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Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

Nov 30, 2022 | Uncategorized

Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life.

 

We are living in crazy busy times, in the fast lane with no slowdown in sight, so we better be focused on what is most significant and important in life. Pay attention to those things and say no to everything trying to derail us.  

 

We all have 168 hours per week to accomplish what we want to do. And everyone I talk to could use more like a 200-hour week. Every time I have a computer problem, the first question the tech guide asks is “Did you reboot the computer?” When the last time you stopped to reboot your life?

 

  1. S. Lewis said, “You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream.” As we look forward to the new year, let’s take time to review our goals program and create a blueprint for future success.

 

An honest evaluation of the past is the first step toward a vision for the future.  It is important to evaluate last year’s goals. By doing this we can see several things.  Did we achieved them? Did you shoot too high or too low? In what areas did we do well and why? Conversely, in what areas did we do poorly, and why? This will enable us to make better, more realistic, and achievable goals for the coming year. After reviewing the past year’s accomplishments and failures, we want to review our wheel of well-being to see if we are riding down the highway of life in alignment and balance.

 

Below are the six pillars of life that are important to your success:   

      Family and Home 

      Spiritual and Ethical 

      Physical and Health 

      Social and Cultural  

      Learning and Intellectual  

      Financial and Career 

 

In each of these areas, you want to develop a crystal-clear vision of where you are going.

 

Describe the life you’d really like to live.  What’s possible? What does it look like when you’re living up to your best expectations in each area? Describe what it looks like and what it feels like when you are happy with each. Write in the present tense, as if it is already in place. This represents a picture of your future as you prefer it to be. 

 

That clear vision allows you to set goals in the direction of your preferred future. That vision provides motivation, energy, purpose, and direction. It helps you to communicate your desires with the people around you. 

 

Many people continuously work on personal tasks that are leading nowhere. I believe Thoreau could have been referring to those people when he wrote: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. Many have made financial objectives their sole concern and paid a heavy price for their success – poor health, failed marriages, neglected friendships, no personal development in any area except business.

 

By developing and pursuing your own personal strategic plan, you will increase your energy, motivation, and your sense of satisfaction- your happiness. It’s your choice to make. So, as you turn the page of your calendar in a few weeks, be ready to make the rest of your life the best of your life.

Strategize Your Way into the New Year

Nov 26, 2022 | Uncategorized

Strategize Your Way into the New Year

In this “do more with less” age, everyone is under siege to improve performance at every level.  In the global marketplace, sustaining success is increasingly more difficult.  Are you prepared to cope with the changes in the economy, the impact of global competition, and supply chain disruptions?  Not to mention workforce shortages and Quiet Quitting?

This is the fundamental reason for developing a strategy.  

How can you develop a strategy for your company in a world where the only constant is change? Most people are wary of planning in the first place; preferring instead to keep doing the same old thing and getting the same result. (That of course is the definition of insanity!) The biggest fear is setting a rigid plan that will hinder their ability to pivot quickly.  Which is precisely why you need a proactive strategy.

Strategy is the process of planning and allocating your resources to optimize success.  Without a strategy, the only motivation is survival.  To do more with less, you need crystal clear vision, guiding principles, and unique value proposition.  Create a strategic plan to be a living document communicated throughout the organization for optimal success.  

With only a few weeks left until the new year, there is no better time to start strategizing for 2023! Block out some time to evaluate where you succeeded and where you fell short this year.  Note what you hope to improve and what you want to keep doing.  Use the following to inspire and inform your plan.

A good strategic plan: 

Crystallizes priorities 

Creates a sustainable value proposition,

Defines shared values and guiding principles  

Develops a system to inspire and motivate change  

Aligns employee and company intentions

Communicates strategy to stakeholders

Creates a plan of action

The strategic planning process is one of the most powerful tools you have in your arsenal to improve organizational focus and effectiveness.  Again no one can predict the future, but rather than sit back and wait, the effective executive plans and anticipates what lies ahead.   

We have many tools in our arsenal to help you and your team develop a strategic plan to lead your employees into the new year with focus. Are you ready for it?

 

Asking the Right Questions to Lead Your Team to Success

Nov 20, 2022 | Business Growth, Business Owners, Goal Setting, Leadership, Strategic Planning, Success, Uncategorized

Are you asking the right question to lead your team to success?

What Really Matters Most in life, leadership, and organizational development?

As we prepare to move into the coming year, let’s take a deep dive into this question. Essentially is it a question? Or is it a matter of focus? I believe it’s both.

In order to focus on your life, leadership, and organization, you must first address “What Really Matters Most?” as a question. To transform it from a question to a focus, you must assess where you are now compared with where you want to be.

Rather than reacting to past results and current circumstances, focus on “what really matters most” requires an awareness of and commitment to your vision and purpose. As the saying from Proverbs goes “without a vision, people perish.” There is no pragmatic way to determine how to spend our time, effort, energy and resources without answering this question.

Without focus, you become a victim of current achievements, constantly reworking to compensate for unintended outcomes. We must do some deep work to design our vision.

Today’s leaders face unprecedented positive and negative forces on organizational management. These forces of change present special challenges to leadership and to the workforce. To become a results-driven team, you need extreme clarity on your vision, purpose, and strategy communicated to all involved in supporting its execution. Organizational performance measurably improves as everyone develops an absolute focus on results. This companywide focus on ‘what really matters most’ allows all members to consistently create, develop, and track the results in tandem.

