Goals

10 Personal Challenges to Make the Most of 2020

January 6, 2020 by Alicia Curtis

Want to carve out time and space for thinking and reflection in 2020? Join me once a month online for 90 minutes for reflection, inspiration and connection. Our next gathering is on the 28 January and you can use the coupon bemyguest to try it for free for the first time. Or better yet, commit to growing your reflection muscle by registering for all the 2020 Alyceum Live gatherings here.

So it’s at this time of the year, we are pondering how to make the most of the year ahead. What habits can stay and which ones need to go! As James Clear says in his book, Atomic Habits, “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”

The fascinating realisation is you choose who you want to be. Every action you take is a step forward in a direction. Which path do you want to take? In today’s blog post we are exploring small actions, habits and mindsets to make the most of 2020! Here’s my top ten personal challenges!

1. GOALS – Make a bucket list of 100 goals you’d like to achieve in your lifetime

So first – let’s get clear on what we want to do with our lives. Can you list 100 goals that you’d like to achieve in your lifetime? This is often called a bucket list. Think about life as experiences – what experiences would you like to have?

Salsa dancing? African adventure? Learn french? Be part of a book club?

How often do you step back and think about this? We are creatures of comfort, and our operating mode would rather just do things similar to last time then explore something new. So we have to continually push ourselves to explore new things!

If you struggle with creating your 100 – think about certain themes in your life, for example, what’s 10 travel goals, what’s 10 hobbies you would like to try, what’s 10 goals you could do with friends, what’s 10 things you like to learn more about?

2. ATTENTION – Reclaim your attention

In the world we live in – this is a HUGE one. Make 2020 the year you reclaim your attention.

Social media, app notifications, emails – these modern day conveniences erode your attention and willpower. How much time do you spend on your phone? How many times are you distracted with a notification? What do you do when you first wake up in the morning or straight before you go to bed at night?

Some of the biggest technology companies in the world are becoming world experts in developing addictions! This is not good for us for many reasons, it trains our brains to look for distract instead of concentrating, and we avoid every moment to be bored.

Why is that such a bad thing, you ask?

Bored can actually be useful. In Manoosh Zomorodi’s book, Bored and Brilliant, she explores the benefits of bored, saying that it can be an incubator lab for brilliance!

In the book, she explores 7 challenges, here are a couple of you.

First challenge is just to observe yourself. Count how many times you reach for your phone, head to instagram or get distracted by a notification. Often your phones can now record this information too. The results might be surprising.

Another challenge is to keep your devices while in motion. If you’re walking, in the car, or meeting with someone, keep your phone out of reach.

Better yet, another challenge is to delete the app that you’re most addicted to off your phone!

The point is, you set intentions and boundaries about how you want to live your life. How you spend your days, are how you spend your life. Just 25 minutes a day can equal to 2 years of your life!

Think of the time you could regain in your life and put it towards achieving one of your 100 goals instead!

3. RESILIENCE – Take a cold shower

Hate the cold? That’s the whole point! If you want to build your sense of resilience, you need to do the things you hate. You can start with the act of taking a cold shower.

Cold exposure has been shown to have numerous health benefits such as improving your immune system, decreasing depression or help with weight loss – which is really great, but not the reason why we are doing it.

The simple act of having a cold shower helps develop our ability to deal with discomfort. The more we practice dealing with discomfort, the more everyday annoyances won’t bother us anymore. We practice with cold showers so we can build our courage for the important moments in life that are uncomfortable.

4. COURAGE – Be Bold and push your comfort zones every day

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

So the cold showers are building our courage – now it’s time to push out of those comfort zones and be bold.

Make a list of the boldest moves you could make this year. Think about the things that really scare you. Reaching out to that person who you admire, attending a conference, speaking in front of an audience, taking on a physical challenge, trying a new hobby.

Dr Stan Beechman, author of Elite Teams writes that fear is keeping you from reaching your potential. Conquering fear should be your primary goal in life.

What fears do you have?

What courageous acts will move you forward? Saying yes. Saying no. Making that phone call. Speaking up at that meeting. Taking that new class. Setting that goal.

