The 5-Step Process to Getting Clear on What You Really WANT

Few things are as important to your personal resilience as identifying your overall direction in life, getting clear on who you are, where you're going and what you really want.  Yet many are those who bumble ahead without first paying their dues at this toll house of life... and they pay for it down the road with confusion, uncertainty and unhappiness.

So this first step is critical.  And contrary to what some think, this is not about making a list of neat things to have.  This is not like making your Christmas list!  It’s not about making a list of every little thing you might like to have.  Would I like an electric back-scratcher?  Well, if someone offered it to me I suppose I wouldn’t turn it down.  But if no one offers it to me I’m unlikely even to think about it for years, if at all.  This isn’t even about getting all the stuff you really want.  This is about first and foremost finding out who you are.

The Critical "How To" Steps

First, make a list of everything you've been really interested in during your life.  Write that down.  You can use an ordinary piece of paper, a journal or a word processing program to do this – it doesn’t matter.  But it does matter that you do it in writing!   It’s good to ask other people who know you well if you’ve missed something.  Ask your parents, peers, siblings, or anyone who knows you well.  You should take a couple of days to do this.  Start today.  Then come back to it once a day for a couple of days.  After this and ONLY after this, go on to step 2…

Second, make a list of everything you've been really good at during your whole life.  Someone once wrote to me claiming he had been totally mediocre at everything his whole life.  I’m sorry, but I think there are probably some self-esteem issues there that are obscuring the truth, because  everybody I know has lots of talents, irrespective of their level of intellectual sophistication, their education, or any other factor.

Do the same thing here – take a couple of days.  Ask those who know you well.  Now comes the hard part…

Third , look for patterns.  You try to answer the question "why"?  Almost everyone skips the third step - big mistake!  The third step is harder to do, and there is not necessarily a right or wrong answer.  It's a voyage self-discovery.  This is not simply an intellectual process – it’s a process of feeling, of emotion, of the heart.  You can't force this process, so just let the answers come to you.  If anything does come up, write it down.  If you really don't see any connections, any unifying themes, don't worry and just move on to the next step.

Fourth, find out what really inspires you.  You see, it is not enough to know what you want.  It is not even enough to know what you're really interested in or what you’re very talented at.  What you need to know here is what overriding purpose inspires you deeply.  There could be more than one.  What turns your crank, what floats your boat?

You may have a huge interest in aircraft.  Any idea why?  Maybe you are a natural comedian.  Do you know what it is about comedy that turns you on?  What can you work on or think about for hours and lose all track of time?  What purpose, issue, field of endeavor or question fills you with inspiration and energy, so much so that you feel like you’re carried on a wave?

Fifth, do this exercise: take the lists of your interests, talents and the connections between them and imagine jobs you would be totally jazzed about having.  You can make them up.  For instance, if you’re the aircraft lover, imagine someone offering you the job of looking after the aircraft of the world’s largest aviation museum… with a huge budget for new acquisitions that you decide on!

Take your time and just imagine different jobs you could have related to your passionate interests.  REMEMBER: these jobs don’t have to be real.  Don’t let your cursed sense of reality get in the way – just have fun with this. 

The Temptations

After studying and experiencing various types of mindset work over the years, it seems to me there are some fundamental traps to avoid:

1. Worrying about your doubts.  The antidote is to go and do the things that will bring you results.  Usually these are activities that are just outside your comfort zone but, once you start doing them, they feel SO right.  Also, realize that doubt is a natural stage when you're about to do something new and different.  Just don't let it paralyze you ;-)
   
2. Sweating about not having clarity.   The antidote is to take action on the small things you are clear about.  And realize you can't force clarity.  All you can do is continually stay inspired and let the answers come.
   
3. Thinking "I'm not passionate about anything."  That's because you've let the fire go out.  I've studied martial arts for years and years, but if I don't keep up with what's going on, if I don't read, study and practice, I lose that inspiration pretty quickly.  So no matter what you're interested in, you pretty much have to toss logs on the fire of your inspiration.  That fire won't feed itself - you have to do that!  