You also need to develop your leadership team, creating programs that give them tools to change their thinking and behavior to achieve sustainable results, growth, and profitability. By developing your people into self-leaders, they will grow and move forward to answer “What Really Matters Most” for your business.

Future looking leaders will use the competitive edge found in developing self-leadership in employees at all levels of the company. Your people are the ones to make it happen. Hence the need for clarity, focus, and a real understanding of “What Really Matters Most” at all levels. Do you have a winning strategy to get you to What Really Matters Most?  

Take your Resolutions from Goal to Reality

Nov 14, 2022 | Goal Setting, Motivation, Strategic Planning, Success

Three Game Changing Words to take Resolutions from Goals to Reality

 

It is time for New Year Goal Setting and people are taking their resolutions much more seriously than in years past. This is no surprise for leaders in the field of business strategy, productivity, and leadership because we know the critical importance and power of goal setting. 

 

There is a lot of optimism that this coming year will be better.  You will see realization of your hopes and dreams with a rigorous planning process to kick off the new year.  There is no doubt that life and business will continue to change because change is the only constant. Management guru Peter Drucker wisely said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” 

  

Setting goals or resolutions is not enough.  Studies continue to show that less than 10% of people who make resolutions succeed. How can you beat the odds?  These three areas are key to success in every endeavor: Clarity, Focus, and System.

 

Clarity.  Far too many people have clarity around what they don’t want rather than what they truly want their future to be. Hazy goals produce hazy results, but SMART goals get you to the finish line. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Tangible goals.  Paul J. Meyer, founder of Success Motivation Institute, said, “Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon must inevitably come to pass.” A crystal-clear strategy and a daily routine of habits will drive you toward your goals.  Your goals must be in alignment with your core values; people never make difficult changes for goals that don’t support their most important values

   

Focus. Goals provide focus and direction.  You should only have a few significant goals at a time. The more goals you have, the less resources you can commit to them.  “If you aren’t making the progress you would like to make and are capable of making, it is simply because your goals aren’t clearly defined,” explains Paul J Meyer. Focus is so important because you will only achieve goals you are fully committed to.

 

System. To achieve an important goal, it is critical to have a system. John Dryden said, “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”  Your daily routine, daily huddles and focus on high payoff activities are the backbone of your personal and professional life.  You will never achieve your goals until you change your daily habits and routines.   

 

At Achievement Unlimited, we have the tools, systems, and software to make your New Year goals a reality.  

 

10 Secrets to Creating Your Best Year Yet

Nov 4, 2022 | Goal Setting, Motivation, Strategic Planning

10 Secrets to Creating Your Best Year Yet 

 

Step 1.  Get clarity about what your best year would look like.

Know what outcomes you want and what you don’t want. Start with “what matters most” so that you can say yes to that and no to everything else. We will always have more goals, wants, and desires than time to reach them. The key to success is making choices about which goals to commit to – and then making a 100% commitment to those. Get the pen to the paper before January and start mapping out your future.   

 

Step 2.  Goal setting is essential for success and achievement.   

Goal setting is the bridge between where you are now and where you want to go. Nothing will improve performance and success more than a clearly written goal, a plan to get there, and a deadline. Goal setting forces you to focus on what is most important. 

 

Step 3. Review & execute. After you identify your goals, schedule a weekly appointment with yourself to check in on progress.  Focus on what matters most by setting up ironclad boundaries so you are not interrupted by the tyranny of the urgent.

 

Step 4. Review your successes and failures. Build on your successes and learn from your failures. “What Worked, What Didn’t, What’s Next?” The key is to evaluate often- objectively- and then move on. Looking at what happened with a healthy degree of detachment allows us to make better decisions.

 

Step 5. Focus on the present. Remember, input equals output so be sure you’re putting plenty of good stuff in. Life is lived out one moment at a time; it is critical to develop the habit of living in the present moment with an upward view of your bigger future.  

 

Step 6. Stop living out of your inbox. Plan to work on your highest payoff activities and cut or delegate your low payoff activities. Start to live your life by design and not by default and see how your motivation grows. 

 

Step 7.  Invest in yourself. What do you want to learn, do, or become? Be specific and put these activities on your calendar to make sure they happen. Start to journal.  Ask yourself daily: “What went well today? Why?” and “What did not go well today? What did you learn?”  Journal about how you can change your actions to do better the next time.

 

Step 8. Create a Mastermind Group. Establish a personal board of directors, people whose wisdom, knowledge, and character you respect, to encourage you. Enlist the help of an experienced mentor and/or coach to help you identify where you can improve, refine your process, and focus for success. They should hold you accountable, keeping you on track and moving forward. 

 

Step 9. Take ownership of your attitude. You choose to have a positive or negative attitude about life. Develop an attitude of gratitude.

 

Step 10. Create a morning routine. The first hour of the day should be a power hour for you to center yourself before rushing into the day.

 

Goal setting is ongoing experience. Each daily goal should serve to help you realize your corresponding monthly goals. I challenge you to pause and consider how today’s goals will help you realize your life’s legacy and overall purpose. 

 

We can help you to get started creating your goals, find your stumbling blocks, and set up an accountability plan to keep you working on your plan all the way to success.