Make that bravery list and pick them off each month! Fortune favours the bold!

5. RELATIONSHIPS – Find people who inspire you

Crowd your life with people who inspire you.

You can start easily with books and podcasts. Then find meet ups, events or communities. Invest time in developing the relationships in your life.

Friendships take time and effort. In the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Jeffrey Hall, professor of Communication Studies, suggested that it’s all about time we invest. His results showed that it takes 40 to 60 hours to form a casual friendship, 80 to 100 hours to be upgraded to being a friend, and about 200 hours to become “good friends”

Let’s start clocking up the time who bring out the best in us!

6. GIVING – Find ways to give back

There are so many ways we can play our part in creating a better world – we can give our money, time, expertise or resources. Stand up for something. Recognise the challenges in our world and do something about it. Get informed. Get together with others and get doing something different because of it.

Our world needs change makers. You can be that change maker.

What’s a cause that is truly meaningful to you? Perhaps it get that fire in your belly – gets you angry or annoyed. Dedicate some time in 2020 supporting this cause, either through your time, money, expertise or resources.

Perhaps 2020 is the year, you find your first community board position?

7. SELF AWARENESS – Create a list of journalling questions

Michael Gelb in his book, Think like Da Vinci explores the habits and rituals of the great Leonardo Da Vinci. In his one short life time, Leonardo Da Vinci was a creative, a scientist, a town planner and an inventor to name a few. Da Vinci journaled about everything – his ideas, his learning, his findings and more.

A list of 100 questions is like your curiosity list. Start by writing down a question that you can ponder in your journal.

Am I in the right job or career?
How can I use my strengths more everyday?
What does love look like to me?
How can I be fearless?

Just keep brainstorming questions until you get to 100 – try to do this in one sitting! Then review your list and group them into patterns or similarities. Once you’ve done that, see if you can choose 10 power questions to keep handy when you are journalling.

You can never again have the excuse….but I don’t know what to journal about!

8. STRENGTHS – Spend time honing your superpowers

Do you truly understand, foster and utilise your strengths?

Your innate talents combined with your knowledge and skills, creates your strengths. These are your superpowers.

Focus on building mastery in your areas of strength. Are you a technical expert, a connector, an entrepreneur, a pace setter? Whatever you are, double down on your areas of strength.

“We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives.”
~ George Leonard from Mastery

In what ways, can you keep on the path of mastery in 2020?

9. FOCUS – Break up with complaining

Why not make 2020 the year that you stop complaining!

Do you enjoy a good complain? I think everyone does. But how much do you do it everyday? It can be quite surprising how easily we can fall into complaining all the time!

Time to break the habit.

Will Bowen, author of A Complaint Free World came up with a simple challenge….

“Begin to wear the bracelet on either wrist. When you catch yourself complaining, gossiping, or criticizing, move the bracelet to the other wrist.

If you hear someone else who is wearing a purple bracelet complain, it’s okay to point out their need to switch the bracelet to the other arm; BUT if you’re going to do this, you must move your bracelet first! Because you’re complaining about their complaining.

Stay with it. It may take many months to reach 21 consecutive days. The average is 4 to 8 months.”
What a challenge!

Why should we kick the complaining habit? There are many reasons:

Complaining induces our stress response which is not good for our brains.
Complaining makes it hard to see the possibilities and open our minds.
Pessimists report worse physical and mental health than optimists.

This is a great challenge to first be aware of how much you complain and then complete the challenge to erase it from your conversation.

10. VISION – Don’t just thinking about 2020, let’s think about the whole decade ahead!

Instead of thinking about where you want to be and do in 2020, why not think about where you want to be in 2030? What age will you be? What will you be doing?

Commit to the long term. We are a very short term-focused society, we like things instantly. Have you noticed?

Peter Diamandis, author of Bold, bucks the trend here with his challenge – what’s your 25-year commitment? He says, imagine publicly making a 25 year commitment to something you’re passionate about?

There is great power in this type of long term thinking to make a greater impact in our lives and in society. So what’s your 25 year commitment?

Well that’s it – my top 10 challenges to help you improve your 2020 and beyond. What do you think?

