Part Two

2. Tell a different story

This second step is about how you can start to tell that different story. I’m going to give you a practical exercise that you can use to ensure you can powerfully follow through on your decision to always take responsibility for yourself. But before I do so, let me tell you about Natalie du Toit.

Natalie’s Story

South African swimmer, Natalie du Toit, first came to the world stage in 1998. She was competing as a highly-promising 14-year-old in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur. But her life was tragically changed in February 2001 when she lost her left leg at the knee in a motorbike accident. Remarkably, she was back in the pool by May, and before she had even re-learned to walk she had made the next Commonwealth Games a target. In the 2002 Manchester games she won golds in the 50m and 100m disabled freestyle swimming events, breaking four world records in one day.

Natalie du Toit had the most plausible excuse in the world to stop competing, to give up. Yet she didn’t – she made no excuses, she didn’t blame anyone or anything, she didn’t rationalise herself into a mediocre life.
Natalie du Toit has excelled at disabled swimming, but she never let go of her dream to compete as an able-bodied swimmer. In 2008, in the Beijing Olympics, she became the first amputee to qualify for the able-bodied Olympics and competed in the women’s open water 10 km swimming event, considered the hardest swimming event there is, lining up against the world’s greatest long-distance swimmers. In the 24-competitor race, she finished ahead of 9 top able-bodied swimmers.
She had no physical or technical trick to compensate for the loss of her limb. ‘I don’t even think of one leg, two legs,’ she said. ‘When you’re racing in an able-bodied competition you’re all equal and you go out there and try your best, and that’s what counts. I go out there and train as hard as anybody else. I have the same dreams, the same goals. It doesn’t matter if you look different. You’re still the same as everybody else because you have the same dream.’
Interviewed after the event, she enthused, ‘My message isn’t just to disabled people. It’s to everyone out there… I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs… I was able to use the negativism in a good light and say after my accident, I can still do it…’

Taking responsibility is about response – ability: your ability to choose your response to whatever happens in your life. It’s not what happens to you in your life that shapes your life: it’s what you do with what happens. You choose what you make your experiences mean. You choose how you interpret the events of your life. Natalie du Toit is a terrific role model for this, and that’s why I wanted to tell you her story.

What about you? How do you interpret the events of your life? What have you made your life experiences mean? 

When you read your story, you might find it’s peppered with ‘negativisms’ – your mother was overly critical (or too accepting)… your father always expected too much (or too little)… you went to the wrong school (whatever ‘wrong’ means to you)… your job was too demanding (or undemanding) … The crucial point is, even if these were all absolutely true, focusing on them, and using them to limit the potential of your life, will not serve you.

Remember, you can have what you want, or you can explain and justify why you don’t yet have it. Your challenge is to be a person of your own making.

Here’s that exercise I mentioned that you can use to ensure you powerfully and practically follow through on your decision to always take responsibility for yourself. It will help you to rethink the meaning and significance of past events – and those that happen from now on. Take each ‘negativism’ and answer these five questions:

. Something I learned about myself from that experience was….
. A way I can now make this insight work for me in my life is…
. The way in which that experience makes me unique is…
. The opportunity that experience gave me was…
.  Making full use of that advantage would mean…

Once you realise you can do this for all the ‘negativisms’ in your life, all those experiences you wish you could change, something wonderful will happen – those experiences will change.

For example, one of my clients, Tim, had been focused on the negative aspects of being part of a big family – the fact he never got much attention or support from his parents. Asking the above questions, he was able to take a different perspective and see that his childhood had made him into the resourceful and self-reliant adult he now was, and to reflect that with his own children he had used his experience to make himself an attentive and caring parent.

Commit to re-telling the story of any ‘negativisms’ in your life. Each time you do, you step closer to a life of purpose and passion, to living your destiny.

 

Part Three

3. Associate with empowering role models

Surround yourself with empowering role models. The company you keep is vital.

