Summary Of Action Steps
Action Step 1:
Read back over your answers to the Questionnaire in Chapter 1 and make notes on thoughts that have come to mind while you completed the questionnaire. If it has been a long time since you thought about the direction of your life, these thoughts and ideas will be invaluable in the weeks to come.
Action Step 2:
On a blank piece of paper write a list of everything you are passionate about, every interest, and every hobby. Don’t think about business ideas, just write things down.
Action Step 3:
Identify one area of your life in which you need a high level peer. Identify two people who can be that peer. In the next 24 hours, make one simple step to start modelling that person. For example order a book they have written or contact them.
Action Step 4:
Systematically examine your monthly expenses. Go through your bank statements and credit card bills. Try to cut your expenses by 20%.
Action Step 5:
If you do not already volunteer and serve others, find a way you can use what you have to help someone else - at your church or community, a short term trip overseas, at a school or old person’s home, with a charity or for a person in need.
Believe it or not it will benefit you more than them.
Action Step 6:
Set aside ten minutes in your day where you will be alone, quiet and undisturbed. Get up early in the morning if you have to.
Sit cross legged on the floor with you back to a wall. Close your eyes and start taking slow and deep breaths, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Your tummy should be rising and falling while you breathe, not your chest.
Now imagine you are in an empty house except for the furniture, and you are looking out at a view of the ocean. Spend five minute right there looking out to sea. After five minutes of peacefully clearing your mind of any other distraction, ask yourself these questions:
What is my purpose in life?
How can I make the world a better place?
Where would I feel the most contentment and fulfilment?Do this will no pre-conceived ideas and just allow your heart (and God if you are a believer) to tell you the answers to these questions.
Write down whatever you feel. It might be just a snippet, or a thought or an idea, or a picture or a plan.
Action Step 7:
Make a list of the characteristics of the Future You. Start modelling as many of these characteristics as you can.
Action Step 8:
Complete these steps (a) to (e) with a piece of paper. Take action today!
Remember some of the decisions you make will be mistakes, but that is okay. Mistakes are simply learning experiences. We need to allow ourselves to make mistakes and we need to allow ourselves to fail.
(a) Identify Your Goal
Ask yourself where you want to be in five years. For example with my dream partner, in a job/business I love, in my own debt free house, with a published novel!
(b) Admit Your Fears
Until you admit your fears specifically you cannot address them. For example “I fear the unknown and failure if I completely change my career path.”
(c) Consequences
Concentrate on what your life will be like if you don’t change, and emphasise how bad it will be! For example: “If I don’t change I will be stuck in this dead end job until they make me redundant and then I’ll be unemployable and I’ll be broke and I’ll also die lonely because I haven’t got the guts to ask out the person I like!”
The more you focus on the negatives of not changing, the more you will be motivated to change.
(d) Identify Areas for Change
Specifically identify areas of your life you are not happy with that need change. Write them down.
(e) Be Decisive
Don’t prolong the pain! Make a decision right now i.e. today! Planning your next five years starts right now. Write that resignation letter now, phone the person you want to ask out right now! Whatever it is, start the process now.
If you are still having trouble making a decision go back to step (c) and tell yourself over and over how much worse your life is going to be if you stay in your rut.
Action Step 9:
Think about an area of your life where you keep doing the same thing over and over but it is not working.
It is time to do less of that or stop it altogether and find another approach.
Think about an area of your life where what you are doing is producing excellent results. Try to find ways to do that activity more and more, and also apply that activity to other areas of your life.
Take a blank piece of paper and write down one area of your life where you know this principle applies. Write down ways that you can do more of what is working and/or less of what is not working.
Action Step 10:
Try something NEW in the next 24 hours, and if you fail, embrace it then move on.
Action Step 11:
Write down the three limiting beliefs that have been holding you back the most. Under each one, write down the negative consequences you have already experienced through holding each belief.
Then on a separate piece of paper write each limiting belief with a space under each one. Now write down an opposite empowering belief for each. Then most important, cross out the limiting belief.
For example:
“No matter what I do I’ll always be overweight.”
“I can be slender and gorgeous!”
