As 2018 begins to come to life, I’ve been thinking about the year ahead and how I want to design a successful New Year for myself.
Most of us are acquainted with the concept of Deliberate Design. We’re been practising it in same shape of form since we were little.
Think about the last time you wanted to make something happen and how you made it come to life? You may have gotten that promotion, purchased the item that you wanted or met the love of your life that you’d be dreaming about for years.
These simple examples are Deliberate Design at play. Except most of us don’t even realise that we’re designing our future every single of moment of the day with our thoughts and actions.
I always remind my clients that everything in life we do is a strategy that we’re running. The question is, is that strategy that I’m running resourceful or unresourceful? Unresourceful strategies include procrastination, drama and self-limiting thoughts patterns. Resourceful strategies are ones that aid our wellbeing and allow us to thrive as human beings.
We use strategies to help us Deliberately Design our future and our goals so that we can live our most successful life.
Here are some steps and strategies you can explore in 2018 to design your most incredible life.
1. Want to be successful? Start by getting your house in order
In order to begin to master success, we need to get our environment in order.
This is where we begin the entire process for designing our best life.
By environment, I mean the following:
Physical Environment
Does your physical environment facilitate your success? The New Year is the perfect time to declutter your physical space so that you can begin to declutter your mind? Do you have an office space to work and learn from? Have you created a sacred space within your environment that lets you meditate and find inner peace?
I’m currently in the middle of a move. Imagine moving boxes and stuff….everywhere!! It’s going to take me a few more weeks to get unpacked but I’ve created “clear zones” within my home and office that give me certainty amidst the uncertainty of a move. These environments create the grounded environment that I need to thrive.
Reflection point: do you need to clear your physical space? If so, get packing!
Additional resource: How I simplified my life and made $20k in the process.
Purpose
Purpose is the foundation for designing a life that you love.
By purpose, I mean the higher purpose that you strive towards every single day. As human beings, we are meaning driven which means that we find our peace when we can attribute a mission or purpose to our life.
Without this foundational piece of the puzzle, you will find yourself wasting precious time and energy climbing the wrong ladders. We’ve all been there but there is no need to follow a path that isn’t your own.
Reflection point: Have you identified your Purpose and are you living aligned with your Purpose?
Additional Resource: Explore my 8-week Purpose Program.
Goals and Outcomes
I work with a lot of clients that lack clarity around what outcomes they want to strive towards and what goals they want to achieve.
I believe that this occurs for a number of reasons, namely that we:
- Don’t know how to set effective, small and actionable goals.
- Have difficulty visualising our goals.
- Don’t have the structures in place that will facilitate outcome creation.
- Are stuck in “short-term thinking”.
- Have fears and limiting beliefs that stop us from creating goals in the first place.
Here are some questions we can begin to ask ourselves as we Deliberately Design our New Year:
- What do I want next year to look like?
- What do I see myself doing?
- Seeing the steps that need to be taken.
- Who am I being?
- Understanding who we need to become and how we need to behave.
- What do I look like?
- Visualising the benchmark for our most successful selves.
- What do I notice around me?
- Taking notice of the environment that facilitates success.
- Who do I see around me?
- Noticing the people that you have in your life that will facilitate your success and letting other people go.
Reflection point: Do you have clarity around the goals and outcomes you want to reach in 2018?
Additional Resource: Explore my Success Coaching Program here.
Standards
Many of my clients come to see me in order to “level up” in their career or business. One of the things we explore as part of this process are their standards.
I love discussions around standards because they are powerful upgrades that we can make to our behaviour and way of operating that allows us to begin seeing the results in our external world.
What standards do you have around your behaviour? How do you turn up in the world? What are your rituals, habits and routines?
It may be time for a standards upgrade if you find that you’re quick to judge others, you are constantly making excuses and you don’t follow through on your commitments.
Reflection point: Is it time for you to step up or upgrade some of your standards? If so, what standards do you need to adjust? What are you focusing on solutions and ideas or problems?
…
The environment aspect of the equation for living your best life is fundamental because….we can only create what we can envision.
Let that sink in. If we can’t visualise what our business or career is going to look like in 1 year, we cannot create it.
The limits of what we can create are determined by our current level of thinking.