Watch the child of a friend for a little while and that child will soon say and do things that you recognise in your friend. As children, we naturally model the most significant people in our lives. We naturally notice what our parents and carers do, what our friends do, and we do the same things. Most of the time we do all this unconsciously.

Use this powerful natural ability to seek out confident people you admire and consciously model what they do. Study them. Notice the way they talk, the way they move, and the way they behave. Observe how they respond to the events of their life, their response – ability. Watch what they do and learn from them. Then ask yourself what you can do, how you can change your behaviour, the way you talk, the way you respond, to be more like them. As you change what you do, so you will change how you feel. And as you change how you feel, you will change what you do. Thoughts feed behaviour and vice versa.

You don’t have to be born with an empowering attitude to grow one. No matter what your background, once you take the decision to empower yourself you can work to achieve it. Apply these techniques and you’ll do just that.

Action!

Actions for the Week

1. Commit right now to building an empowering attitude

Never again talk yourself out of that purposeful, passionate life that’s waiting for you.

2. Ask yourself if you are truly taking responsibility for your life

Recognise that no one else is responsible for how you feel, and that you’re in charge of your own destiny.

3. Challenge any ‘negativisms’ by rethinking the meaning and significance of past events

Commit to re-telling the story of your life. Turn your negative experiences into positive advantages. Each time you do, you step closer to a life of purpose and passion, to living your destiny.

4. Seek out empowering role modes and consciously model what they do

You don’t have to be born with an empowered attitude to grow one.

5. Throughout this course, keep vigilant

As you work through the next five modules, if you ever hear yourself justifying and rationalising why you ‘can’t’, come right back to this first module. Listen to, and challenge, the story you are telling yourself. Remember, it’s easy to talk yourself out of that purposeful, passionate life that’s waiting for you. Challenge yourself to talk yourself back in.

 

Part Two

You get what you think

What you think about yourself is crucial to shaping your life. Your thoughts create your behaviour, and how you behave creates your reality. What you believe is possible and appropriate for you, you will get. Your life is the result of what you expect and anticipate. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Your beliefs express themselves in your internal dialogue. They are statements that you say to yourself that you hold to be true. They are established mental and emotional patterns – unconscious thoughts rooted deeply inside you – and they will always evoke a predictable emotional response and a predictable behaviour from you.

How beliefs take root

Your beliefs start when you are a child, and then you run on autopilot. The unfortunate thing is, many of your beliefs can be unhelpful and unsupportive. They can create an attitude in you that is self-obstructive.
As a child, you unconsciously absorb many unhelpful beliefs, instilled in you by an authority figure that you recognise now, from your adult perspective, may not be at all valid.

Even though what you believe isn’t true, you may have amassed an abundance of ‘evidence’ that it is. No matter how invalid a belief is, it’s quite possible for you to have convinced yourself it is. For example, if you have the belief, ‘I am unattractive’, you will be focused on all the things you don’t like about yourself. Further, you will most probably have reinforced your belief by voicing it to others.  The more convinced you are of something, the more other people will be too. Your conviction persuades other people to believe you – what you project to others, the cues you send out, they will reflect back to you. In addition, you may even have given up looking after yourself, resigned to the fact that you are unattractive, unwittingly creating a vicious circle for yourself.

Change beliefs that don’t work for you

There’s an alternative. You can challenge and change beliefs that don’t serve you and replace them with real, more constructive beliefs. Rather than running on autopilot – when the person who normally shows up is the child you were when the belief was created – you can ‘switch to manual’ and summon up the wiser, more experienced, more resourceful adult you now are. Once the new belief is firmly established, you can happily return to autopilot.

Change what you think about yourself, and you will change the way you feel, how you behave, and the reality of your life.

So – what do you think about yourself? How empowering are your beliefs? How much do they propel you forward, and how much do they hold you back? Are your beliefs appropriate to your desire for a life filled with purpose and passion?

What beliefs are diminishing your personal power and effectiveness undermining the ideal of your most powerful self and sabotaging your progress to embody that ideal? What do you need to replace them with?

