I’ve been thinking of my life as a business.  Without getting too carried away with the analogy – after all, life’s way more than business – it gives me a helpful frame, along with patterns and practices, to draw from.  Rather than think of a business that makes money, I think of a business that creates value (the mark of an enduring business.)  In this case, value for yourself and others.
My life is my business.  I get to set the mission, vision, and values.  Through this lens I can decide who my customers are (myself, family, friends, community, employer, … etc.).  I can decide what my core capabilities will be, and how to invest my life force to flow value for others.  With this in mind, here are some guidelines for life inspired by business …
Top 10 Guidelines
Here’s my top ten to start things off:

• Live your values.
• Compete with yourself.
• Play to your strengths.
• Team up.
• Model the best.
• Productize yourself.
• Balance your portfolio.
• Follow the growth.
• Find a way forward.
• Flow value.

Life 2.0 Guidelines
Here’s a more exhaustive list along with elaboration.  You can drink from the fire hose, or tackle in steps, as you prefer.  I would suggest first reading it through to get the lay of the land, and then going back and spending more time on the points that resonate for you.  Enjoy …

• Live your values.   Values are the culture of a business.  That’s why sometimes it doesn’t feel right.  You want one thing, the business wants another.  Your best fits are where your values match and you can live your values on the job.  In life, when you live your values you feel strong.  When you compromise your values, you feel weak.  Living your values is a way to stay true to yourself.  It’s part of your authenticity.  See Finding Your Values.
• Invest in yourself.  You’re a good bet to invest in.  Sharpen your mind.  Craft your body.  Master your emotions.  Make time for yourself.   This includes think time and fun time.  See Life Frame.
• Unique differentiators.  A successful business stands out.  Its unique value to the market is obvious.  You bring unique value to the table.  Your mash up of skills, experience, and values are a unique combination.  Use your differentiation as a leverage point in your life.  Your unique differentiators can be the key to how you sell yourself in the market.  Are you the “get things done” or the “creative mind” or the “makes them smile” or … ?
• Track progress from time to time.  A business keeps a scorecard to measure its progress along the way.  In life, you can check yourself against your outcomes and objectives.  For example, do you have the right people in your life?  … Are you spending the right time and energy on your body? … Are you actually enjoying the things you do for fun? … etc.  See Tests for Success, Improvement Frame and Keys for Skilled Happiness.
• Play to your strengths.  A great business plays to its strengths.  Darwin and survival of the fittest are as true in business as in life.  Give your best where you’ve got your best to give.  Nature supports you.  In life, you can spend all your time working on your weaknesses, or you can play to your strengths and maximize your results.  Spending time in your strengths not only renews your energy, but it’s where you’ll get your best ROI.  See Give Your Best Where You Have Your Best to Give and Choose Your Jobs Based on Strengths.
• Perform a SWOT analysis.  SWOT is an abbreviation for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.  It’s an analysis tool to explore the overall strategic position of a business and it’s environment.  You can apply it to your life.  Simply list your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities, and threats.
• Assess and prioritize potential risks.  Every business opportunity has potential risks.  So does life.  This includes the risk of missed opportunities.   Take calculated risks.  Smart risks help you get more from life.  Remember the saying: ships are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.
• Create budgets.   Create budgets for your time.  This will help manage your energy and avoid spreading yourself too thin.  You can also use time as a forcing function to prioritize and to meet windows of opportunity.   See Timeboxes, Rhythms, and Incremental Value and How To Use Timeboxing for Getting Results.
• Balance your portfolio.  Diversified investment portfolios help reduce risk and maximize return.  You can do the same in life by spreading your life force across your key hot spots.  I use what I call my Life Frame: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun.  Investing in these areas helps me stay balanced and effective.  See Life Frame.
• Learn and respond.  Successful businesses learn and adapt.  They respond to feedback.  They test their results and continuously fine tune their approach.   You’re a living learning loop.  You have feedback all around you.  What’s it telling you?  See Working your business is working on your life.  See The Change Frame.
• Team up.  Successful businesses create partnerships.  In life, adopt a “better together” strategy.  Pair up with others that compliment your strengths and weaknesses.  Life is a team sport.  See How To Consistently Build a Winning Team and Outsource Your 80 Percent.
• Compete with yourself.  Successful businesses find ways to improve efficiency and effectiveness.  They raise their own bar.   Make it a game to improve your abilities.  Improve your super powers.  Find more effective ways of getting things done.  The secret is that when you compete with others, they’ll knock you down.  When you compete with yourself, others will lift you up.  Everybody wants to help the underdog that makes the most of what they’ve got.  Be YOUR best.
• Cost, differentiation, and focus.   According to Michael Porter, businesses can compete on cost, differentiation (unique capabilities along dimensions that customers value), or focus (best in class in a segment).  As a contributing member to society, you can use this lens to figure out your long term competitive strategy.  In this case, competitiveness roughly equates to your ability to survive in the marketplace.  For example, rather than compete on cost, how can you differentiate yourself?
• Know your target market.  A business has to figure out who its customers are and what channels it will use.  In life, you can figure out what arenas you can play in to maximize your results.  Changing where you play your game can dramatically change your game.  The world might seem like a big place, but at the end of the day, the most important impact on you is YOUR world.