If you want to improve your ability to reflect and engage with a good dose of monthly inspiration and connection, then I invite you to join my Alyceum Live online gatherings. Join us here for a free taster (FIRST TIME GUESTS ONLY) on the 28 January using the coupon bemyguest. Or better yet, commit to growing your reflection muscle by registering for all the 2020 Alyceum Live gatherings here.

10 questions to plan for 2020

December 30, 2019 by Alicia Curtis

Want to join my Reflection Revolution in 2020? You, me, the Alyceum Community, once a month for 90 minutes for reflection, inspiration and connection. Join us here for a free taster (FIRST TIME GUESTS ONLY) on the 28 January using the coupon bemyguest. Or better yet, commit to growing your reflection muscle by registering for all the 2020 Alyceum Live gatherings here.

A fresh new year to dream, visualise and plan. But how do you get started? Journalling is a great tool to develop our insight, connect with our inner voice and start to develop clarity about the life you want to lead.

I think we can under-estimate what can be achieved in a year but we have to take the time to contemplate what we will actually want to achieve and break it down into your first bite sized piece of this. So what do you want to be different in a year’s time?

In December I posted 10 Questions to Fuel Your Reflection of 2019. Because we have to look back first!

It’s a great practice to….

reflect back over the whole year (it gives you a sense of what can be achieved in a year),
visualise what you did with your time (consider the projects you worked on and how you spent your time), and
really consider on the key learnings you have taken from the year – seriously, what did you learn?

Most often, we sleep walk through life without taking the time to reflect, grow and stretch into the future. Just as useful as it is to look back, now it’s time to look forward.

10 Questions to help your planning in 2020

So where to start!

Take these 10 journaling questions to planning for 2020. They are simple questions but they will take some time to consider. Put yourself first – before work, Netflix or social media, and make it a priority to immerse yourself in these questions.

1. How will you step into the highest version of yourself this year?

If you practiced all the habits you wanted, lived your core strengths and you were totally aligned with values – this would be your highest version of you. Visualise who and what this person would look like, what choices they would make, how they would talk and interact with others and what they would focus on in life. The game is – how do you edge closer and closer to this person every moment. Think small steps.

Your highest version of you can be your greatest mentor, guide and inspiration – ask her for advice as life’s challenges arise. Tap into the inner wisdom you possess. The clearer your highest version is to you, the better she can guide you through life’s ups and downs.

2. Describe your ideal day, week and year?

How you live your days is how you live your life!

It’s a big statement but it’s true. Our daily habits form the foundations for how you live your life. What is one habit you want to focus on this year and one habit you want to let go of?

Take some time to craft your ideal day, week and year. What does an ideal 24 hours look like to you? Take into consideration all the realities of life and craft what it could look like.

What about a week? What do the ultimate 7 days look like? Break the rules, and see what you come up with. What energises you? Who do you want to spend time with? What goals do you want to dedicate your life to?

3. How will you use your strengths?

Want to enjoy life to the fullest? Put your strengths to work!

Professor Martin Seligman, Director of the University of Penn Positive Psychology Centre found that a key part of flourishing in life and work is using your strengths. So first you have to know them – do you know them? Inside out and back to front? How much of your day do you get to use your strengths currently?

How can you increase the dial on this and use them more and more in your life. Again, you can be creative with this, perhaps you haven’t come across ways that you could be using them more and more in your life.

4. How will you take care of yourself? What’s your health and wellbeing plan?

Without your health it’s very hard to achieve anything of significance over the long term. Think physical, mental and spiritual. This means you have to actively plan for sleep, rest, nutrition, movement, mental clarity and fun! How could you step up your health? How can you make it fun?

I read an article this year that so aptly described self care as not a day in the day spa but the everyday looking after yourself – cooking healthy meals, moving your body and doing something that enriches your spirit – this is real self care.

Don’t wait until your health is threatened to make health a priority. Do it now.

5. What is holding you back?

Otto Scharmer, author of the books Theory U and Leading from the Emerging Future talks about the three voices that hold you back…

the voice of judgement (shutting down your open mind instead of being inquiring and curious),
the voice of cynicism (shutting down your open heart instead of connecting and relating) and
the voice of fear (shutting down your open will instead of letting go).

