Are you trying to build your best life? Aren’t we all?
Good news! You don’t need the thousands of self-help experts who claim that their approaches will help you build the life of your dreams. Less is more. You just need three surprisingly simple steps based on answers already inside you.
Learn more about these three steps, the same ones that make great TV and movie directors, in this week’s Goal Success by Choice.
Amuse Bouche
Before we get to today’s post, I offer you this light “amuse-bouche” to entertain your mind before we get down to business. Like any other amuse-bouche, you may hate my “dad joke,” but it is worth every penny that you paid for it, right?
I just learned that Albert Einstein was a real person. All this time, I thought he was just a theoretical physicist!
Goal Success by Choice
Do you have dreams that you are trying to make come true? Do you have a goal that you are trying to crush? Success doesn’t happen by chance. Success is a series of choices that can make you unstoppable. Goal Success by Choice helps you make these choices to move you closer to your goals.
Are you ready to help build a world where no goal dies of loneliness?
Mindset Trap: You’re Building A Better You, Not Fixing Yourself
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein
We all want to create and live the best versions of our lives. This leads many of us to seek advice from experts on how to make it happen. It seems that every self-help guru out there has their own five-point strategy or some system that they swear by. It gets complicated quickly, especially when each new approach seems to contradict something you have previously read.
In our quest to learn how to build the life of our dreams, we can spend so much time seeking out the self-help get-rich-quick schemes that we lose sight of the most simple path.
I was recently reminded of the simple path to achieving success from an unlikely source.
The Office Ladies
I absolutely love the Office Ladies podcast. This weekly podcast by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey is a re-watch of The Office.
Since The Office is one of my favorite shows (e.g., I watch at least one episode nearly every day), this is right up my alley. Plus, being hosted by people who were there, this podcast is very well-done, and I like it better than any of the other re-watch podcasts that I listen to for my other favorite TV series.
Occasionally, the Office Ladies will have other cast or crew members from The Office on the podcast as guests. This was the case when they recently had B.J. Novak as a guest when they re-watched the Scott’s Tots episode.
The Scotts Tots was B.J. Novak’s debut as a director before he went on to direct multiple episodes of The Office and other shows and movies. Since this was his first directing experience, the podcast spent some time discussing his transition from writer and actor to director. Like any role transition in life, B.J had many ah-has and learnings.
B.J. shared that one of his immediate strategies to ease his transition was to seek out every piece of advice he could from other directors. This was a pretty ingenious strategy and one that might be the topic of a future Goal Success by Choice post. B.J. shared some of the advice he received during the podcast.
The most eye-opening advice that B.J. Novak received in his transitioning to directing was from Albert S. Ruddy, producer of The Godfather. Ruddy said that you only need to know three things to be a great director:
- Know what you want
- Know how to get it
- Know when you’ve got it
This advice, while it seems simplistic, it is surprisingly brilliant. Why seek out some complex formula for greatness when the basics are all you need? Sometimes less really is more!
Template for Your Best Life
I know what you are thinking: “I’m not trying to become a great director!” I get it, that’s not your goal, but this three-step recipe for greatness is still relevant. It will help you create your best life. You can literally make your dreams come true by focusing on these three simple steps.
While these steps are simple, meaning they are not complex on the surface, they aren’t always easy to achieve. But, with a few essential tools and tactics, you can ensure you have answers for all of them and be well on your way to your best life.
Do you know what you want?
Have you done the work to evaluate your life, define your big goals, and create a vision? If not, this is the place to start. If you don’t know what you want, the odds of it ever happening are zero – unless you get there by accident. All self-improvement, personal development and transformation start with figuring out where you want to grow your life or who you want to become. Without a clear destination, you are just spinning your wheels and going nowhere.
How do you figure out what you want? You can start by downloading my Goal Success Quick Start Guide for free from OperationMelt.com. This eBook will guide you through the process of evaluating your life today, brainstorming your goals and defining your vision statement for your life. This process is essential to figuring out what you want.
Do you know how to get what you want?
Once you have defined your vision and SMART goals, the next step is to build a plan that works for you. This is where your project management skills will come into play. I explain the project planning process in my book, Operation Melt: How I Used Life-Changing Project Management to Lose Over 100 Pounds in Under a Year.
I would suggest starting by rereading your goal statement and then thinking about what things you can do every day to make advancements. This project is going to require everyday commitment and action, so that is a good place to begin.
The second step when you create your project plan is to think a little bit more about the timeline for meeting your goal. How will you know along the way that you are on track? Start by breaking down the full goal into smaller steps that you can measure along the way. If you are planning to lose twenty-five pounds, when do you want to have lost the first five, the first ten and so forth.
Finally, when putting your project plan together, you need to think about what steps you can take to keep yourself committed.
Looking for a little more “how to” guidance on how to break your goal down into a project plan? I discuss it in more detail in my weekly PM Believer blog series.
- Start by considering your boundaries and what will and will not work for you (see The Right Plan, Your Plan)
- Next, decompose your bigger, SMART goal into the individual steps needed to bring it to life (see How to Eat an Elephant Part 1)
- Finally, put the steps on a timeline and establish some milestones for you to know whether you are on track (see How to Eat an Elephant Part 2)
Following these steps will allow you to confidently answer, “yes, I know exactly how to get what I want!”
Do you know if you’ve got it?
Finally, keep going until you reach the finish line. But, you need to know how close you are to that finish line and whether you need some course corrections. This means tracking your progress every day until you are done.
The first half of progress tracking focuses on the M in your SMART goal, measurable. A well-crafted goal can be measured by tracking some empirical evidence. This could be your calories and weight, running time and distance, net income and savings balance, or some other data. Track this data every day and make sure that you are on track. When things start to slip, act quickly to course-correct as needed.
As Einstein said, “not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that can be measured matters.” This certainly applies to your journey to your best life; the numbers don’t tell the whole story. You also need to explore your feelings along the way to see whether or not you are getting closer to feeling the way you want. This is where journaling comes into play.
Journaling is a daily practice that allows you to observe, explore and capture your thoughts. By spending some solo, quiet time writing every day, you can evaluate how you feel about your progress towards your goals. Just sit quietly with a notebook or your computer, ask yourself how your journey is going and write whatever comes to mind. It is all inside you today; you just need to give it an outlet to come out.
Find a Partner
You don’t always have to go it alone. If you find that you don’t have satisfactory (as evaluated by you alone) answers to these questions, there is help available for you. At its core, coaching is all about bringing processes and tools to help you find your answers to these questions. As I said above, the answers are inside you; you may just need somebody to help you find them.
So What?
There are thousands of self-help experts who claim that their approaches will help you build the life of your dreams. But less is more, and you likely don’t need all of that. You just need three surprisingly simple steps based on answers already inside you. Funny enough, these are the same three simple steps that make great TV and movie directors.
Do you need a partner to help you find your answers? That is my specialty as both a coach and a project manager.
Click Here to learn more about my Operation Melt coaching services.
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