• Know intrinsic value vs. the market value.  The intrinsic value of a glass of water might be negligible.  Take that same glass of water to the desert and the value just shot up.  Intrinsic values are lasting.  Market value fluctuates.  Think about the intrinsic values and market values in your life.
• Invest in innovation.  Experiment.  You never know where your breakthroughs will come from.
  Know what holds you back.  Every business has at least one bottleneck on its throughput.  So do you.  What holds you back the most?  Pushing this bottleneck around might help you unleash your best results.  See Theory of Constraints (TOC).
• Hire and fire the right people.   A business thrives when it’s got the right people.  Your life thrives when you’ve got the right people in it.  What people do you want in your life?  See Catalysts and Drains.
• You get what you reward.  A business gets what it rewards.  That same is true in life.  The idea here is that if you have an attitude of gratitude, reward your good behaviors and you’ll get more of them, appreciate the people in your life that do the things you like (or you’ll lose them or the behaviors.)  The key point is what gets ignored gets lost … use it or lose it.
• Find a way forward.  The market place changes.  Life’s not static.  Follow trends to see where things are going.  Sharpen your anticipation skills.  Respond to change and stay agile in your approach.
• Never get stuck.  Ask solution focused questions such as, “what’s my next best move?” or “how can I make the most of this” or “what’s the way forward?” or simply, “what’s the solution?” See Solution-Focused Questions.
• Model the best.  Successful businesses don’t start from scratch.  They model what works.  Every now and then somebody changes the game, but a lot of what works is proven patterns and practices.  Success leaves clues.  Find your mentors and models in life.  Mentors are one of your best short-cuts to avoid years of mistakes.  A lot of ideas sound good or look good on paper.  Mentors and models can help you filter through the vast amount of information.  See Capturing and Sharing Strategies, Eliciting a Strategy, and  Lessons Learned from Per.
• Know the business case.  A business case helps answer the question, does this investment make sense?  You can ask the same of your life investments.  See 3 Keys of a Business Case and How To Figure Out What You Really Want.
• Know the ROI.  Quit the right things and lean into the right dips.  See Lessons Learned from the Dip.
• Productize yourself.   A business can find economies of scale with a product strategy.  The right products also help service companies sustain through the downtimes.  You can turn what you know into information products, such as a book or an information kit or training.  Productizing yourself helps you decouple from time and break away from the grind.   It’s a great complement to a services strategy, since your products and services can help support.
• Focus on renewal.   A business that renews itself refuels for the future.  It cuts the dead wood and creates new opportunities.   Your energy is one of your most precious resources.
• Create a system that supports you.   A successful business is a system of inputs and outputs.   Map out your system.  This includes your inputs, outputs, and key processes.  One simple way to improve your system is to create and improve checklists for your common tasks.  Periodically review these to see how you can tune, prune, and optimize your key workflows.
• Flow value.   Any business with a sense of entitlement soon finds itself in trouble.  The market weeds it out.  Flowing value is a simple but effective way to stay focused, survive, and thrive.  See Timeboxes, Rhythms, and Incremental Value.
• Follow the growth.  A business thrives on growth.  It’s where the energy is.  Find the growth opportunities in your life.    See You Can Travel the Road of Success.
• Passion, profit, value.  A successful business finds the intersection of passion, profit, and value.  Making a profit without value or passion is unsustainable.   Look for the passions in your life that have the best profit potential.  You define what profit is: energy, financial, emotional, or whatever you choose.  If it’s not generating value, don’t expect to profit and don’t expect it to be sustainable unless it’s truly valuable for you.
• Think in terms of funding your life style.   Your lifestyle is a sliding scale of quality in different areas.  Everything is a trade-off and comes with a certain cost.  If you think in terms of funding your life style, you get clarity on what you need to make and why.  You can make conscious trade-offs by design.  It’s about shifting from a decision to get a job, make money, pay for costs, and use whatever is left for fun … to intentional design around your lifestyle and evaluating the trade-offs as a sliding scale … how much do you need to make for different lifestyles, and do you like the trade-offs those lifestyles demand?
• Ask what’s the minimum you need to make.  This is such a simple question, but it gives immediate clarity.  What’s the business need to make to stay around?  You can simply ask, “What’s the minimum you need to support your basic needs?”  This one question can put a lot of things in perspective very quickly.  See How Much Profitability Do You Need?
• Focus on sustainable results.  Unless you’re a fly-by-night business, you’re focused on the long-haul.  That means building trust, flowing value, and growing in a sustainable way.  In life, play for the long haul.  One of my mentors uses the following quote as a guide: “Live each day as if it were your last and plan to live 100 years.”  The key to sustainable results is playing to your strengths, following your passions, and living your values.  It’s also about finding effective metaphors, whether that means pacing yourself for a marathon or running a series of sprints within a longer race.  Test to see what works for you.  See Sustainable, Healthy Commitment.
• Know the cycle you’re in.  A business should know the maturity level of its market.  It should also know its maturity level in terms of people, process, and product.  A business also should know whether the market is in growth or decline.  When you know the cycle you’re in you can pace yourself.  You can anticipate a bad bet.  You can better understand whether you’re waxing or waning in specific areas and time your best moves.  See 4 Stages of Market Maturity.