“The best result I can get is a bit above average.”
“I can achieve excellence if I put my mind to it!”
“I am no good at relationships; I may as well stay single.”
“I love people, people love me and I’m going to be the perfect partner for someone!”Close your eyes and see yourself actually cutting those limiting beliefs out of your mind and putting them in a blender and blending them. Then pour them into your sink and see them get washed away.
Write your three new empowering beliefs on a new piece of paper and read them aloud to yourself every day with energy and enthusiasm. I have used this technique myself and it really works.
Action Step 12:
Take a blank piece of paper and write down on the left side all of the limiting mental barriers you either speak or think.
Once you have done that, write a corresponding positive statement that over-writes and replaces your mental barrier.
Some examples:
“I could never afford that.”
“How could I afford that?” “I feel sick and tired.”
“I’m healthy and fit and I don’t get sick.” “I couldn’t start a business.”
“I’d be very successful in business.” “I could never be that good.”
“I excel at everything I work hard at.” “I’m not good enough to get that job.”
“I am able to succeed at whatever job I do.”You can literally re-program or re-socialize your mind by repeating the positive statement and developing the habit of thinking and speaking positively. This effectively breaks down any limiting mental barriers.
Action Step 13:
Write out ten positive and affirming self-statements and repeat them five times each day. In three minutes a day you will (over time) transform your attitude, your behaviour and your reality. Have you ever met someone who was determined to achieve something? Someone whose determination propelled them past others who were more naturally gifted? Determination is simply the physical outworking of self talk statements such as “I will succeed” “I will never give up” “I’m going to make it no matter what gets in my way”.
Action Step 14:
Write down your five minute meditation and starting tomorrow; begin to create your own day.
We can eradicate negative thoughts and by doing that, help to create a day that becomes more positive, creative, loving, effective, and therefore more life-changing.
One of the main attributes of our humanity is we can change who we are, what we feel, what we believe and what we achieve. The start of that process is changing our thoughts and attitudes from negative ones that suck life out of us to positive ones that lift us up and recharge us.
Once you start directing your day from the start and taking control of how you think about yourself and what is happening to you, you will find you can actually shape your day and even create your day. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to live!
Action Step 15:
Pick the one habit or situation you want to change and go through each of these steps:
1. Give yourself leverage
2. Make a mind-shift
3. Make a decision
4. Take action NOW
5. Set a Goal
6. Create a habitAction Step 16:
Always keep business cards and email addresses and websites of friends, acquaintances and casual contacts.
Action Step 17:
Next week make three specific changes in the amount you move. Arrange a walk, take some forced breaks, and walk up stairs instead of taking the elevator.
Action Step 18:
Next week set aside just five minutes a day to just sit in a quiet place on the floor, back straight and legs crossed (chairs and couches are too comfortable, this is not a power nap!), and breathe, listen, wait, meditate, and pray.
Action Step 19:
Commit to yourself and one other person that you will take three small steps every day towards fulfilling your dream.
Action Step 20:
If you have areas of your life you need to change or improve, find one or two people you have huge respect for, and would never like to let down, and make a commitment to them. Remember they don’t need to do anything except read your email. It is you who register in your mind you have made a commitment and you dare not break that commitment.
Action Step 21:
Commit to making just one incremental change in your life each month for the next three months.
Action Step 22:
Start now and plan one mini-retirement in the next six months (cannot include usual annual vacations).
Action Step 23:
Schedule vacation time now. Block out special days (anniversary, friend’s birthday, long weekend away) on your calendar and if you are employed, apply for a vacation day immediately. If you schedule it now, it will happen!
Action Step 24:
It is sometimes difficult to say what we really feel. How often do we tell the people we love that we love them? How often do we speak out our appreciation, gratitude, thanks? Many people deeply regret not saying what they wanted to and needed to say. Often the person concerned dies and it is then too late.
If this has prompted you or reminded you of someone you need to say something to, pick up the phone or write them a letter now. Don’t let your lack of communication be a regret for you at the end of your life.
Action Step 25:
In the next week do something fun you will remember doing on your deathbed.