Part Three

Seven steps to empower your beliefs

Think about the daily dialogue you have with yourself, the thoughts that run through your head on a regular basis. If you kept notes of everything you said to yourself, what would it sound like? How much of what you say is supportive and helpful, and how much is self-limiting and sabotaging?

The way you think is just a habit. It can be changed. In fact scientists have identified that habits and behaviours can be changed in 21 days by doing the sort of mental work I’m now going to ask you to do.

Here’s a proven process to freshen up and upgrade your beliefs, to summon the wiser, more experienced, more resourceful adult you now are, and ensure this person is now in charge.
 
Work through the following 7 questions:

 

1. A limiting belief I hold about myself is…

And another limiting belief I hold about myself is…

[Continue to list your limiting beliefs, until you have at least 10]

Above all, my most limiting belief is…

2. Where did this belief come from? From my adult perspective, what validity does it have?

3. What evidence have I built up for this belief? From my adult perspective, how fair and balanced am I being?

4. What has been, and is, the cost of this belief to me?

The effect of this belief on my life is…
And it stops me from doing…

5. What would be the opposite of this belief? One that is far, far more productive?

Stating this new belief as an affirmation, positively, in the present tense…
For example, ‘I am unattractive’ could be ‘I am naturally attractive’

6. What evidence is there that this new belief is in fact already true? 

Justify your new belief by gathering evidence to support it – list at least five pieces of evidence that support the reality that you are already the person your new belief says you are.

7. How will I act on this new belief?

Identify at least three actions you will now take to act on this new belief.

Part Four

Nurture your new beliefs

Once you have created a new belief, it’s vital to nurture it. 

A belief doesn’t normally change immediately. Your unsupportive belief programme may have been running for 20 years or more, creating neural pathways that make thinking in the old way totally natural for you. You must carve new neural pathways to allow your new thinking to become established. Do this by continually repeating steps 5, 6 and 7 above:

• affirm your new belief
• consciously look for evidence that the new belief is true
• act on it.

Often, the very best way you can take action is to do the very thing that scares you most.

As Susan Jeffers said, ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’.

Cultivate the habit of building yourself up

Let’s not forget those positive beliefs you already have about yourself. Give more airtime to these existing beliefs that are supportive and helpful. Consolidate and capitalise on them. They are helping you to hold the ideal of your most powerful self and will support you in working to embody that ideal.

Answer the following questions:

1. An empowering belief I hold about myself is…

2. The evidence I have for this belief is…

3. The benefit of this belief to me is…
a. The effect of this belief on my life has been and is…
b. And it helps me to…

4. I will capitalise on this empowering belief by…
Identify at least three actions you will now take.

Be positively attentive to yourself. Collect compelling evidence of your strengths.  Acknowledge yourself when you do things well. If you make a mistake, coach yourself: learn from it and move on, stronger and wiser. Accentuate the positive and minimise the negative. Keep propelling yourself forward into a life filled with purpose and passion.

Action!

Actions for the Week

1. To fulfil your destiny and live a life full of purpose and passion, you first have to expect to have such a life.

Make a decision now to raise your expectations and never, ever, sell yourself short.

2. Understand how negative beliefs can be entirely unfounded and that the way you think is just a habit.

It can be changed. Give more airtime to your supportive, helpful beliefs. Cultivate the habit of building yourself up.

3. Take a self-belief MOT.

Think about the dialogue you have with yourself, the thoughts that run through your head on a regular basis. If you kept notes of everything you said to yourself, what would it sound like? 

4. Upgrade your belief system, and nurture it.

 Make sure what you say to yourself from now on is always supportive and helpful. Carve new neural pathways by continually affirming your new beliefs, consciously looking for evidence that the new beliefs are true, and acting on them. Feel the fear, and do it anyway.

5. Throughout this course, keep alert.

Just as with Module 1, as you work through the next modules, if you ever hear yourself sabotaging or undermining yourself, saying, I can’t’, come right back to this module. Identify, and challenge, the belief you are hearing. Stop being your own worst enemy and become instead your own best friend.

