Planning and foundations

illustration for Dr. Allen’s e-book, How to Become Emotionally Mature, print available here

Did you try the future writing exercise?  How did it go?

I have to tell you about a great thing I am learning, I am finally using and implementing many of the techniques taught in Productive Flourishing.  If I were to describe them, they teach a wholistic way of organizing life.  They say: start finishing the stuff that matters.  I feel they are holding my hand while challenging me hard.  Though love!  I also, highly recommend their book Start Finishing, how to go from idea to done by Charlie Gilkey.

This last Saturday we had an all-day workshop to pick 1 project to work on for the next 12 weeks.  Sounds kind of easy, but is a soul-searching process.  I am 80% there and it was interesting how the project that I planned to work on, wasn’t the one I needed to work on first.  And my 1 project had baby projects, because I was trying to cram up too much under the 1 project umbrella, overdoing it, me?  Nah!

The third time was easier, I wouldn’t call it a charm.  But it made me remember and think about the journey already traveled.  How important it was for me to figure out my core values, and priorities.  This is something I wished I had earlier that made that process easier. 

In Dare to Lead by Brene Brown,  she had this exercise, link here.  Brene gives you a list of values, you make a first pass and cross out any that doesn’t strongly resonate with you.  I liked a lot of them at first, but on a second pass, you can do a deep cleaning by thinking of who you are and want to be.  You continue on until you are left with a handful.  At that point, I wrote the left-over values on a separate paper, and thought about them individually, made it easier to cross out more. You do this until you are left with 2 or 3. 

While my first couple values were confirmed with this exercise, my third value shifted a little.  LOVE has always been a guiding value for me, LIGHT represents my faith, and I had JOY for a number of years and with this exercise, it went to GROWTH as that is how I find joy.  So love, light, and growth have become my foundation. They are the inspiration that moves what I do, the choices I make, and how I act.   Big values to live up to, and every day I promise I try. 

What are the values that guide your life?