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Finding your Purpose in a Noisy and Distracted World

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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.

“All change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about.” – Margaret Wheatley

Finding and living your purpose is more important than ever in a world that can lack meaning and connection. But how often do we truly focus our attention on what’s important to us?

Do you feel a little lost at times? What about turning up the volume on your inner voice and work on a purpose that resonates with you.

I’m going to be honest, it’s not easy. Like any type of self reflection work, it is work! The answers won’t all come immediately. You do have to work at it and it will take time. You can continue to evolve it too, it will become your life’s work. But it is nice to think about the body of work you want to create in the world.

Before you jump into the three powerful activities below, I have a few smaller recommendations to get you started:

• Get out into nature more. Less screens and walls means you can breathe more deeply, get more oxygen into your bloodstream and connect back with you. Research says that nature helps our heads as well as our bodies stay healthy. You know the feeling you get after a walk or hike in the bush, a stroll on the beach or a day at the river. Diarise nature time to clear your head.
• Insights and understanding come with time. Set up a habit to reflect often. Just like any other skill or habit, it will take time to get into your reflection flow. The great news is those who take the time to reflect are better learners, happier people and more productive. Join me at the next Alyceum Live online gathering for reflection, inspiration and connection on the 28 January using the coupon bemyguest (First time user only).
• Move your body. The insights can come when we move, that’s what our bodies were made to do! It gets the blood pumping and gives you inspiration. Exercise is not only crucial to physical health, but it’s good for your head too.

Purpose Activity 1: Identify and Utilise your Signature Strengths

Living your strengths each and every day can be one of the most powerful strategies you have to creating a life of meaning, happiness and personal success.

Martin Seligman, Professor and founder of the University of Penn’s Positive Psychology Centre, has invested in a huge amount of research into the benefits of identifying and living your strengths as a way of living a flourishing life. They have developed an online (free) survey to identify your top 5 character strengths. (Head to Questionnaires and check out the VIA Character Strengths Survey).

These researchers found 6 universal virtues, which can be broken down into 24 core strengths. Here’s a look at the 24:

  • Courage: Bravery, Perseverance, Honesty and Zest
  • Wisdom: Creativity, Curiosity, Critical thinking, love of learning and perspective
  • Humanity: Love, Kindness and Social intelligence
  • Justice: Teamwork, Fairness and Leadership
  • Temperance: Appreciation of Beauty, Gratitude, Hope, Humour and Spirituality

Personally, I’ve gained much over the years by reflecting on my key strengths and incorporating them more and more into my life. It makes me happy when I get to use my strengths and it brings me a sense of purpose. Understanding my key strengths has given me an awareness of my leadership superpowers too. My strengths (and my unique mix of strengths) as my leadership brand and people get to know me for my strengths.

Ryan Niemiec and Robert McGrath, authors of the bok, The Power of Character Strengths shared that there are telltale signs to know what is a signature strength of yours. There are three tell tale signs: Essential (It’s a core part of who you are as a person), Effortless (It feels natural and evokes a sense of flow when you’re using it) and Energising (It lifts you up and makes you feel happy).

For those playing along at home, my top strengths are hope, zest, gratitude, leadership and creativity. What’s yours?

A note to beware– after mentoring many people to focus on their strengths, the catch is that people see their strengths as so easy or commonplace that they dismiss their power. You might think – how is this my superpower? Isn’t everyone good at this? This is nothing special. The simple answer is NO! Not everyone has this strength. How can you deepen your mastery of this strength, practice it deliberately and enhance its use in your life?

Purpose Activity 2: Understand your Hedgehog

This concept was highlighted in Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, and is based on the ancient Greek parable about the hedgehog and the fox. The story goes, despite all the tactics of the fox, the hedgehog always wins because it knows how to do one thing really well and that’s defend itself (think roll in a ball of spikes!).

So this model asks you to think about the intersection of three questions:

1. What are you great at? These are your strength areas! Focus on them, practice them, improve them and know them! What can you be best in the world at?
2. What does the world need? What will people pay for? Or what does the world need and are willing to pay for?
3. What are you deeply passionate about? What makes you curious? What do you love or brings you joy? What’s important to you?