If you follow this process and avoid these traps, you'll be amazed at how much more clarity you have on your life within a matter of weeks.  Now go for it!

~ Dr. Symeon Rodger :-)

Why the Key Life Skill of Leadership is Vital to YOUR Personal Happiness

Just a few quick thoughts on why leadership is a key life skill you need to live a deliberate, powerful and stress-free life and experience maximum fulfillment and success in everything you do...  


...even if you don't think of yourself as a leader.

And there's a special leadership challenge waiting for you below...

• You are a leader - almost everyone is at various times in their lives
• You may be a leader within your own family, your community, on a sports team, at work, at your place of worship or in lots of other venues
• Leadership isn't always a position with a title - Gandhi was one of the greatest and most successful leaders of the twentieth century, yet he had no position and no formal authority at all
• I submit that you have probably found yourself taking on the informal role of leader on many occasions in your life, however humble
• Leadership is seldom easy - as a great fictional character once put it in reference to leaders in training, "You will be tested, well beyond your current limitations."
• Every parent is a leader and every parent can attest to the truth of those words!
• I just watched last year's best picture, The King's Speech
• There you see King George VI, the most reluctant of monarchs, who has leadership thrust upon him and who overcomes a devastating handicap to become a powerful symbol of resistance during Britain's "finest hour"
• Leadership is a key life skill, not just something for rare people at rare times
• How so?
• Without it, you can neither pull your own life together nor can you help others meaningfully
• Now think about that and consider the consequences for a society that does not train its people in leadership - what hope could there be for such a nation?
  
  
  
   
• And yet, everywhere around us we see the failure of key institutions, including governmental institutions, financial institutions, religious institutions and, of course, corporate entities
• Close examination will reveal in nearly every case a catastrophic failure of leadership - people in positions of authority failed 
• Failed at what?  Did they just make mistakes?  
• No.  In nearly every case they failed the test of character - they too self-interested to tell the plain truth and do the right thing, or too proud to listen to anyone's advice
• Personal integrity is the rock upon which leadership is built - that is an unalterable principle that history has shown us time and time again
• As one great fictional speech on leadership puts it, "I am not interested in the names of your fathers, nor in your family's lineage.  What I AM interested in... is your breaking point!  How will you conduct yourselves in battle?  How far will you go to preserve your honor, to fulfill your duty?  These are simple questions that will decide the fate of our empire."
• It is through the skill of leadership that these same questions will determine the fate of every civilization
• Leadership begins with resilience and no one without resilience can succeed as a leader
• Notice in today's two videos - to be a leader, you have to lead from the front, be willing to show the way, get your hands dirty
• This means you have to be a role model - the people you lead must see in you what they wish to become
• So if you're flabby, self-indulgent, too timid or self-interested to make tough decisions, or lack the personal integrity to tell the plain truth every time, then you'll fail
• So leadership depends on self-leadership - your ability to be the leader of your own life, to get your act together, to become a person of character
• Of course, without resilience, you cannot acquire self-leadership
• Resilience means Psycho-Physical Resilience, Character-Value Resilience and Spiritual-Noetic resilience: without these, you can't get your act together, and hence self-leadership becomes impossible
• So, in the final analysis, leadership itself depends on cultivating your personal resilience
• Now you can see why the critical life skill of leadership is vital to living a deliberate, powerful and stress-free life and to maximizing your own personal fulfillment and happiness
  
  
  
  
  
  
• So if you're ever again tempted to think of yourself as someone who is "not a leader", slap yourself upside the head and think again
• You've been a leader before and you'll be one again
• And since that's the case, you have a responsibility to the people you'll lead - and to yourself for that matter - to become the very best leader you can be
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• Leadership challenge - identify at least one situation you are in this week in which you function as a leader (formally or informally) in some capacity, and apply just one of the principles in either of these videos to yourself while in that situation and watch the difference it makes!
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  ~ Dr. Symeon Rodger