“Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I read an article on Stepcase Lifehack on Why You Should Start Your New Year in February.  The main idea is to use January to recover from the holidays and make February your focus for getting down to business.

So, if you didn’t get the start you wanted in January, then don’t sweat it.  Instead, get ready to make things happen in February.   Use January as your time to plan things out, decompress from the holidays, and get clear on what you want out of the year.

I like this idea on multiple levels.   For one thing, it’s a forward-looking mental model.  Instead of trying to play catch up or worry about how you missed your great start in January, plan your great start for February. Rather than feel behind on things, you can feel on top of things.  It’s along the lines of, “If you miss the train, catch the next one.”, or, “I’m not late for today, I’m early for tomorrow.”

It’s this forward looking view on life that helps you rise above the noise, and take advantage of windows of opportunity.

To make the most of my months, I use 30 Day Improvement Sprints, a practice from Agile Results.  I pick a theme for the month, and I do a little something each day towards the goal.  It’s a simple way to keep taking action, a day at a time, and achieve big things.   I’ve used 30 Day Improvement Sprints to change habits, tackle tough challenges at work, work on personal projects, explore new interests, and learn new things.

If you’re looking for a way to make this year different, consider 30 Days of Getting Results.   It’s a timeless collection of little lessons you can use to get a fresh start and bring out your best.

Photo by Jack Bachelor.

“In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away.” — Shing Xiong

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Dia Thabet on lessons learned in life.  Dia’s specialty is setting and achieving goals.  In fact, he runs a site, 2AchieveYourGoals.com, which is dedicated to setting and achieving goals. While I’ve always been goal-oriented, I’m more of a river person with goals.  I find that a lot of success is serendipity in action, made possible by pursuing a path, but being open to possibilities.  I also like the growth that happens in the process, and I make sure I enjoy the journey, even when the path is tough and filled with challenges.  For me it’s always been a case where tougher the challenge, the sweeter the reward.  Without further ado, here’s Dia …

Everyone goes through life and learns various lessons. Some of the lessons are learned the hard way. Although we experience similar situations in life, each one of us views life and experiences differently.

The followings are 10 lessons that I have learned in my life:

Lesson # 1. Planning is essential if we want to succeed.
When I was a child, I never planned. I used to live day by day without having a clear plan on what I’m going to do. This changed when I started college. I learned that if I don’t plan, others will plan for me and that planning is a major key to success.

Once I started to plan what I’m going to do every day, I started to achieve my goals faster and I became more organized as well in my life.

Lesson #2. Look inside for happiness.
A long time ago, I used to think that material things like having fancy house, car, and traveling are the key to happiness. Boy, how wrong I was. As I started achieving material things in my life, I found that my happiness didn’t increase much. For sure material things add to my happiness, but I’ve learned that if I want to be truly happy then it has to come from within. It is a state of mind and it is up to me to make myself happy.

Lesson # 3. Mistakes are experiences and opportunities.
When I was a child, I used to get upset at myself every time I make a mistake and feel embarrassed. I used to think of mistakes as something horrible and sign of weakness.

Again, after I started getting into the personal development field, I learned that mistakes are really nothing more than opportunities and are necessary part in success. Now, whenever I make a mistake, I view it as an experience and an opportunity that has a lesson for me to learn.

Lesson # 4. Life is sweet.
When I was a child, I grew up in an environment where almost everybody kept saying life is hard and it is full of suffering. I must say that I believed them. It wasn’t until I began in the search of self improvement at the end of the 1990s that I was able to change my limiting belief about life.

I learned that it is up to me how to see and view life. It all starts with my thoughts and the way I look at the world. I started to look at life in a beautiful way and see the positive side in life.

Lesson # 5. Knowledge is power.
Like many children, I didn’t know the importance of knowledge as a child. As a child, I didn’t really care to learn much or to read much. Probably like most children, I only cared about playing.

It wasn’t until I started going to college that I realized that knowledge is power and I can use this knowledge to help myself and others. I started reading as many books as possible, although 99% of the books that I read were about self improvement and personal development.

