open mind and one must not forget to think and use common sense. The mental attitude needs to be there, positive thinking is a prerequisite to succeed. But it’s not just that.

Listen to this audiobook ‘The Secret‘ by Rhonda Byrne and make your own decision whether you want to use the law of attraction for yourself!