2. Put the Structures in place for excellence
Once we have identified the environment including the values, beliefs, mission, goals and standards that we need to have in place to live a successful life, we can begin to put the structures in place that will facilitate our success.
This is where most of us tend to fall short. We identify the goals and the outcomes we want to achieve, but we don’t have appropriate structures in place to facilitate that success.
Let’s play out a scenario ….I’ve identified a new goal — I want to wake up every single day ready to excel in my business. The only problem is, I don’t know how to design a morning ritual that works for me so I keep playing out the same outdated patterns that leave me tired in the mornings, running behind schedule, distracted and not ready for the day ahead.
This is where structure comes into the equation. Structure asks me to consider the following:
- What resources do I need to put in place to help me reach my goals?
- What are the different categories and elements of my goal that I need to consider?
- Can I think of any examples or benchmarks that will guide me when it comes to bringing this goal to life?
- What planning do I need to do to bring this life?
- What strategy do I need to have in place to make this goal come to life?
For example, if I want to set up my day for success, I may explore the following questions and thoughts:
- What does my morning ritual need to look like so that it energises me?
- What tools do I need to use? Eg. Apps, timetables.
- What planning do I need to do to make this happen? Food prep plan, sleep plan, clean environment etc.
- Who has a great morning routine that I can emulate?
- What other strategies do I need to consider to make my goal (set up an awesome day) come to life:
- Sleep plan to ensure I have a restful night’s sleep.
- Food plan to ensure I fuel my body adequately.
- Meditation or spiritual practice that grounds me for the day.
- Movement or exercise ritual.
As you can see from this brief example, I’ve identified my goal (have an awesome start to the day) and I’ve started to plan and design a morning ritual that serves me and my goal.
Reflection point: Where do you fall short when it comes to bringing your goals and mission to life?
Additional Resource: Download my Daily Domination Checklist here.
Most of the time, there is nothing wrong with the goal that you’ve set. It’s simply that you don’t have the structures in place to facilitate bringing that goal to life.
3. Start to take action
My favourite part of this entire process is taking action!
The Law of Deliberate Creation (otherwise known as the Law of Attraction) is a thing that absolutely works.
The problem doesn’t lie in the law, it lies in our resistance that stops us from drawing into our experience that which we want to experience.
What do I even mean? Let me explain with an example…
You keep telling everyone that you want to meet your soulmate. You’ve even created a secret Pinterest board planning out your future wedding. Except your soulmate doesn’t turn up. Why? Because you’re complaining that there aren’t “any good men” out there, you refuse to try online dating, you carry self-limiting beliefs around relationships and you rebuff the advances of any man that shows interest in you because you’re looking for that perfect 10. It’s an extreme but powerful examples of how we can resist the outcome that we insist that we’re after.
So as part of Stage 3 of this process, I want you to consider the following:
- What actions do you need to take towards your goal or outcome?
- Do you behave consistently and in alignment with the goal you want to bring to life or are you resisting the outcome?
- What benchmarks or KPIs do you have in place to track your progress and your success? Do you know what these lead measures need to be?
- What habits and rituals have you created to bring this goal or outcome to life?
- Are you behaving congruently with your goal or mission or are you just going through the motions without aligning with the outcome?
As you can see, if we identify the correct mission and goals to work towards (environment) and then put the right structures in place (rituals, resources, benchmarks) and finally take positive action….we have a simple formula that facilitates the creation of our most incredible life.
BONUS Step 4: Don’t forget a sprinkle of magic
There is a fundamental element to the equation for living your most successful life. It’s the “magic” piece of the puzzles which ensures that we grow and thrive and human beings.
I’m constantly reminding my clients to invite the following into their life:
- Childlike curiosity for life and all of life’s experiences.
- Fun and laughter.
- Creativity and playfulness with no desired outcome in mind.
- Looking for opportunities to be in awe of life and existence.
- Working towards a meaning or purpose that resonates with the individual and serves as a guiding lighthouse for their life.
- Deep connection and love.
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” Roald Dahl
Call to Action
There is no secret formula to success.
What success requires from us is simple. It requires us to set an intention that resonates with our soul. It then requires us to work towards bringing that intention to life.
If you want to explore the ways in which you can design your own definition of success, book a complimentary Strategy call with me or visit lorentrlin.com.
LT
Originally published at lorentrlin.com on December 26, 2017.