Lesson # 6. We can’t change people.
Just like most people, I tried to change some people’s behavior whether it is a friend, family member, or colleague. What I learned is that I can affect others, but it is up to that person to change. I can’t change anyone. Change comes from within, not by force or because I want to.

Lesson # 7. Life is a choice we make.
I have learned that instead of playing the victim and blaming people and my circumstances, I always have a choice and I should take responsibility for my life. I have learned when I blame people or circumstances, my life will be filled with negativity.

Since I learned my life can’t improve by blaming others and that I have a choice, I began to understand that there is more than one interpretation for everything in life. I started to choose the positive interpretation for every event in my life and yes it is up to me to choose the positive over the negative.

Lesson # 8. Visualization is powerful.
Visualization is something that I haven’t learned as a child. Basically it was not taught to me. When I discovered the power of visualization, my life has changed dramatically in a positive way. I started to visualize my goals every night before I go to sleep and that helped me focus more on what I want to achieve in life instead of focusing on what I don’t want.

Lesson # 9. Our thoughts control our emotions.
Limiting beliefs are based on my thoughts. I learned that every event and situation has at least two interpretations, one positive and one negative. I realized that most of our thoughts humans are negative because we tend to interpret events in a negative way.

I learned that if I want to overcome negative thinking and programming, I have to examine my beliefs and start choosing the positive interpretation in situations and circumstances. After all, if I control my thoughts, then I can control my emotions.

Lesson # 10. We can achieve everything we want in life.
When I started reading self help books back in first year in college, I used to read and not apply what I read into my life. As you might have guessed, I didn’t accomplish a lot of my goals. It was only when I made a solid decision to take serious and massive action to achieve all my goals that my life has improved for the better and started to see positive results.

One of the major things that I accomplished by taking massive action is improving my singing voice. When I started taking singing lessons, I made a commitment to practice daily for around an hour and my singing voice in returns improved and got a lot better.

The important lesson that I learned is that everyone can achieve all their goals if they put what they learn into action. With being persistent and taking action, success will be knocking on your door.

Photo by Nono Fara.

I watched a video by Zig Ziglar on setting goals, and his goal setting formula has to be one of the most powerful and precise  that I’ve seen:

“Write it down, put a date on it, listed the obstacles I had to overcome, identified the people, the groups, the organizations I needed to work with, spelled out a plan of action, set that time limit in there, and identified all the benefits to me.  It was only when I did that, that the goal became a reality.”

Are you a goal person or a river person?  Goal people layout a roadmap of goals and set out to achieve them.  River people, on the other hand, go with the flow.  They live for the moment and don’t worry too much about the future.  Neither is good or bad, or right or wrong.  They’re just different approaches for the journey of life.

In the book,Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW! , Stephen M. Shapiro writes about goal people and river people.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• There’s two types of people: goal people and river people.  Earl Nightingale, chairman of Nightingale-conant and personal development leader originally explained there are two types of people: goal people and river people.
• Chuck Frey provides a good perspective on the difference.  Chuck Frey, founder of innovationtools.com explained the difference to Shapiro (below).
• Goals vs. opportunities.  Goal people layout a roadmap of goals.  River people seek out learning opportunities and experiences.
• Achievement vs. experience.  Goal people seek out achievement.  River people seek out experience.
• Future-oriented vs. living in the moment.  Goal people are future oriented.  River people live for the moment.

Goal People
Goal people create a path of goals, objectives and timetables.  Shapiro writes:

Most of us are undoubtedly familiar with goal people.  They are the individuals who write down their objectives and timetables  for reaching them, and then focus on attaining them, one by one.  By laying out a roadmap of future achievements in front of them, goal people give their creative minds a clear set of stimuli to work on.  Their subconscious minds can then go to work incubating ideas and insights that will help them to reach their goals.