 

Part Two

What are your talents?

Over the course of your life you’ve gained experience, skills, and knowledge; you’ve developed personal qualities, character and inner resources. You’ve shaped talents that are unique to you.

Start by uncovering these unique talents. I’m using that word, ‘uncovering’ deliberately, because very often our talents are genuinely hidden. Here’s how to throw the spotlight on yours.

When you were a child

Talents start to emerge when you are a child. There are subjects you’re better at than others when you’re at school. There are things you can do that you notice your friends don’t do so well. It’s a time when you may also have memories of thinking about ‘what I’d like to be when I grow up’. Often these thoughts hold significant insights – even (or especially) if what you currently do bears little resemblance to these childhood imaginings.

Thinking about your childhood:

• At school, what were you best at? How much of this do you do now?
• How did you imagine yourself as an adult?
• What did you see yourself doing?

• Homing in on the essence of that, how does it connect with what you do now?

When you feel most ‘yourself’

Next, think about the times when you feel most ‘yourself’ – these are times when you feel good ‘on the inside’, when you’re behaving naturally, and what you do just seems to flow.

Thinking about the times you feel most yourself:

• What, precisely, are you doing?
• What comes easily to you?
• What are you good at – in the words of the American psychologist, Martin Seligman, what are your ‘signature strengths’?
• Which three words best describe how you see yourself?
• What character traits and attitudes are you displaying?
• What inner resources and personal qualities are you revealing?

What others think

Sometimes you are so familiar with the things you are good at that you don’t appreciate them. You take them for granted or underrate them. Sometimes you don’t even see them. So when you are gathering together your talents, ask others what they think too. Don’t just rely on yourself – cast the net wider. Choose friends, colleagues, family members who you trust and respect. Get to know yourself as others see you. What can they see that you can’t?

Thinking about other people:

• What do they admire, respect or even envy you for?
• What do you bring to a team?

• What resources do you have to offer?

The bigger picture

Now step back and review what you’ve discovered. Overall,

• What is unique and special about you?
• Putting modesty aside, what do you consider to be your genuine talents, regardless of any improvements you think they could benefit from?

Part Three

 

What do you enjoy?

You may find yourself doing what you can do, rather than what you actively enjoy as well. For many of my clients, this is particularly what has happened in their careers. They’ve progressed and become successful through what they can do, but in the process they’ve lost touch with what they truly enjoy – to such an extent that they’ve begun to forget what it was they enjoyed doing in the first place.

No one else enjoys exactly the same things you do. Over the course of your life you’ve experienced things you’ve liked and things you didn’t like, in a way that has allowed you to refine and fine-tune your desires and personal preferences into what they are now.

Let’s identify those personal preferences, those things you truly enjoy. These are your passions.

When you were a child

You’re often most naturally passionate when you are a child. It’s when you spontaneously do what you love.  There are some things you discover you like better than others. There are things you love to do that you notice your friends don’t like at all (and that’s often why, as children, we make new friends). 

Thinking about your childhood:

• What did you love to do when you were ten or younger? 
• How much of this do you do now?

When you feel most alive

Next, think about the occasions when you feel most alive, most powerfully and fully ‘you’.

Thinking of these times:

• What activities are you happiest doing?
• What, precisely, are you doing?

If you didn’t have to ‘make a living’ and had plenty of time

‘I don’t have enough money to do what I want’. ‘I need more time’. In my experience, these are two of the most common, and damaging, statements we make to ourselves to kill our passion. Your true passions, the things you would want to continue to do, even if there was no ‘reason’ to do them, can often be uncovered if you imagine you don’t need to earn a living, and time is no object.

Imagine the following scenarios:

• You’ve won the lottery, had a long holiday, and are now ready to do something. What sort of things would you contemplate?
• You’ve found yourself in prison for some time. What would you not stop doing? What would you still continue to do?

Now get to the essence of what these passions are. How much of this essence is in your life right now? How can you start to include more?

Part Four

What are your achievements?