As I see more businesses expand and contract, grow and die, I think of how we can borrow the lessons from business to find more growth and expansion in our lives, as well as renewal and sustainability.  Businesses are not static.  Neither is life.

Special thanks to Loren Kohnfelder for a very thoughtful review and really helping this post make a lot more sense.

My Related Posts

• You 2.0
• Finding Your Process
• Living Your Process
• Lessons Learned from the Dip
• Lessons Learned from the Bootstrapper’s Bible
• Testing Your Business Clarity

Photo by carf.

You 2.0 is a way to unleash a version of your best self.  It cuts to the chase to help you quickly find your purpose, your why, your how, your values, your strengths, and your personal success patterns.  Once you’ve mapped these out, you have a firm foundation to be your best in any situation.  By finding and living your process, you lead a life by design, not by default.

I call it You 2.0 because it’s about renewal and taking yourself to the next level.  A few years back, a friend of mine broke his back.  You can imagine the extreme scenario.  Rather than focusing on trying to get back to where he was, he focused on rebuilding himself to be better and stronger than before.  A version 2.0.

Why You 2.0
Here are a some key benefits:

• Success by design.  Rather than luck into success, you’ll know your personal combination for results.
• Living your purpose.  Nothing fuels life like knowing what you want.
• Living your values.  Living your values help you enjoy more moments in your life, a moment at a time.
• Playing to your strengths.  When you play to your strengths, you improve your energy, and you amplify your results.  It’s the simplest way to get more impact each day.
• Improved results.  You’ll improve your results.  A little self-knowledge goes a long way.  You’ll be a better, faster, stronger you for whatever you want.

The real secret is life gets better once you have your personal map.

Download the Free You 2.0 E-Book
The You 2.0 E-Book is a very short (25 pages) guide to help you be YOUR best.

• Download the You 2.0 Free E-Book

My Related Posts

• The Zen of Results Free E-Book
• Finding Your Process
• Living Your Process

Photo by aeter.

This is a follow up post to my previous post, Living Your Process.   I’ve had enough folks ask me how to map out their success process that I’ll share some more prescriptive guidance.  It’s a work in progress, but it’s enough to share for now.  The big idea with living your process is that it helps you make the most of what you’ve got.  It’s about living with passion and playing to your strengths.  It’s also about living your values whether it’s at work or at play.  It’s about knowing what fulfills you and what sparks you each day.  It’s about living from the inside out and leading yourself first.  When you know your purpose, live your values, and play to your strengths, you can deal with life’s curve balls more effectively.  You also set yourself up for success by getting more chances at bat and improving your chances of succeeding in any situation.

The Map
The map above is a bird’s-eye view of mapping out YOUR process.  Each of the nodes are opportunities for you to flesh out.  In other words, you can think of this as the tree and the branches and you add the leaves.  For example, you would add your purpose, your why, your how, your values, your strengths, your tagline, your metaphors, and your personal success patterns.  That’s YOUR map.  While the sum is more than the parts, an incomplete map is better than none. It’s OK to incrementally figure yourself out.  The more you know, the more you grow.

Why Find Your Process
Here’s some of the key benefits:

• Success by design.  Rather than luck into success, you’ll know your personal combination for results.  This is the ultimate key to skilled living.  If you know where you’re headed, it’s easier to find your way through the maze of life.
• Living your purpose.  When you’re living your purpose, every day has meaning.  If you know what you want, you can find the meaning in the things you do.  If you’ don’t feel you’re on your path, you can get on it.  Most importantly, If you get knocked off your horse, it’s easier to get back on.
• Living your values.  When you live your values, you enjoy more moments in life, a moment at a time.  When you know your values, you can make better choices about who to hang with and what situations to avoid.  Living your values is what makes you feel good.
• Playing to your strengths.  When you play to your strengths, you’ll improve your energy.  You’ll get stronger every day instead of weaker.  You’ll play at what you do.  You might even whistle while you work.
• Improved results.  You’ll improve your results.  A little self-knowledge goes a long way.  You’ll be a better, stronger, faster you for whatever you want. 