River People
River people lead a more unstructured life.  They seek out learning opportunities and experiences.  Shapiro writes:

River People, on the other hand, don’t like to follow such a structured route to success.  They are called river people because they are happiest and most fulfilled when they are wading in a rich river of interest – a subject or profession about which they are very passionate.  While they may not have a concrete plan with measurable goals, rive people are often successful because they are so passionate about their area of interest.  This, in turn, helps them to recognize, breakthrough opportunities that may not even be visible on the mental radar screens of the more narrowly focused goal people.  River people are explorer, continually seeking out learning opportunities and new experiences.  For river people, joy comes from the journey, not from reaching the destination – exactly the opposite of goal people.  From the standpoint of creativity, river people are more likely to benefit from serendipity, because they tend to be more open to new ideas, points of view, and insights than single-minded, focused goal people.

Goal-Free People
Goal-free people choose a life of experience over achievement.  Shapiro writes:

River people are individuals who live life out of experience rather than achievement.  People driven by passion.  These are the goal-free people.  Goal-free people don’t necessarily live a life free from all goals.  They live from from the stranglehold of goals that grips so many people.  They live experientially in each moment.  A life of their design rather than that which society tells them to live.  They have a deep appreciation for what they are today; they avoid worrying about the future.

My Related Posts

• How To Figure Out What You Really Want
• When It’s Cold Shiver, When It’s Hot Sweat
• What You Become By Reaching Your Goals
• Step Into Your Future
• PRIEST for Well-Formed Outcomes
• Productivity Objectives

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer

If your business doesn’t have productivity objectives, it doesn’t have direction.  If your business doesn’t have productivity measurements, it doesn’t have control. 

I think the meta-point is, assuming both businesses produce effective results, the more efficient one wins in the long run.  That’s consistent with my experience.  I think another important point here is that if you focus on your productivity, you can usually find a lot of opportunity for innovation in your processes.

In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker explains that productivity is the best yardstick for comparing management effectiveness.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Results are the best way to compare effectiveness.  Productivity is the best tool for comparing effectiveness.   Your yield is directly related to the effectiveness and efficiency of your production.
• Quality of management is a key differentiater.  The quality of management differentiates one business from another in the same field.  It’s a game of survival of the fittest. 
• Focus on continuous productivity improvement.  Management’s most important job is continuous productivity improvement.   This leads to innovations.  Being productive doesn’t necessarily mean making more things, it means producing more of the right results efficiently.

Productivity is the Best Yardstick
Productivity is the best tool for comparing management effectiveness across your enterprise.

Drucker writes:

“A productivity measurement is the best yardstick for comparing management of different units within an enterprise, and for comparing managements of different enterprises.”

Productivity is the Degree to Which Resources are Utilized and Their Yield
The quality of management differentiates one business from another in the same field. 

Drucker writes:

“All businesses have access to pretty much the same resources. Except for the rare monopoly situation, the only thing that differentiates one business from another in any given field is the quality of its management on all levels. The first measurement of this critical factor is productivity, that is, the degree to which resources are utilized and their yield.”

Continuous Productivity Improvement
Management’s most important job is continuous productivity improvement. 

Drucker writes:

“The continual improvement of productivity is one of management’s most important jobs. It is also one of the most difficult; for productivity is a balance among a diversity of factors, few of which are easily definable or clearly measurable.”

Labor is Only One Factor
According to Drucker, there’s three major resources when you’re considering productivity objectives: land, labor and capital.  Drucker writes that you can’t let labor make the other resources less productive:

“Labor is only one of the three factors of production. And if productivity of labor is accomplished by making the other resources less productive, there is actually loss of productivity.”

Objectives are Direction, Measurement is Control
Productivity is central.  You need to be able to measure productivity, or you don’t really have control.

Drucker writes:

“Productivity is a difficult concept, but it is central. Without productivity objectives, a business does not have direction. Without productivity measurements, it does not have control.”

My Related Posts

• Social Responsibilities Objectives
• How Much Profitability Do You Need?
• Four Needs of the Organization
• Process Orientation Over Product Orientation

Photo by kelsey e.