How powerful!

Do you ever listen to the stories you tell yourself or others about what’s happening in your life? I often try to listen in to what I say automatically to friends and colleagues about what’s happening in my life.

Journalling is another great opportunity to tap into your stories.

These stories are your beliefs – but you know what, you don’t have to believe them? What? Yes, your beliefs can hold you back and sometimes you need to actively change them.

What beliefs do you need to say goodbye to and what beliefs will you try out in 2020?

6. How will you give back to the community? And how can you be of service to others?

If you know me at all, you know I see this as an integral piece in life. Life is energised by using our greatest strengths in service to the world. If you haven’t felt this through your giving before, you probably haven’t tapped into the right giving for you yet.

How can you focus on giving to others this year? Often this can provide great energy in our lives. If you were to focus on one area to give back in, what’s it going to be this year? Commit as deeply to this as the other areas in your life.

Maybe it could be to join a Not-For-Profit board?

7. What do you want to learn?

The most extraordinary leaders I know are people who never stop learning. They are humble and understand the world is changing at an extraordinary pace.

First define the what. Where do you want to grow, stretch and learn this year? If you could develop your own learning curriculum this year, what would it be?

Then think about the how. How will you learn what you want to learn? What books can you read? Are there any courses you can take? What conferences can you learn from? Which key skills do you want to learn and foster this year?

Get excited about what you can learn and how you can grow as a person and leader.

8. What relationships do you want to foster?

Relationships feed you – they can lift you up, inspire you, challenge you and support you. Yet, we are increasingly living in a lonely world. In today’s world, we’ve forgotten how to foster friendships with others.

Lately I’ve become really intentional about the relationships I’ve wanted to foster. Which ones energise me? Provide great insights? Challenge me? Nurture me?

Think about who makes up your community? Family, friends, networks, work colleagues and neighbours.

Be focused on the key relationships you would like to develop this year. Who can help you be the person you want to be? Will you reach out to a new mentor, create a mastermind group, attend a new conference to expand your networks. Foster your friendships?

This will take time. Devote time, energy, ideas and resources to develop these friendships. Make them fun. Make them meaningful. And they will create a life worth living.

9. How will you be inspired?

Inspire – the original latin definition means to breathe into. How do you breathe life into your existence?

What are the inspiration sources that help you stay energised and refreshed for the ups and downs for the year. How can you operationalise your inspiration sources so you can perform at an optimal level?

Inspiration is required on a consistent basis so think about the sources that energise you in life. What gives you energy and what drains your energy?

10. What amazing life adventures do you want to do this year?

Ok – now it’s time for a bit of fun.

Forget work, think about what is going to bring you joy and fun into your life. What life adventures could you have this year?

Think about what you’ve never done before! What’s something you could do for the very first time? It could be a new place to visit, a new hobby, a new friendship to cultivate?

Think about your fears – what are you avoiding? What gets the heart rate going? Life adventures can be a mental challenge as well as a physical one. What is one fear to conquer this year? What training and preparation could you do? Who could you enlist to help you? Give yourself a challenge.

Think about what brings you joy!

Let’s continue the conversation here. I’d love to know what 2020 will bring you!

10 key questions to fuel your reflection in 2019

December 2, 2019 by Alicia Curtis

It’s so easy to get caught up in the consumerism of Christmas with the social pressures of presents, parties and more but I have a challenge for you to change and reframe what the last month of the year is about! Instead of December passing you by in a blur, let’s make it a time of review and reflection, meaning-making and connection! Isn’t that what the festive season is really supposed to be about?

* Want to join my Reflection Revolution in 2020? You, me, the Alyceum Community, once a month for 90 minutes for reflection, inspiration and connection. Join us here for a free taster on the 18 December using the coupon bemyguest. Or better yet, commit to growing your reflection muscle by registering for all the 2020 Alyceum Live gatherings here.*

Connection and Reflection

Rather than making December a month of overindulgence of food and drink, why not gather an intimate group of your family, friends and colleagues together to make time for personal reflection and then share your reflections with each other. You could couple this with an early morning walk along the beach, an evening yoga session or a fun game of tennis! I’ve made it simple for you and created a list of questions you can send to your friends below. Or better yet, make up your own list of questions to explore!

