Do you spend more time planning your weekly shop than you do your life?

A couple of weeks ago I finally signed up for a trip to climb Aconcagua – the largest mountain outside of the Himalayas standing just under 7000m above the planes of Argentina. I did so for a number of reasons, but mainly because the mountain creates a chance to push myself out of my comfort zone, embrace a new experience and consequentially grow as a person. It was also in my plan. I prospered in so many ways from climbing Kilimanjaro, the experience spawning my business and the focus of my current life, that I had already decided I wanted to climb another.

One of my rules for life is ‘life is too short not to be the best that you want to be’, to live the best life you want to. If that is going to happen, you need to spend more time planning your life than you do your weekly shopping! Unfortunately we are all leading busier and busier lives, we live in the pressing needs of today and next week, bombarded by information and opportunity from every angle. As a consequence we can easily find that life is whizzing along and passing us by, we find ourselves running just to keep up, juggling priorities, not being clear what is important and failing to grab the opportunities that come our way. We can feel stressed, frustrated, lack confidence and conviction, lack motivation in areas of our life and feel like we are underachieving. I believe that there is therefore a great opportunity for us all to take back some control, to create greater clarity on what we want to achieve/ experience in life, define our personal priorities and put in place the foundations to enable us to deliver against them. A chance to create a ‘Sat Nav’ for our lives – to enable us to build the path to a happy, fulfilling and successful life.

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to have the wonderful experience of 10 friends and colleagues joining me in a room to explore the process of building their ‘Sat Nav for Life’ – a richly rewarding experience for me as I was fulfilling my purpose to motivate and inspire people to build a brighter future.

We established four key principles that sit behind the philosophy that life is too short not to be the best you want to be #btbywtb.

1. Your life is unique and you only have one shot – now, while it is undeniably true that our lives are unique, I accept that some people believe you get another go – I don’t, and am determined to make my one shot the best it can be. Whilst our lives are such a tiny blip in the grand scheme of things and it is so easy to accept that reality, for us they are quite literally everything, so why accept second best? Don’t follow in someone else’s footsteps, carve out your own!
2. You have the freedom to choose the life you want to create – you are already the person that you dream about being, we just place barriers and blockers, mostly in the form of self-limiting beliefs, in the way. Stephen Covey talks about having the Freedom to Choose and I truly had an ‘ah ha’ moment when I finally got what it means to truly take personal accountability. There is only one person who is responsible for how your life turns out and that is you! You can’t change some of the things that happen to you, but you can choose how you respond. I had the wonderful pleasure of listening to Martine Wright (the British Paralympian who lost her legs in the 7/7 Bombings) speak a few months ago. She is a great example of this important life rule in action and incredibly she is now glad that she lost her legs, because the new life she chose created more opportunities than she could possibly have imagined.
3. You are the one that is in charge – we are all leaders in life although most folk fail to recognise this fact in my experience. We are all leading the most important team in the world – ‘team you’. Choosing the life you want to create is the first step, living that life is a tough challenge that requires great leadership at a personal level. We face the same challenges as the most powerful CEOs and World Leaders with thousands or millions of followers. Setting our direction; aligning and motivating ourselves behind that direction; developing our capability, challenging the status quo and enabling change are all critical to us living the lives we dare to dream about.
4. Attention is a scarce resource – we live in a world where information and choice is unprecedented, demands on our attention are endless and multiple. As a result we can feel that we are never on top of anything, flitting from one to another without truly making an impact. Success comes from focussing our attention on the things that matter, making the most of a finite but incredibly powerful resource.

Ask yourself this question – ‘what would I do or have a go at if I knew I couldn’t fail?’ If you have an answer to that question then there is a distinct possibility you are not being the best that you want to be!  It is hard because life gets in the way and we are constantly juggling being dads, mums, husbands, wives, brothers, sons, best friends etc etc.  But if you remind yourself of the four principles then maybe it is time to take control?  As Jim Rohn said “if you don’t have a plan you end up being part of someone else’s plan, and guess what, they didn’t write it with your benefit in mind!”

Watch this space regards ‘Sat Nav for Life’, a programme I am shaping up and want to make available to everyone, if you are interested, drop me a note and please………….. find someone to share this blog with. 🙂