Two Groups in the Same Camp
Feldman writes:

“One of the best examples of how group goals can influence group formation comes from a now-classic field study held in a boy’s summer camp named Robber’s Cave (Sherif, 1966). Two groups of missle-class 11- and 12-year-olds – none of whom knew that he was in an experiment – were settled in opposite sides of the camp. Each group was unaware of the other group’s existence. To develop the two campsites into groups, the experimenters arranged for the boys to engage in activities that could only be carried out by group efforts, such as carrying a heavy canoe into the water or cleaning a dirty beach so that it was suitable for
use. Quite soon, each campsite evolved into what could clearly be called a group. They gave themselves names (the “Rattlers” and the “Eagles”) and they developed particular patterns and standards of behavior unique to each group.”

Wicked, Disturbed and Vicious
Feldman writes:

“Once the two groups had been established, the experiments tried to develop competition. To do this, they developed a tournament of games in which the two groups competed for a series of prizes that only one group could win. The researchers got more than they bargained for: beyond the tournament. The groups picked fights, raided each other’s campsights, and generally behaved in a manner that lead the researchers to feel that, to an outside observer, the children appeared as “wicked, disturbed, and vicious bunches of youngsters” (Sherif, 1966, p. 58). “

Superordinate Goals
Feldman writes:

“In an attempt to reduce the intergroup conflict, the experimenters at first tried a number of strategies that proved ineffective. Arranging for pleasant experiences, such as watching a movie, only provoked more fighting as soon as the lights were dimmed. Moral exhortation proved useless. Even the introduction of a third group, which was supposed to act as a kind of common enemy, was ineffective. One thing did work, however: the introduction of a superordinate goal. Reasoning that it was common goals that led to the formation of the groups initially, the researchers thought that the introduction of goals that were common to both groups – superordinate goals – might be effective in uniting the two groups. This time, they were right. ”

Crisis Brings the Groups Together
Feldman writes:

“The experimenters arranged for a series of emergencies. For instance, the water supply broke down, and the boys had to work jointly if they wanted to have water to drink. After a number of such events, group hostility was eventually reduced, friendships developed across group lines, and the superordinate goals became effective in unifying the previously hostile groups.”

Key Take Aways
I think we’ve all seen crisis bring folks together. At work I often run into groups competing against each other for limited resources or territory. Common goals are a higher level bring groups together. When that’s not possible, it’s important to take away the threat, to reduce cross-group hostility. One way to do this, if the space is large enough, is to carve out a niche, to reduce the turf wars. Everybody gets a place to play and they respect each other’s boundaries.

“Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build.” — Robert Collier quotes

What if you could step into your future, experience your success, and look back on how you got there? What if you could do a dry run or walkthrough of your future accomplishments and actually feel your results?

In Brilliant Nlp: What the Most Successful People Know, Say & Do, David Molden and Pat Hutchinson write about a simple but effective technique from their Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) experience, that you can use to visualize your success.

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Do a dry run of your future. Mental simulation is a great way to do rapid pattern matching. Stepping through your future and asking your mind how you got there, puts your mind into a resourceful state. It goes into problem solving mode. You might be surprised at the results.
• Incrementally render your future. You can frame out your future and gradually add detail. Framing out your future will help you figure out the big rocks before getting stuck in details. You can add detail over time.
• Iterate on your future. Doing multiple dry runs might be better than getting stuck on trying to figure out too much. The more you do it, the easier it will get and the more you’ll think of.
• Pay attention to surprises. Maybe the grass isn’t greener on the other side of the hill. Maybe it doesn’t feel like you thought it would, and you really want something else. Maybe you find you’re missing key skills or abilities. Use the experience for reflection and consider whether you really want another path.

Summary of Steps

• Step 1. Mark a Space on the Floor to Represent Now
• Step 2. Walk to a Point in the Future and Take a Look Back.
• Step 3. Walk to a Point Further in the Future and Take a Look Back.

Step 1. Mark a Space on the Floor to Represent Now
Find a place on the floor to start from.  This place represents “now.”

Molden and Hutchinson write:

“Find a quiet space where you can visualize the journey of achievement. Mark a space on the floor to represent ‘now.’ “

Step 2. Walk to a Point in the Future and Take a Look Back.
Take a step into your future.  Walk to some point on the floor that represents your future.  Then stand on that spot and take a look back and feel your success.  Imagine you achieved all of your outcomes.