Reflection can be a powerful learning tool to ignite your self awareness, relationships and leadership. Better yet, it’s absolutely free to do and your reflections get better with practice.

A Magic Carpet Ride

Think of it as a magic carpet ride through the events, activities and experiences that occurred in 2019. Fly through your year from January to now, think about the moments of pure joy as well as the challenges that have made you stronger. I find it can be worthwhile to flick through your diary and note the events, milestones, projects or family moments that made an impact this year.

Step back and reflect – what did these moments mean for you? What have you learnt? By standing back and looking at it from a distance, you can elicit the learning and the meaning. There has been multiple research studies that have shown the benefits of regular reflection. It helps our performance and also makes us happier. Think of it as the debrief after the game, consider each move made, think about how strategies panned out, reflect on winning moves and ones to improve on next time.

As Margaret Wheatley said “We are, always, poets, exploring possibilities of meaning in a world which is also all the time exploring possibilities.”

Let me prompt you…

I get it… reflection can be hard if it’s a muscle you haven’t used in awhile. So let me take some of the pain away but giving you some prompts to help with your thinking. Here are 10 questions to get you thinking about the year that’s been!

1. What has made you proud this year?

Tap into the experiences and achievements that made you feel happy, satisfied and alive!

Sometimes our reflections can be dogged by what went wrong and how do you improve. Instead, I want you to focus on the activities that made you the proudest this year!

What activities can you credit to your hard work, initiative or creativity? Sink into these feelings – perhaps it was something you achieved or something someone close to you achieved. Perhaps it was something you overcame this year or a lesson you learned. It could be anything – relationships, goals, hard work or your attitude

2. What inspired you this year?

inspiration: the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.

Re-energising is so important. Pinpoint what it was for you.

What were your sources of inspiration this year? People, environments, conferences or videos (like TED videos), movies, events, books – anything! See if you can pin point it – what or who inspired you to be your best?

What were the catalysts to enhance your knowledge, confidence, skills or work? Was it a new podcast, a key event or an important mentor? Share this list with others to combine your inspiration avenues!

3. What are your three key learnings from this year?

What’s been your major learning curves this year?

Instead of sailing into the new year without fully gaining the benefit of all your experiences this year, consider the three main things that you’ve learnt. What did you set out to learn and improve on during the year? Where can you see you improved from last year?

Where have you grown the most as a person, leader, family member or friend? Were these intended learning curves or a by product of circumstance? Either way, we can take each experience to the next level by reflecting on what we learnt.

4. What habits have served you well?

Aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do. It’s quite enlightening to realise that what you do day in, day out makes you the person you are! Maybe it’s a little scary too!

It’s so simple, but it can also mean the discipline of constructing your day to be the person you want to be. What habits did you intentionally practice this year and which ones have slipped in – good or bad? Which habits have you added this year? Which ones did you drop? How did it make a difference to your year?

5. What were your key relationships this year and how have they affected you?

Family and friends, business colleagues and community – relationships can play a key part of your happiness and also your success.

Which relationships made you feel strong and empowered? How did you intentionally foster the relationships in your life? Are you hanging around the right people? Are they lifting you up to be your best? How has your presence positively impacted on the people around you too?

6. How did you utilise your strengths this year?

Your strengths are your superpowers. How do you use them in service to the world? Do you know what your key strengths are? If not, perhaps it’s time to get clear about the strengths that you are or can contribute to the world.

How did you put your strengths to work this year? Are you using your strengths on a daily, weekly and monthly basis? How does it make you feel when you can work in your zone of genius, as Gay Hendricks would call it.

7. How did you focus on what’s fundamentally important to you this year?

It is so easy to get caught up in what everyone else wants you to do. Your email can end of being a huge list of other people’s to do actions! Your family, friends, work or even society in general can dictate what gets done.