The simplest reason for finding your process is it helps you get your groove on and find your mojo.  If you feel like you’re in a slump, this may be just the map you need.  Make it a project and have fun with it.

How To Find Your Process

Here’s a summary of the key steps:

• Step 1. Find Your Purpose
• Step 2. Find Your Why
• Step 3. Find Your How
• Step 4. Find Your Values
• Step 5. Find Your Strengths

If you get stuck, move on to the next item.  It’s iterative and incremental.  To keep moving forward, simply ask yourself what you know, don’t know and need to know next.  Also, thinking on paper helps more than trying to just do it in your head.  Write stuff down so you can play around with it.

Step 1. Find Your Purpose
In this step, you figure out why you’re here.  Simply ask yourself the following question:

• What’s my purpose in life?

Keep asking yourself until something sticks.  You should have an emotional reaction and it should *feel* right.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  It doesn’t have to be what you expect.  It just needs to be good enough for now.  If it sounds corny when you say it, then change the words until it works for you.

Examples

• I’m the explorer who paves the path for others.
• I’m the mentor who helps people live more, laugh more, learn more, love more.
• I’m the coach who helps make others great.
• I’m the writer who helps people write their life story.
• I’m the developer who transforms the world.
• I’m the musician who makes people feel alive.
• I’m the poet who makes people think.
• I’m the researcher who finds the truth.
• I’m the bridge builder who connects people.
• I’m the mother who leaves my world a better place than I found it.

Checkpoint

• You have a one-liner way to say your purpose?
• Your purpose resonates for you?
• Your purpose is compelling?

Step 2. Find Your Why
In this step you find your Why.  This is about narrowing down on your motivation and key drivers.  Figuring out why you do what you do, helps reinforce your purpose.   It’s the why behind your purpose.  To find your why, ask yourself the following question:

• Why do you do what you do?

If you can’t distinguish your purpose and your why, it’s fine to consolidate for now.  The key is to know your purpose and know why you care.  If you know why you care, you’ll find it easier to drive your day from your passion as well as find creative ways to bake it into everything you do.

Examples

• Make others great.
• Share the world’s best patterns and practices for work and life.
• Lift others up.
• Change the world.

Checkpoint

• Does it resonate?
• Does it motivate you?

Additional Resources

• Why Do you Do What You Do?
• How To Figure Out What You Really Want
• Who Are You and What Do You Want?

Step 3. Find Your How
This really is your core approach or pattern for how you tackle things in life.  The better handle you get on your approach, the more you can leverage it time and again.   Think of it as your personal recipe for results.  The simplest way to find your approach is to examine the highlights in your life where you were at your best and think about your approach in those scenarios.

Example

1. Get a new perspective.
2. Create a framework.
3. Add the exponential.
4. See results.
5. Measure satisfaction.

Checkpoint

• You can write your approach down as a small set of steps?
• When you think through your steps, they resonate?
• It’s a pattern you’ve used to get results throughout your life?

Additional Resources

• Why Do You Do What You Do?

Step 4. Find Your Values
In this step you find your top 5 values.   Choose five values that matter the most to you:

• Are they truly YOUR values? 
• Are they a means or an end? 

If one value is simply to accomplish another, then look to the value you want to accomplish.  If you want economic security because you think it leads to freedom, then freedom is the one you value most.  This is important because there’s multiple ways to accomplish a goal and flexibility is key.  Know what you want, but be flexible in your approach.

• Finding Your Values

Step 5. Find Your Strengths
In this step, you identify your top 5 strengths.  To do so, ask yourself:

• What are you really good at?
• What comes naturally for you?
• What activities make you feel great?

Examples

• Making people smile.
• Reading a room.
• Arranging information in new ways.
• Stepping back and seeing the big picture.
• Helping people get new perspective on things.
• Connecting the right people together to solve problems.
• Taking on big challenges that have a lot of ambiguity.
• Making order out of chaos.
• Helping people find their best talents.
• Focusing on a problem until
• Coming up with new ideas.
• Turning ideas into results.

Checkpoint

• You have a list of 5 of your key strengths?
• Your list of strengths resonates?
• Your list of strengths makes you feel strong?
• Your list of strengths show your unique value?

Additional Resources

• Finding Your Key Strengths
• SIGN – The 4 Signs of a Strength

Tag Line / Motto

Your tag line or motto should be something that reminds you what you do and you find compelling.  It should be easy to say.  Here’s some examples:

• Crack the nut on human potential.
• Stand on the shoulders of giants.
• Make others great.
• Make the most of what you’ve got.
• Exponential results for the underdog.