Molden and Hutchinson write:

“From this space walk to a point on the floor a particular distance away to represent the time you think it will take to achieve your outcomes. Stand on this point and look back to ‘now.’ Spend some time feeling what it’s like to have achieved all your outcomes.”

Step 3. Walk to a Point Further in the Future and Take a Look Back.
Walk to a next point on the floor that represents a time even further into your future.  Imagine you have achieved all your outcomes.  Feel your success.  Visualize what you did to achieve your outcomes.

Molden and Hutchinson write:

“Next, walk a little further into the future and turn around. Look back to ‘now’ again and visualize what you did to achieve your outcomes. Make sure your internal language is in the past tense. Once your mind has grasped the idea that you have already succeeded, visualizing what you did as opposed to what you have to do is a much more creative, insightful and far less stressful process. It’s very powerful, and great fun too.” 

My Related Posts

• PRIEST for Well-Formed Outcomes
• How To Figure Out What You Really Want
• How To Visualize Success
• Fear of Becoming Who You Truly Are
• How To Paint a Future Picture

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” — Jimmy Dean

The acronym PRIEST provides a framework for evaluating outcomes.   Outcomes is another way to say goals or “results” but with more precision.   It’s a way to walk through what you want to accomplish and map out your results with precision and detail.  The better you can visualize, talk about, and feel your success, the more you stack the deck in your favor.

In Brilliant Nlp: What the Most Successful People Know, Say & Do, David Molden and Pat Hutchinson share the PRIEST framework for well-formed goals.

Why PRIEST
PRIEST is an acronym to make it easier to remember how to create well-formed outcomes.  According to Molden and Hutchinson, PRIEST is a way to clarify your goals with precision and accuracy:

• P is for Positively Stated.
• R is for Resources
• I is for Initiated and Maintained By Self
• E is for Ecology
• S is for Sensory Evidence
• T is for Time.

Summary of Steps for Using PRIEST

• Step 1.  State Your Goals in the Positive (the P in PRIEST)
• Step 2. Identify the Resources You Need (the R in PRIEST)
• Step 3. State Your Outcome in a Way that’s Initiated by You (the I in PRIEST)
• Step 4.  Check the Ecology (the E in PRIEST)
• Step 5. Identify Your Sensory Evidence (the S in PRIEST)
• Step 6. Identify the Time Frame (the T in PRIEST)

Step 1.  State Your Goals in the Positive (the P in PRIEST)
State your goals in a positive way.  It’s about what you want, not what you don’t want.  The mind is not good with processing “not” or “no.”
Molden and Hutchinson write:

“A feature of the human mind is its inability to process a negative. Consider the following instruction, "whatever you do, do NOT think about a pink elephant," Oh! Too late, you thought about one didn’t you? We know you did because you have to think of the thing you are not supposed to think about! Beware of your capacity to "get what you focus on." If your main focus is on what you don’t want you may end up getting it! Make sure that your outcomes are clearly stated in the positive — in other words what you do want, not what you don’t want (a pink elephant.)”

Step 2. Identify the Resources You Need (the R in PRIEST)
Identify the resources you have, and the resource you need.  This includes both internal resources, as well as external one.
Molden and Hutchinson write:

“This includes internal as well as external resources. Do you have the courage, confidence, staying power, commitment, determination and other internal resources you may need to succeed? If not there are NLP techniques you can use to acquire them. What external resources will you need – finance, people, knowledge?”

Step 3. State Your Outcome in a Way that’s Initiated by You (the I in PRIEST)
State your goal in a way so that it is for initiated and maintained by you.  Focus on what you control.  If it’s beyond your control, then reset your expectations and adjust your outcomes accordingly.  The key is to stay empowered.
Molden and Hutchinson write:

“Is the achievement of this outcome totally in your control or does it depend on something outside your control? You may want to adjust your outcome if you are not fully in control. Even if you involve other people to help you, make sure you keep hold of the responsibility for your choices, even when things don’t go according to plan.”

Step 4.  Check the Ecology (the E in PRIEST)
Take a look at the bigger picture.  Map out the bigger system or situation that this is part of. 
Molden and Hutchinson write:

“Have you considered the consequences of achieving your outcome? What are the likely impacts on other people and other aspects of your life? Are they acceptable to you? This is known as an ‘ecology check.’”