Have you ever stopped to consider and acknowledge your achievements and accomplishments? It’s vitally important to do this, as it will give fascinating insights into your talents and passions. Furthermore, if you never acknowledge your achievements, you may well develop a skewed view of yourself and your potential.  So take stock and appreciate your achievements to date.

Answer the following questions:

• In your life and work, what do you consider to have been your greatest achievements?~
• What, for you, have been the highlights, the moments when you ‘buzzed’ the most, your most proud and positive moments?
• When have you triumphed over adversity?

Consider what insights into your talents, passions and potential this gives you. What will you now do to develop these passions and talents – to step fully and authentically into your true potential?

Action!

Actions for the Week

1. Appreciate that you are unique and special

There is no one else who is exactly like you, with your combination of talents and passions. Your challenge is to be fully, authentically yourself.

2. What are you good at?

Over the course of your life, what experience, skills, and knowledge have you gained; what personal qualities, character and inner resources have you developed – what are your talents?

3. What do you enjoy doing most?

What’s the result of all the refining and fine-tuning of your desires and personal preferences to date – what are your passions?

4. What are your proudest achievements?

What insights do these give you into your talents and passions, and into your true potential?

5. What will you now do to develop these passions and talents?

What will you do to step fully and authentically into your true potential?

 

Part Two

Clarify your core values

Do you have a well thought-out value system? Your values define what’s important to you and underpin every decision you make and every action you take. They are your personal standards in life: your code of ethics. They are your template for a life of authenticity and personal integrity. They’re not prompted by how you think you should be, or how you think you need to be to impress others. Your values are qualities that make you feel good in yourself, ‘on the inside’ – and that you admire in others. These are the qualities you are naturally pulled towards.

Answer this question:

What are your top ten personal standards?

Henry Ford, the inventor of the modern motor car, said, ‘Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.’ What’s important to you to do right when no one is looking?

Answer the following questions:

Think about an occasion when you felt ‘really you’, when you felt fully and powerfully yourself. When you felt genuine, natural and authentic. Describe how you were at this time. The qualities and characteristics you uncover are very likely to be important values for you.

Now think about an occasion when you felt you were prevented from being your ‘real’ self. Describe how you were at this time. The likelihood is that you were repressing values that were important to you.

Think about how you spend your money, and in particular the possession you have that is most important to you. What does this mean to you, and what does it give you?

For example,

An occasion when Joanna felt ‘really her’ was when she was travelling. She loved the fact she could please herself, live from day to day, and learn about different cultures. She also loved the spectacular sites she saw, especially wonderful sunsets and mountain views. From this experience, Joanna was able to identify some of her key values: independence, freedom, spontaneity, learning and beauty.

An occasion when she felt prevented from being her ‘real’ self was when she had been working in an office where everyone was judged by individual targets, and where competition rather than teamwork was admired. From this experience, she was able to identify that co-operation, sharing, teamwork, and helping others were key values. She also uncovered the values of honesty and respect.

One of the things Joanna loved to spend her money on was small, thoughtful, surprise gifts for her partner, uncovering for her the values of love, sharing, caring and intimacy.  She also saved each month, as she didn’t want to be depended on anyone, demonstrating again the importance of independence to her, and also security. Her most valued possession was her car, a Mini Cooper, and underneath was the sheer feeling of fun she had every time she drove that car.

What about you – what are your core values?

Study the words that emerge. Absorb them. Write them on a piece of paper that you take out and look at every day. These words define you. They cut to the very core of who you are and what living your destiny with purpose and passion is all about. How you express them may change, but your core values will remain the same. Commit now to living them fully. 

Part Three

Envision your ideal life

Purpose and values are keystones to an ideal life. What else? What does your ideal life look like? In order to create what you want, start by creating a vision of it first. Everything we have in our lives starts this way.

Think BIG. Stretch your horizons. One of the fastest ways to kill passion is to play your life too small; to limit yourself by what you feel is ‘realistic’. As the poet Samuel Johnson said, ‘Our aspirations are our possibilities’. Play bigger than ‘reality’.