Make it something punchy and precise.

Metaphors
Metaphors can be a simple way to empower yourself.  Choose the metaphors that work for you.  You can find a metaphor for yourself and for life.  Here’s some examples:

• Metaphors for you:  I’m a lover, I’m a fighter, I’m a healer, I’m a lion, I’m a bull, I’m a warrior, I’m a truth seeker, I’m a mentor, … etc.
• Metaphors for life:   Life’s a game, life’s a dance, life’s a tragedy, life’s an adventure, life’s a comedy, … etc.

Personal Success Patterns
You have patterns that work for you and patterns that don’t.  All you have to do is flip back through your past experiences and pay attention to what worked and what didn’t.  Look to patterns for thinking, feeling, and doing.  One way to start is to think of your best patterns that have worked for you for:

• Eating
• Sleeping
• Working out
• Feeling good
• Dealing with stress

Another way to find your patterns is to find the patterns that don’t work for you and contrast them with patterns that have either worked for you or that might work for you.  It’s easy to find some patterns you may have forgotten about for a long time.

Self-Awareness
Know thyself.  There’s several lenses you can use to get better perspective on yourself.  Here’s some of the keys:

• Learning Styles
• 5 Thinking Styles
• Satir Categories – Blamer, Placater, Computer, Distractor, and Level
• 7 NLP Meta-programs for Understanding People
• 6 Styles Under Stress
• Meta-programs and Intrinsic Values in NLP
• The Lens of Human Understanding
• Johari Window – Know and Share Yourself Enough
• 10 Types of Difficult People
• The 16 Myers-Briggs Type Indicators (MyersBriggs.org)

The more lenses you have the easier it gets to use the right tool for the job and to make sense of things.  A large part of life is making sense of the world.  Remember though, it’s not THE world, it’s YOUR world.  Your world is all the people you know, things you do, experiences you have, and everything else you come across throughout your life.  You’re the ultimate meaning maker for your world, so make the most of what you’ve got.

Conclusion
Map out your process and lead the life you want to live.  You can do it one moment at a time.  It’s living your process that will keep you going and help you make the most of each and every situation.   It’s your personal recipe for results.  Your map is a living document and you can add to it and refine it over your life time.  It will be one of your best tools as you chart your life.  Sail on and soar on, upward bound and forward looking.  Find a way forward.  You always do.  Now you have a better lens for unleashing your best.

My Related Posts

• Living Your Process
• Why Do You Do What You Do?
• How To Figure Out What You Really Want
• Rituals for Results

I’m a fan of “living your process.”  To put it another way, this is about “approach over results.”  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of results.  The problem is you can’t control all the events in your life or what happens to you.  In life, you control your attitude and response … and it’s not what happens to you, but how you react.

In this post, I’m summarizing some of the best of the best of what I know about making the most of what you’ve got and being YOUR best.  This isn’t about perfection or idealistic living.  This is about real living for real people.  It’s about unlocking your personal combination for results and unleashing your inner awesome.  if you’ve put other people or their lives on a pedestal, those are nice trophies, but now it’s time to start living the world on your terms, finding your unique strength, and living your values.  Life’s not a spectator’s sport.  It’s meant to be lived.  While there’s tons of roadmaps, only you can make the journey.  Pack your bags with your greatest assets (which you’ll find in this post), and head out.  When life happens, and you get knocked off your horse, get back on.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and carry forward lessons learned.  Life is full of lessons waiting to be learned.

Living Your Process
Living your process is really about living life on your terms.  It’s also about leveraging the timeless patterns and practices that have worked well for others.  I think the keys to living your process are:

• Purpose. Know your purpose.  See Vision, Mission, and Values for some ways to think about this.  It’s tailored for business, but you can adapt it for your life.  I have an example of my vision, mission, and values in my About  page which can also help.
• Why.  Know why you do what you do.  This is the why behind the why.  One technique for finding your “why” is the Golden Circle.  For more on the Golden Circle, see Why Do You Do What You Do.
• How.  Know how you do what you do.  Identify your personal success patterns.  If you flip back through your life, you can review what’s worked for you and what hasn’t.  Carry the good forward.  The Golden Circle technique also helps you figure out your personal success patterns.  For more on the Golden Circle, see Why Do You Do What You Do.
• Values.  When you live your values, you feel good.  It’s that simple.  First, you need to know what your top values really are.  You have a lot of values, but you want to know the top values to optimize your life around.  Once you know your values, your next move is to live your life like you mean it.  This includes seeking out the situations and people that help you live your values, as well as bringing your values to the situation, no matter where you find yourself.  See Finding Your Values.
• Strengths.   You have a lot of strengths, but this is about your top 5 that set you apart.  It’s your unique voice.  It’s the strengths that come so natural to you that you might not even value them as a strength.   One of the keys of going from good to great is focusing on your strengths over weakness.  When you focus on your strengths, you get energy and you get stronger.  Passion is your key fuel for making things happen.  See Finding Your Strengths.