Step 5. Identify Your Sensory Evidence (the S in PRIEST)
Identify how you will know when you’re done.  This includes using your senses, such as what you’ll see or hear.
Molden and Hutchinson write:

“What sensory evidence will tell you that you have successfully achieved your outcomes? What will you hear? what will you see and how will you feel? Take some time to imagine how things will be in the future having achieved what you set out to achieve. How will you know you have been successful?”

Step 6. Identify the Time Frame (the T in PRIEST)
Identify the timeline or timeframe for your goals.  This pins your outcomes in a way that you can use to prioritize or to pace yourself.
Molden and Hutchinson write:

“What timescale are you working to? How long will it take you to achieve all the outcomes attached to your goal? If you write out your goals it is very easy to miss something.”

Key Take Aways
Here are my key take aways:

• Leverage sensory evidence. I think this is a hidden gem. Hard measures aren’t always the best way to show progress, particularly when it’s not obvious or it’s tough to measure. For example, if you’re losing weight, what you see and feel might be more promising feedback than what you see on a scale. On the flip side, if you’re not seeing or feeling results, your approach might not be working and it might be time to change your approach.
• Leverage your resources. I think this is another key to success. I see too many people go it alone without figuring out what they need, beyond just motivation. Knowledge is key. One of the most effective ways to succeed is to use reference examples and model their success. Mentors are all around you. Figuring out the resources you’ll need up front can really help you over hurdles downstream, particulary if your lacking a resource like knowledge.
• Focus on what you want. This sounds obvious, but it’s easier to stay on course if you keep your attention on where you’re going versus where you don’t want to go.
• Know how the system will react. I really like the ecology check. You can affect a lot of change in your sphere of influence. Anticipating what the downstream chain of reaction might be, can be motivating or it might inspire you to take a different course.
• Use time to your advantage. Do you need to be a tortoise or a hare? Is is a marathon or a sprint? Can you chunk it up and get incremental results sooner? Do you personally thrive on building momentum? Can you scale back Rome? Keeping perspective on time, anticipating results, and choosing the right pace go a long way for effective results. One of the most important things to remember is that consistent action over time produces profound change. Most of the meaningful changes you want probably go beyond a short-burst effort.

My Related Posts

• What You Become By Reaching Your Goals
• How To Paint a Future Picture
• How To Figure Out What You Really Want
• How To Overcome Resistance
• Fear of Becoming Who You Truly Are

“Retail department store founder J.C. Penny declared, “Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I will give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal and I will give you a stock clerk.” Penny recognized the power and importance of goals. While you work on them, they work on you. And what you get by reaching your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by reaching them. ”

My Related Posts

• How To Figure Out What You Really Want
• Fear of Becoming Who You Truly Are
• Skills for the Road Ahead

What if you spend your years climbing the corporate ladder, only to find that your ladder was up against the wrong wall? What if money can’t buy what you’re really looking for? What if there’s a simpler or more effective way to get what you want? In Work from the Inside Out: Seven Steps to Loving What You Do, Nancy O’Hara writes about an approach to help you figure out what you really want.

Key Take Aways
I had several take aways from this particular approach:

• Frame out work goals, relationship goals, feeling goals, and thinking goals. I think a lot of goal setting exercises that people are taught tend to be pretty limited. I like the fact that O’Hara frames out the goals into meaningful buckets. I think this is the key to figuring out the real drivers behind some goals.
• Unmasking your goals is a key step for clarity. The goal behind the goal is what’s important. I particularly like the unmasking process O’Hara lays out.
• Make the process as meaningful as the outcome. The pursuit needs to be as meaningful as the accomplishment. My favorite line from her steps is “…And decide, since it is so important to have this thing, that everything along the way you must do to get it will be as important, as valued and as pleasing as the thing itself…”. For me, the most important message in this is that the process of achieving the goal is as important as the goal itself. It makes the day to day meaningful. If you know you’re moving towards what you want, which may require sacrifice, but you are aware of what you are trading, the path becomes more rewarding. See Process Over Product Orientation.
• Results are instant. As soon as you know your are on your path, every step on your path is the right one. Martin Luther talked and walked his dream – his pursuit was as meaningful as his accomplishments. In one night, Ebenezer Scrooge got to see his past, present and future. He didn’t like his future. He started living the life he wanted to lead the next day.
• Purpose and passion get you back up on your your horse. Life happens. We got knocked off our horses. The trick is getting back on. Having clarity in what you want and passion in what you do, helps you get back on your horse. If you’re not confident in your path, it’s easier to get knocked off your horse and even tougher to get back on.
• Check that your ladder is up against the right wall. Having clarity on what you want, helps you choose more effective strategies. if you know what you really want, you can choose more effective strategies.
• Mitigate the risks of having a life of regrets. Scrooge didn’t like his outcome. He immediately chose a more caring approach with the people in his life and changed his destiny.
• Maybe you’ve had it all along. When I read this line “…Absorb yourself in these details, enjoy the process of getting to it, and maybe when you get there it will feel as though you’ve had it all along …” I can’t help but to think of Dorothy when she got back home, and realized there’s no place like home.

Work Goals, Thing Goals, Feeling Goals and Thinking Goals
How do you figure out what you really want? What do you really want at work? What tangible things do you want? What relationships do you want? What feelings do you want more of (or less of)? What states of mind (such as peace of mind) do you want more of?

Finding the Goal Behind the Goal
Identifying what you really want can be tricky. The pursuit of a tangible goal, such as a Ferrari, might be masking a feeling goal (more freedom, feeling of competence or feeling of success.) Chasing that Ferrari might cause you a lot of stress in your life, when maybe all you needed to do was go fishing. Maybe there’s another strategy to drive Ferraris (e.g. maybe a lot attendant at a rich club.)

Steps For Figuring Out What You Really Want
O’Hara writes the following steps:

1. Write a random and comprehensive list of all the tangible things you would like to have that you don’t now have (in no particular order.)
2. Now prioritize the list by placing numbers before each item, with the number 1 being assigned to the most desired thing.
3. Then for the top ten items on the list assign a number from 1 to 5 that indicates the intensity of your desire, with 1 being low and 5 being high.
4. For each of the ten items write a paragraph or two about how having them would change or not change your life and how not having them now affects your life.
5. Repeat exercises 1 to 4 with a list of intangible things you would like to have in your life. (This could include relationships, feelings, states of mind.)
6. Repeat exercises 1 to 4 with work-related desires (perhaps your ideal job, a new boss, a different schedule.)
7. On a separate piece of paper write down the most-desired thing from each list and put it aside for the moment. Then collect all the pages you’ve written on to complete the exercise in this section and make a ritual of burning or otherwise destroying them. Choose a time when you can be alone. Read over (preferably out loud) what you’ve written and sit quietly, absorbing the extent of your own desires and the dissatisfaction they’ve created. Then shred the papers into tiny pieces and/or safely burn them. As you watch them disappear, imagine your desire for them also going up in smoke. Be willing — even just for the time it takes to do this exercise — to let them go.
8. Afterward sit quietly again and absorb the impact of this ritual. Write about the feelings it evoked and what effect, if any, it had on your wish list.
9. Now look at the three desires you wrote down and set aside. Is your level of desire for these things the same as it was when you first wrote about them? Concentrate on the work-related desire and write about what you could do to attain it. And if it still feels that your life will be more complete with it than without it, then make a plan that will move you toward getting it. And decide, since it is so important to have this thing, that everything along the way you must do to get it will be as important, as valued and as pleasing as the thing itself. Each act, each chore is a part of the thing itself because without them you cannot have it. If you see each of those things in this way, then you will see that in the doing of these things you already have them. Absorb yourself in these details, enjoy the process of getting to it, and maybe when you get there it will feel as though you’ve had it all along

Additional Resources

• How To Discover Your Life Purpose in About 20 Minutes (Steve Pavlina)
• The Power of Clarity (Steve Pavlina)
• Deciding What To Do With Your Life (Steve Pavlina)

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