Now spend a bit of time to consider these questions individually – think of them as three circles in a venn diagram. Then the interesting part is finding something that intersects all three of these. According to Jim Collins’s book, organisations that have focused on one thing (the intersection of these three questions) and done it really well, outperform all their competitors and stand the test of time.

What’s in the intersection for you?

Purpose Activity 3: Focus on the Intrinsic Motivators

In life, you can easily get caught up with, as author Brian Johnson would call it, ‘society’s candy’. Which is when there is an over-emphasis on our extrinsic motivators – namely fame, fortune and how you look. It’s okay to focus a little on these things but an over-emphasis can actually, at worst, make you depressed. Yes, that’s right. If you are living the rat race where you are continually focused on material wealth, chasing fame and focusing on what you look for appearance sake – you are in danger of having poorer mental health because of it.

Instead, it’s best to reorient yourself to focus on areas that intrinsically motivate us – fostering strong relationships,

learning and growth, and contributing to a community. It’s been found that people who are motivated by these intrinsic motivators are more likely to be healthy and have higher self esteem.

When you look at your goals this year and in life, what is driving them? Is it about status, power, money or comparison?

Or is it about how you can learn and grow as a person, or the people who mean the most to you, or how you can give back to a greater purpose in life? It is so interesting to use this filter when you come across advertising. You start to see the extrinsic motivators that advertisers use to try and get you to buy their product. Where does your focus truly lie?

Last word

My last word is this – no one is going to do this important work for you. It’s up to you to take responsibility for clarifying your purpose in life and living a more meaningful existence.

We live in a really lucky time (and place) in the world where we can focus on meaning and purpose in our life. Don’t underestimate the power of these simple reflection activities. Join me on social media and share your purpose!

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start?

This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
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10 Personal Challenges to Make the Most of 2020

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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.

Be More Productive with this One Key Skill

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Imagine if I could give you a magic pill that had the ability to make you happier, healthier, foster stronger relationships, enhance your career, deal with stress and conflict and even help you live longer – would you take it? Of course, right? What if I told you, you could have access to all these things without a pill?

How?

It is all about strengthening your willpower.

What is willpower?

Simply, it is the ability to decide and initiate action. It’s about being able to control your impulses and decide on the most empowered action you can take. How good are you at controlling your attention, emotions and actions?

Ok, I agree it’s not easy in the world we live in. The reality is that we live in a noisy, distracted, emotionally charged world, that drives terrible behaviours where:

  • multitasking is the norm
  • we are addicted to our phones and to social media
  • There are constantly multiple tabs open on our computer screens.
  • we can’t sit, be still, clear our minds or be without our phones without making people anxious!

The bad news is this noise weakens our willpower. It’s our kryptonite. Not good for us.

The good news is that scientists have found that willpower is like a muscle, you can strengthen it with practice. You can start with really small ways to build your willpower. Even the smallest practices of self discipline start to build our willpower muscle.

It’s the habit of noticing what you are about to do and choosing to do the more difficult thing instead of the easiest. It’s about slowing down and asking yourself “What would my most empowered self choose to do here?”.

I’m talking about the most simplest of things to begin with. For example, putting your clothes and shoes away at night, making the bed in the morning, going for a run or eating the healthier option at the cafe. Every time you do this, you are strengthening your willpower muscle, just like working out at the gym.

Think of it as having two different people in your head:

1. Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – who lives for the moment, wants instant gratification and has no self control.
2. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter – who is a level headed person, who can delay gratification to achieve bigger goals and stay calm in chaos.

Each day, these two voices in your head debate the smallest to the largest willpower challenges you are faced with. Can you resist instant gratification for longer term rewards?

3 Strategies to Develop your Willpower

1. Pause and Plan

When you’re faced with a choice, rather than racing into action, consider the options carefully. Think about it for a moment. Take three deep breaths and think about the long term gain of taking the harder option. Listen to Aretha Franklin’s classic song, Think:

You better think (think)
Think about what you’re trying to do to me
Think (think, think)
Let your mind go, let yourself be free

What’s truly the best decision to be made? What would your best self do?