Think about when you get into work everyday, do you reflect on your key priorities and set in for some deep, deliberative work or do you check your email and focus on what others want of you? Did you get to focus on what was important to you this year or did you get pulled in different directions?

What is fundamentally important to you and how do you ensure it stays the priority for you?

8. What are you grateful for this year?

Time to evoke a little gratitude. Make a list and check it twice!

Gratitude has immeasurable benefits to your physical health, mental health, improves your relationships, increases your resilience, helps you sleep better, improves your self esteem, not to mention, it makes you happier!

From the huge big things to the tiniest little things. What are you grateful for? If it involved people around you, this might be a nice way to reconnect with people during December and tell them what made you grateful too!

9. What have been the obstacles, hard times or challenges you’ve experienced and how have you grown from the experiences?

Yes there are going to be ups and downs in the year. Times where it didn’t always go to plan. Experiences you didn’t expect. What were your biggest challenges this year?

Revisit these tough times and bring some reframing to it – how has it made you a better person, how did you grow and what did you learn? If it’s still tough to revisit, perhaps it’s time for gather a new meaning about the experience.

10. How would I summarise the year that I’ve had?

Use your creative juices to summarise the year in a creative way.

It’s quite in vogue these days to come up with a word at the start of the year, but I want you to do this retrospectively. How would you summarise it?

What would be the theme, mantra or symbol that characterises the year that you had? How would you draw a picture to reflect on the past year? Time to get out of your head and instead into your heart and body. What colours would you use? What shapes or images represent this year?

Take some time this December…

Grab your favourite drink, put on some encouraging music and sit in your favourite chair or go outside into nature and answer these questions for yourself!? Then come together with friends and share your reflections from the year.

Look out the blog in the coming weeks for 10 Questions to Plan for the New Year.

Have you registered for the Alyceum Live online gathering below?

As our Christmas gift to you, you can register for FREE using the coupon code bemyguest by clicking on the image below.

3 things I learnt at TEDxPerth

November 20, 2017 by Alicia Curtis

W hat comes to mind when you hear the word philanthropy? Who do you think of? Bill Gates, Oprah or even Andrew Forrest? What do all these people have in common? Yes they are all very wealthy, very well known business leaders. Without a doubt, their giving is inspiring…but it can also make you feel that only certain people can be a philanthropist. What if I told you that you didn’t have to be rich and famous to be a philanthropist?

This was the beginning of my TEDxPerth talk on the 11th November in front of 1500 people at the Perth Concert Hall. I spoke about the power that everyone has to be a philanthropist. If you want to hear more about philanthropy, network with some exceptional leaders and enjoy a fabulous night, I really encourage you to attend the 100 Women Gala night on this Wednesday. Come discover a different way to be a philanthropist!

The process of presenting at TEDxPerth reminded me of three very important ideas about leadership.

1. Feel the fear and do it anyway

Everyone feels fear, nerves and anxiety and it takes courage to put yourself out there and try new things. How often do we truly put ourselves in the position to stretch, be challenged and grow? Get comfort with the uncomfortable and watch your learning skyrocket. What unfamiliar situations can you put yourself in to broaden your knowledge and skills? For me it’s about moving out of my own ego about what others might think of me and into a mindset of service – how can I serve this audience in the best way possible.

Situations: What are you challenging yourself to do next?

2. It takes a village

Leadership is not an individual sport. The support I received from a whole range of people to help me present for 11 – 12 minutes was massive. Quite simply, I couldn’t have done it without them. From the TEDxPerth team to my own family, friends and colleagues, the people you surround yourself with make a huge difference. It makes me utterly grateful for the support networks that I have and a reminder to keep fostering the relationships around you.

Support: Who is your support network?

3. Ideas and Action

The process of distilling an idea into 11 – 12 minutes is a challenging yet rewarding journey. What is the essence of this idea? How will I communicate this? What are my strengths in communicating this? What is absolutely necessary to the message and what can I cut? Communication of ideas is a key part of the role of a leader.

For me personally, it’s not just about the ideas but the action too. An idea is just a dream until you put it into action. The revolutionaries are those who put ideas into action.

Significance: How are you acting on your ideas?

Thank you for all your support!