The power here is that it’s about unleashing your best and living life on your terms.  You don’t depend on anything else.  You simply depend on you.  This means having enough self-awareness and being mindful of your ways.  I think of it as smarter ways for better days.

Approach Over Results
The whole idea of “approach over results” or “living your process” is it’s about giving your best where you have your best to give, making the most of what you’ve got, and focusing on what you control over what you don’t.  You can’t control the results (or scoreboard), but you can give your best shot when you get up to bat.  In life, you control your attitude and response … and it’s not what happens to you, but how you react.
I like Covey’s definition of success … it’s when the response meets the challenge.

Live Your Why and How
If you live your “why” and “how”, you have a ton of flexibility in your “what”s.  You can bring your A-game wherever you go.  Remember that wherever you go, there you are, so mastering yourself is one of the best ways to master any situation.  The real beauty of living your why and how is that you can do it immediately to make the most of your life, whether you live for one more moment or a million years.  It’s being YOUR best in the moment, from moment to moment.  Yes, your world really does revolve around you.  Master your world and the rest of the world becomes a better place.

Success Patterns
Here’s a sampling of success patterns:

• Learned optimism.  Not everybody has a natural disposition for optimism.  In fact, even if you do, events in your life can sour your outlook.  There’s a reason some events are called “life changing events.”  If you treat optimism as a skill and learn the thought patterns and behaviors, you set yourself up for finding opportunities.  Luck is when skill and opportunity come together.
• Continuous improvement.   If you don’t use it, you lose it.  You can spiral up or spiral down.  You can decline in areas you don’t invest.  Avoid investing in your body and see how it responds when you need it.   On the upside, a stitch in time saves nine.
• Growth mindset over fixed mindset.    A fixed mindset assumes either you have it or you don’t.  You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  On the other hand, a growth mindset means you can learn and respond.  You grow more with skills.  Life is a skill you can learn.  See Growth Mindset Over Fixed Mindset.
• Coach over critic.  This means being your own best friend.  Pick yourself up instead of shoot yourself down.  Mastering your self-talk will take you further than just about any other skill.  It’s how you make meaning in your life.  It’s how you make the most of what you’ve got and how you make the most of every situation.
• Strengths over weakness.  You can spend all your time improving your weaknesses or you can invest in your strengths.  Investing in your strengths is how you unleash exponential results in your life.
• Fulfillment over happiness.  There’s a lot of research to suggest that we’re not designed for happiness.  Even so, happiness is a temporary state.   I’m all for happiness, but there’s also a lot to be said for seeking fulfillment.  Fulfillment is more enduring.
• Boundaries and budgets.   Invest in your life hot spots: mind, body, emotions, career, financial, relationships, and fun.  If you invest in these hot spots, the sum is more than the parts.  The key is to invest enough across these buckets and to balance.  All work and no play is a problem.  Find ways to leverage what you already do to have these hot spots support each other and help you be YOUR best.  See Life Frame.
• Approach over results.  Focus on what you control.  While you should know the outcomes you want, you should make sure that you live your values, play to your strengths, and enjoy the journey.  Stop and smell the roses.  The journey may be all you’ve got.  See Process Over Product Orientation.
• Solution-oriented.  Find a way forward.  Ask yourself questions such as “what’s the next best thing for me to do?” … “how can I make the most of this situation?” … “what the best way forward?” … etc.  See Solution-Focused Questions.
• Adapt, adjust or avoid.  Sometimes the best thing you can do is adapt yourself for the situation.  Other times, the best thing to do is adjust the situation to leverage your strengths.  What you don’t want to do is change yourself for the situation in a way that loses your strengths or breaks your values.  Sometimes, the best thing to do is avoid situations entirely.  When that’s not an option, get resourceful and find ways to live your process anyway.  See Adapt, Adjust or Avoid.
• Test your results.  It’s easy to make a lot of assumptions or get stuck or miss out on a lot of opportunities simply because you didn’t take action or test your thinking.  Make it a habit to test your results.  Surprise yourself.  See Scrimmage Your Results.
• Model the best.  Learn from the best of the best.  No matter what you want to do in life, somebody can help you.  There’s always lessons to learn.  Start asking.  Seek out your favorite mentors.  Most experts love sharing what they know.  Be a ready, willing, and able student.  See Lessons From Per.
• Master Emotional Intelligence.  Emotional intelligence is what separates us from the animals.  If you master slowing down your fight or flight response, you give yourself a chance to think your best thoughts, feel your best feelings, and make your best moves.  This is key for your interpersonal relationships and how you respond to the stressful events in your life.  It’s one of the most important skills in life you can possibly master.  See Master My Stories.