Think that bit bigger. Widen your horizons. Envision a life that really works for you, one that makes you genuinely happy and fulfilled. Imagine a life where you express your unique individuality: think beyond what others want and aspire to; this is about what really matters to you, uniquely you.  How would that life be? How would you live, what people would be around you, what work would you do, what lifestyle would you enjoy?

Answer the following questions:

When my life is ideal I am…
How I want to live is…
The people I want around me are…
The work I want to do is…
How I want to relax and have fun is…

Consider every area of your life. Your relationships, your work, your social life, your family, friends, community, your personal and spiritual development, your home… what else? 

For example:

…I have a gorgeous home. One that is warm and welcoming, where friends love to come and stay and which is full of laughter and love. I have a beautiful garden that is an oasis for wildlife and where chickens and dogs play happily side-by-side…

Express that vision is a tangible way. Write out your thoughts, paint a picture, create a collage, design a mood board – whatever is right for you.  Feel what it would be like to live that life. Feel it so much it’s as though you’re already there. Own it.

Take two further steps

Step 1: Clear out the clutter

Answer this question:

What do I need to stop tolerating in my life?

Think about what needs to change. What are you currently tolerating in your life that is allowing your life to fall short of your ideal? What’s in your life at the moment that is draining your passion and enthusiasm? Focus on every aspect of your life, and write the results down. These are the things you want to move out of your life. They have no place. They don’t belong.

Imagine what it will be like if these things weren’t in your life any more.

Answer this question:

How will I move these things out of my life?

Declutter your life; from now on work to get rid of anything that doesn’t fit, until what remains is what really works for you, a life that makes you genuinely happy and fulfilled. It’s time to spring clean and make all the rooms in your life fresh and clean and shining. This is about reclaiming your life, and putting the pieces of your life back together again in a way that positively builds your ideal life.
 
Step 2: Get more of what you love

Think about what’s already working in your life. Recognise where your life is already in harmony with your ideal.

Answer this question:

What do I like about my life, as it is, right now?

Again, think about every aspect of your life, and write these things down. They demonstrate that you’re already living part of your ideal life. Give yourself some time to enjoy thinking about these golden nuggets. They are to appreciate, to keep, and nurture.

Answer this question:

How will I make sure I appreciate and nurture the golden nuggets in my life?

Prominent psychologists consistently report the importance of appreciation to successfully living a happy and fulfilled life. Make sure you give yourself time to focus on what you already have in your life to be grateful for. Enjoy being happy with what you already have in your life and be eager for more!

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Define your purpose, a personal declaration that inspires and energises you

Infuse your life with it; translate this sense of purpose into every aspect of your life.

 
2. From your global dreams, identify any personal work that you need to do

As you do the personal work, your purpose will clarify, strengthen and refine.

3. Identify your values, your template for a life of authenticity and personal integrity

Where are you compromising? Commit now to fully living your values.

4. Create a precise vision of your ideal life, one that makes you genuinely happy and fulfilled

Express it tangibly – write out your thoughts, paint a picture, create a collage, design a mood board, whatever is right for you. Feel what it would be like to live that life. Own it.

5. Declutter and nurture

Root out everything that doesn’t belong in that vision, stop tolerating anything that is allowing your life to fall short of your ideal; nurture the golden nuggets, those aspects of your life that are already in harmony with your ideal.

 

Part Two

2. Get SMART

Make your goals even more powerful by making them SMART – Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Reasonable and Timed.

Great goal setting starts with being specific, defining precisely what it is you want. Think of a sport like shooting. If you don’t know what you’re shooting at, you won’t know how to score. If you don’t know your target, you won’t know when you’ve hit it. Similarly, if you turn up at college on enrolment night and say ‘I want to learn a foreign language’, you’ll immediately be asked, ‘which one’? ‘I want to learn Spanish’ is a more specific goal.