2. Make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing

If you want to go exercise in the morning, what can do do to set yourself up for success? You can set your alarm, you can get your clothes and shoes ready and put them next to your bed, you can arrange to go with a friend so it makes it hard for you to back out. Set yourself up for success.

Consider other good habits that you want to set up in your life – eating healthily at work, banishing time spent on social media. How can you pre-commit to making the right decision and give yourself no other option than to succeed?!

3. Track your progress, make it visual and fun

Get focused on the habits needed for you to achieve your goals. Think about one habit you can do for the next 30 days. Chart your progress or get a friend to help. And hey, even if you miss a day, get back on the horse straight away (recommitting is as important as starting) and make sure you complete your habit the very next day. Monitoring your progress improves your willpower and is also motivating.

It can make an incredible difference in your life

As Kelly McGonigal, author of The Willpower Instinct says “Self-control is a better predictor of academic success than intelligence (take that, SATs), a stronger determinant of effective leadership than charisma (sorry, Tony Robbins), and more important for marital bliss than empathy (yes, the secret to lasting marriage may be learning how to keep your mouth shut). If we want to improve our lives, willpower is not a bad place to start.”

My advice – start with the smallest thing you can do to improve your willpower and work up from there.

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How to achieve your goals with the WOOP method

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We all love an inspiring vision board – but is it really going to help you achieve your goals? We sit there daydreaming of what we would love to have happen in our life. But is it time well spent or just a waste of time?

I’m all for getting clear about the vision you have for your life, work project, or business. But some people get so wrapped up in the visualisation of their goal – they forget about how to get there. Do you focus on the process or the end outcome of your goals?

Gabriele Oettingen, a professor at New York University, developed a practical activity to help people achieve their goals. And visualising is only one part of the story! She breaks goal setting into four main parts and calls it WOOP.

 

The WOOP Method

Get your pen ready!

Wish – What is something you want to achieve? Make it specific and challenging – but also achievable.

Outcome – What will be the result or outcome of you achieving this wish? Imagine, visualise and feel what it will be like to achieve your wish.

Obstacle – Time to get realistic here! What could be the main barrier to you achieving your wish? It’s time to think about how it’s not going to work, and what obstacles or barriers may spring up.

Plan – You’ve brainstormed the challenges. Now it’s time to get that positive hat back on and make a plan to overcome the challenges! When these challenges pop up, this is the plan you turn to.

Now that I’ve outlined Gabriele’s model, I would like to add one more element. Let’s change WOOP into WOOPA!

Action – What is a small action you can take every single day to move toward reaching your wish?

 

Why I love this model

I love this model because it busts some serious goal setting myths.

1. Vision boards are really popular. But I think they can sometimes have the opposite effect. When you only imagine your goals and aspirations, it can soon turn destructive if you can’t achieve it. The more time we spend thinking about our goals, as if we’ve achieved them, it can downplay our sense of motivation to actually achieve them!

2. Another popular saying in goal setting is to “always think positive.” The trouble with this is that any goal worth achieving is going to encounter challenges. We need to dive into the obstacles that we might face to consider innovative ways around it.

3. Focus on the process – not the overall goal. Once you have a clear sense of your vision, then focus your attention on the daily actions required to achieve it. Make this your focal point and get good at smashing the everyday activities needed for your success. Yes, it’s not as alluring as focusing on your big goal – but it will make all the difference in actually achieving it!

 

Same Goal, Different Approach

Even the biggest goals can be broken down into small actionable tasks. Take the NaMoWriMo Challenge for example. Every November, thousands of writers globally challenge themselves to write a book in a month. 50,000 words is the target.

Now you may be thinking, “50,000 words – that’s huge!” But if you break it down, it’s just 1,667 words each day for 30 days.

Small but consistent action can be really powerful. When you focus on the daily action, the results will take care of themselves. Dare to try?

 

Get this Free Guide: 6 POWERFUL SECRETS TO FIND YOUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IN LIFE

The world needs more purpose-driven people. But where do you start?

This inspiring guide will give you powerful insights to find and refine your own purpose in life.
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.