Heart Leader

I strongly believe in the power of reflection. I am talking about taking some intentionally scheduled time on a regular basis (daily or weekly) to think about your life, where you are now and what direction you would like your life to go in. 

The venue is essential to get the most out of your reflection time. Some examples of good places for reflection include the beach, a lake, the mountains, a park, a quiet room where you live or during an activity that you enjoy. I do a lot of my reflecting during my daily work outs. I have 2 hours each morning from 4:45am – 6:45am where I am alone working out in a small gym in my house.  I am able to take that time and think deeply about my life and how I can grow and improve in each important area of my life.  Some days my reflection time is spent thinking about something superficial like what needs to be accomplished that day.  Other days I am reflecting on big decisions I am facing and weighing the positives and negatives of the decision. 

As I wrote about above, my day to day reflection is done in the gym.  Once each year I take an entire day away from business and life and I write  a life plan.  The life plan is a business plan for your life.  Here are the basic steps to create a life plan;

1. Create a list of the 6-8 most important areas of your life.  These are called accounts.  Some of your accounts may be include; health, spouse, children, career, family, hobbies.  List them in order of importance with the most important account being first.

2. Honestly assess each of the accounts.  Write down your thoughts and feelings on what is working and what isn’t in each account.  This requires you to be honest with yourself and this can be very difficult.  All change comes through the truth.  You must be willing to tell the truth.  Be honest with yourself and you can create the change you are looking for.

3. Write a purpose for each of your accounts.  Why is that account important to you?

4. Create a 1, 5, 10 and 20 year vision of what you ideally would like each account to look like in 1, 5, 10 and 20 years.  This is how the account would look like if your plan for that account turned out perfect or the way you envision it.

5. Write specific action plans on how you will get each account from where you have  currently assessed it to where you would ideally like to see the account progress to.  There is a gap that must be bridged.  Some of these actions plans will be small and easy to accomplish and others will be large and difficult.  Do the work to improve the accounts you see value in.  What can you do improve the quality of each account that you have labeled as the most important areas of your life?

Action plan:  I have two action plans for you today.  The first is to intentionally schedule some time each week (30-60 minutes at least) for reflection.  Buy a journal and use it to record your reflection sessions.  The second action plan is write a life plan. 

Thank you for reading my blog.

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You can learn more about me on my web site at http://www.darylwizelman.com

My book, Heart Leader, can be purchased by clicking the link below.

http://www.bookmasters.com/marktplc/02877.htm

Daryl