Make your goals measurable.  Not only does this give you milestones to check that you’re on course, it also helps you keep motivated and excited, as each time you achieve a milestone you create a feeling of winning for yourself. In sport, all great marathon runners literally set interim milestone targets. Apply this approach to all your goals. For instance, you could break your goal to learn Spanish into bite-sized chunks that you can specifically measure yourself against. Maybe one night you focus on learning simple introductions, another night ordering a meal at a café, another night going shopping. In great goal setting, each goal has a clear measure of achievement. The bigger the goal, the more milestone measures you create along the way.

Make your goals ambitious. It’s pointless setting a goal if it’s too easy. Don’t play small. You need to feel challenged and stretched. Make sure your goals push the boundaries of your comfort zone so you’re always expanding and growing as a person.

At the same time, keep your goals reasonable. Being challenged doesn’t mean setting goals that are reliant on fantasy. A goal that’s dependent on your winning the lottery, for instance, will put you back into that limbo land I spoke about in Module 1. At the same time, check that you’re not getting seduced into thinking that something isn’t reasonable when in fact the reason you don’t want to do it is because you’re stepping out of your comfort zone and uncovering a negativism or a limiting belief. Get your wise, experienced, resourceful adult on board and in charge.  

Finally, ensure your goals are timed, that they have a start and end date. If you set open-ended goals you’ll lack momentum to make them happen. If you set a deadline, it creates immediate focus.

Let’s do it. Let’s apply smart goal setting to you.

Looking at the answers you’ve written for the six questions above, now write down the answers to the following questions, making each answer SMART:

1. In order to live my purpose, what do I need to start doing?

2. In order to live my values, what do I need to start doing?

3. In order to live my passions, what do I need to start doing?

4. In order to live my talents, what do I need to start doing?

5. In order to stop tolerating what I don’t want in my life, what do I need to start doing?

6. In order to nurture and grow the things I already love in my life, what do I need to start doing?

Part Three

3. Take action

You’ve created your goals, got SMART, and written it all down. Now make it happen. Setting goals on their own is ineffective without action to achieve them. You might have a wonderfully defined goal, but if you do nothing about it, if you don’t take any steps towards it, the likelihood is it will simply stay a dream and never become reality. There is no substitute for good step-by-step, SMART action.

For example, if your goal is to become a novelist, what practical action will you take to develop and fulfil your talent? Evidence of your talent and passion, belief in your ability, on their own are not enough. You need to channel them into action: it’s the combination of talent, passion, self-belief and the willingness to do the work that will bring you success. So, commit to becoming very, very good. Join a writing group. Get a mentor. Read all the guides you can that have been written by successful writers. Do the practical work to fulfil your talent.

Here’s how Natialie du Toit put it, ‘I go out there and train…. you just do the hours in the swimming pool, you do the hours of racing and you do the hours of mental preparation. You just go out and give it everything.’

Seal you commitment to living your destiny with purpose and passion by acting on the following:

What would my most powerful self do? Being fully authentically myself, what would I do? For each of my goals, the three actions I will now take are….

 

Part Four

4. Plan for contingencies

No matter how great your plan, something may happen to scupper it. Acknowledging this, and preparing for it to happen, is all part of your action plan – it’s called contingency planning.

Answer – and act on – the following questions:

 What might stop me or slow me down, and what could I do to handle this? 
In order to stay focused on the ideal of my most powerful self, to be fully, authentically myself, what negativisms do I need to challenge? What beliefs do I need to cultivate, or change?

 

Part Five

5. Get the right support

As a coach, I’m acutely aware of the importance of an encouraging and supportive environment to helping my clients achieve their dreams. Your friends and family don’t necessarily mean to constrain you, but inadvertently sometimes they do. Sometimes they may want you to stay as you are, not change or move on.

Answer – and act on – the following question:

What support do I need to put in place to fulfil my destiny?

Part Six

6. Remember the Big Picture

Finally, always keep sight of the Really Big Picture of Your Life. Heed the words of the poet, Theodore Roethke, that ‘a mind too active is no mind at all’ and the writer, Brenda Ueland, that ‘imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.’