I’ll have more to say on this in future posts.  To be fair, this post is more of a work in progress.  In fact, I didn’t even plan this post, it was just something that I needed to put out, just in case it just might help somebody find just the inspiration they needed to live the life they deserve and give them enough of the skills and competence to make the most of what they already have.  If I lit your fire, great.  Remember though, that it’s all you.  I’m just here to fan your flames.

It’s hard to live your values if you don’t know what they are.  My dictionary defines a value as “something (as a principle or quality) intrinsically valuable or desirable.”  That sounds about right.   Clarifying your values is one of the first steps towards knowing yourself.  You would think you know yourself after all these years, but a lot of things get in the way.  For example, maybe you never took the time to write down your top five values.  Or maybe, you got caught up in what you think you “should” value or what other people scripted for you.  Either way, now’s the time to figure out your values.  if you know your values, then you know what you want, you who you are, you know where you stand.    You know your values when you have a list of five you can rattle off.

List of Values
To find your values, start with a list.   This is one of my favorite lists of values from one of my training sessions, but I haven’t finished comparing.  It’s good enough for now:

If that list doesn’t work for you, there’s plenty of lists on the Web.  Some are overwhelming and some have lists of values that are too fine-grained.  The key is to have a list of big values that really shape your life decisions as well as your day to day.  Think macro vs. micro.

Find Your Top Values
To find your top values, you can chunk down the list.  Make multiple passes:

• Find your top 10.
• Find your top 5.
• Find your top 3.
• Find your top value.

Remember that it’s not finding what you value.  Chances are, you value a lot of the items on the list.  It’s about find what you value most.  You need to know your top most values so when you have to prioritize or make trade-offs, you have some gauges.  A simple way to think of it is that value are your gauges in life.  For example, my top five gauges are: Adventure, Family Happiness, Health, Integrity, Personal Development.  I think.  It’s tough since freedom is important to me too, as is loyalty.  So is helpfulness.  I like to help.  Some values I can’t trade-off.  Luckily, I don’t need to, except in certain scenarios and decisions.  (Scenario-based values is something I also need to explore.)

Be Willing to Be Surprised
I was surprised the first time I explored my values.  I didn’t realize how important adventure is to me.  It was like my life flashed before my eyes: “Go west young man,” “lead an epic adventure,” “it’s a SWAT mission,” cross-country road-trips, my Jeep, my motorcycle, a dream to go to Australia … etc.

I remember that when I first joined Microsoft, the very first though in my mind was, “Go West young man.”  If for no other reason, it would be an adventure.  I realized that since I’ve been at Microsoft, a work adventure into my daily life.  When I lead a project, I try to build the dream team to go on an epic adventure to take on some big problem.  I would inspire the team by talking in terms of SWAT missions and taking on big challenges.  A lot of my metaphors are about adventure.

That’s the beauty of knowing your values.  You can work more of your values into your day to day, even if it’s as simple as using more metaphors.  You can live you values in lots of ways, large and small.

Testing Your Values
Just having your list of values from the top of your mind, might not be enough.  To get more clarity, you can test your values:

• Is it truly YOUR value?  (i.e. is it internally motivated or is it external … a “should”)
• Is it a means or an end?  If one value is simply to accomplish another, then look to the value you want to accomplish.  If you want economic security because you think it leads to freedom, then freedom is the one you value most.  This is important because there’s multiple ways to accomplish a goal and flexibility is key.  Know what you want, but be flexible in your approach.
• Do your actions show your values?  Actions speak louder than words.
• When were you happiest or most excited?  What was your proudest moment?  These highlights are a potential showcase of your values.
• What do you regret the most?  Again, this is a way to figure out what’s most important to you.

It’s an Ongoing Exercise
Finding and living your values is an ongoing exercise.  Life-changing events can shift our values. (think Scrooge.)  Finding ways to live your values can help you find fulfillment as well as improve your energy and ignite your passions.

Feel free to ask questions, share your thoughts and share your values below.

My Related Posts

• Vision, Mission, and Values
• Meta-programs and Intrinsic Values in NLP
• Questions and Answers on The Top 10 Leadership Lessons

Creating Your Mission and Vision
The key steps to creating your mission and vision are:

• Identify the values of the organization. You find these by observing how employees spend their time, how they set priorities and how they allocate their time and energy. Actions are more revealing than words.
• Create the mission statement. The mission answers “who are you?” It should consist of one or two sentences max. It should quickly communicate the company’s purpose. It should be an original and unique purpose. It should encapsulate the philosophy, beliefs, values and principles. It should be unique, exciting and inspiring. It sets the foundation for priorities, strategies, plans, and work assignments. The company should derive strength from the mission rather than react to outside influences.
• Create the vision. The vision statement answers, “where do you want to go?”