Having a plan, and working your plan is crucial. So too is taking time to reflect, integrate and re-energise. This will keep you balanced and replenished. It will sustain your creativity, and help you clearly see the bigger picture of your life.

As Max Ehrmann wrote in 1927 in his poem, Desiderata, ‘Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.’

Answer this final question:

What moodling will I do and when will I do it?

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Take yourself seriously

 Now is your point of power. Commit right now to accepting your call to action.

2. Set goals that get to the root of what you really want in your life

Write those goals down and make them SMART – specific, measurable, ambitious, reasonable and timed.

3. Take action

Talent, passion, and self-belief alone aren’t enough. You must do the practical work to fulfil your destiny.

4. Plan for contingencies and get the right support for you in place

5. Take time to reflect

 Time to reflect, integrate and re-energise. To balance and replenish, to sustain your creativity, and see the bigger picture of your life. ‘Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.’

Part Two

Be flexible and enjoy the journey

Cultivate an attitude of enjoying the journey. 

You may well start out on one path. It may be the ‘easy option’ – whatever form ‘easy’ takes for you. It may be what you felt was expected of you by your parents or peers. Or maybe it simply felt right at the time. And often, over a period of time, as more information comes along, as other interesting things come up, or as notes of discord start to sound… you experience a pull or a push to jump off that particular path. Perhaps this has happened to you – maybe even several times already. It may well happen again.

In fact, the reason many of us only discover our path later on in life is because of that very path – due to the necessity of developing the diverse and different skills and qualities we will need to walk it.

Even someone who feels they know their path from an early age can often find themselves having to adjust co-ordinates. My jet flying friend turned up at his RAF recruitment office only to discover in his eye test that he was colour blind. In an instant, his dream of flying disintegrated and he needed to set a new course.

It’s natural to shift course on your journey. Something will happen to make you want something different. You may experience this as pleasure or pain. Pull or push. Something else may call you, or that note of discord might be so harsh it thrusts you in another direction. Rather than viewing this as an obstacle, view it as a friend. Rather than thinking you’ve lost your way, realise you are getting a clearer view. Destiny is always evolving.

Part Three

Build your support network

The third thing you must do to handle the tough times well is this: make sure you have a great support network. The friends and mentors you have around you will make a huge difference to your ability to cope. A real support network is there for you whatever is happening in your life, and can be relied upon  to show up if you call when life gets tough. So choose your support wisely. Family and friends can be excellent, but sometimes you need more than that.

Here are three strategies I urge you to carry out:

1. Set up your own support group

Set up a group of like-minded people who all want live purposefully and passionately. Use this course as your agenda and help each other achieve your goals. There’s nothing like having kindred spirits to bounce ideas off, to help with difficulties, to celebrate success with.
At the back of my book, …
 
2. Join the Fiona Harrold website group

This will be your online support group, with people from all over the world to bounce ideas off, help with difficulties, celebrate success with! Join now on www.fionalharrold.com.
3. Get a coach. Successful people hire coaches to help them

Why not you? Don’t you deserve help too? There are wonderful coaches on the Fiona Harrold website, terrific people who will help you get the results that matter to you in your life. For my part, I would be honoured and delighted to work with you.

Action!

Actions of the Week

1. Recognise the importance of tenacity to achieving your dreams

 It’s a crucial character strength.

2. There will be challenges ahead

It’s inevitable. How you handle adversity when it arrives is fundamental to your success.

 
3. There’s no such thing as failure

Change the word failure to ‘feedback’, and use Thomas Edison as your role model. Your plan is a work in progress that you are always refining and polishing.

4. Cultivate flexibility and enjoy the journey

 Something will happen to make you want something different. It may be a push, or a pull, a call, or a note of discord. Rather than thinking you’ve lost your way, realise you are getting a clearer view. Destiny is always evolving.

5. Build your support network

Set up your own support group, join the Fiona Harrold website group, get a coach. For my part, I would be honoured and delighted to work with you.

It’s over to you now. You’re in charge. I know you’ll make it happen. I’m cheering you on. GO!