Example Mission and Vision
Grady provides an example of using a vision statement and mission statement to communicate the philosophical foundation of an arts organization to its stakeholders:

Court Theatre – Strategic Plan

• Mission – Court Theatre exists to celebrate the immutable power and relevance of classic theatre.
• Vision – We share a collective aspiration to create a National Center for Classic Theatre.

Example Values
Grady provides an example statement of values:

Strategic Decisions Are Guided by the Following Statement of Values

• We believe theatre satisfies an innate human need for communal acts of
  imagining.
• We believe works for the stage that reveal timeless themes and illuminate
  universal truths are classics.
• We believe in the primacy of language in theatre.
• We believe in an artistic process that is venturous, collaborative, grounded
  in thorough research and dynaically evolving.
• We believe in an artistic process that is venturous, collaborative, grounded
  in thorough research and dynamically evolving.
• We believe in an environment of trust, generosity, and shared vision enables
  risk-taking in the artistic process.
• We believe the artistic process should inform all aspects of the threatre’s
  operations including leadership, governance, and administration.
• We believe classic theatre is a valid participant in American culture, its
  survival and maturation.
• We believe artists make significant contributions to their communities.
• We believe learning is a life-long journey, and classic theatre has a unique
  ability to teach and inspire its creators and patrons.
• We believe in freedom of expression, and embrace a plethora of artistic
  voices and styles.
• We believe in diversity across all definitions.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Use  a vision statement, mission statement and statement of values to communicate the foundation of your group to stakeholders.
• The mission statement answers who are you.
• The vision statement is where you want to go, once you know who you are.
• Figure out the real values by actually observing the group.  This is more accurate than just thinking them up.  Otherwise, people say one thing, but do another.

Additional Resources

• Man on a Mission – a blog dedicated to mission statements.

My Related Posts

• Measure of Success
• Mission Statement
• Corporate Culture
• Organizational Values

In A Simple Statement: A Guide to Nonprofit Arts Management and Leadership, Jamie Grady writes about organizational values:

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Define what matters.  I think the reason the values are so important for an organization is because it’s really about defining what matters and where people will spend time and energy.
• Actions are louder than words. I’ve seen first hand when an organization states one set of values, but operated under another. I don’t think it’s on purpose. I think it happens when people write their values down without really first observing .
• Use dimensions to frame and understand the values.   Consider the following dimensions: prosocial, market, financial, achievement, and artistic.

I find the dimensions particularly helpful as a way to frame out values in core areas that matter.

What are Organizational Values
Grady writes the following on organizational values:

• Organizational values are abstract ideas that guide organizational thinking and actions.
• Organization values represent the foundation on which the company is formed.
• Defining an organization’s unique values is the first and most critical step in its formation and development
• While difference in opinion and skills may be beneficial to the success of an organization, a unity of purpose must be maintained.
• In order for the institution to be successful, the values on which the company is built must be appropriate for the time, place, and environment in which the organization will operate.
• A company’s organizational values let others know what it is, why it has been created, and how it is different from other companies.

How Do You Find Organizational Values
Grady writes the following point on finding the values:

• In order to understand and identify the values of an organization and to gauge their influence on the company, managers must carefully examine how that organization operates.
• While it may be helpful to listen to people describe what they believe the values of the organization are, it is far better to observe those people in their day-to-day activities.
• Note how employees spend their time, how they communicate within the organization and how they go about their daily job responsibilities and tasks.
• Although values are often difficult to define, they are usually revealed by employees’ actions and thinking, how they set their priorities, and how they allocate their time and energy. An employee’s actions are more revealing than their words.

Dimensions to Understand Values
Grady writes the following dimensions help to understand organizational values and how those values drive an organization:

• Prosocial dimension. Not-for-profit theatres have a responsibility
  to provide community access to their performances, remove economic and cultural
  barriers to attendance, and educate audiences in theatre arts.
• Market dimension. Theatres struggle between creating art of art’s
  sake and meeting customer needs and expectations. A purely
  market-orientated philosophy is typically the mark of a commercial theatre, with its complete reliance on ticket sales for revenues, but all theater managers recognize the realities of the marketplace.
• Financial dimension. Although all theatres must content with the
  reality of financial demands while pursuing creativity and artistic excellence,
  fiscal stability is a particularly high priority for some theatres.
• Achievement dimension. Public recognition and acclaim can affirm
  an organization’s creative activity, and some theatres particularly strive for
  external recognition.
• Artistic dimension. For many theatres, the top priority is
  internally focused creativity, innovation, and artistic dependence.
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