So what remains to define your journey to a more fulfilling life?  Simply making the changes needed to integrate this process into your life on an ongoing basis.  As your life changes and you achieve key elements of your vision, you may find that your vision begins to expand or change in ways that cause you to incorporate new goals.  As you gain skills and overcome obstacles to your success, you may find entirely new skills suddenly become relevant and perhaps even critical to achieving your goals.

How can you incorporate this change without losing your momentum?  Just as good manufacturing processes include an element of continuous improvement, or Kaizen, you can apply this same concept to your vision and your process of achieving it.  And just like running a business or organization of any kind, you want to plan on some regular reviews and opportunities to review what is going well, and what you might want to change.

What personal practices do you currently have in place?  How could you integrate some review of your personal goals and progress into those practices?  If you journal daily, how would you include some review of your plans into that?  If you review your finances quarterly, what would adding a review of other aspects of your business or life at that time add to your ability to plan for the future?  Are there other mindfulness or planning or visioning practices that would lend themselves well to reviewing your vision, goals and recommitting to them, or making appropriate changes to keep the inspiring and motivating to you?

With a vision, goals, strategies and plans that originate in your personal skills, talents, preferences and values, you will find yourself living a life of greater satisfaction, purpose and energy. This higher level of energy will allow you to achieve so much more than you thought possible in your chosen field, while leaving you abundant energy to share with others and inspire them to find their own source of energy, inspiration and fulfillment.

Want to learn more and get help becoming your truest self?  Learn more about my Mastermind Coaching Groups starting this month and come to the preview call:  http://transcendllc.biz/blog/business-growth-mastermind-group

The strategy is not the end of the process, but the beginning of your journey toward your vision.  You have defined the vision, made it concrete with some goals that define what it will take for the vision to come to life, developed some strategies that you think will help you achieve your goals, and now you are ready for the plans.

Plans are the day to day activities that are how you will implement the strategy.  In some cases, it may be as simple as attending a meeting, or joining a group and putting it on your calendar.  In others, it may involve multiple steps in meeting with others to get feedback, breaking your strategy down into specific steps and tasks, and then making time to take those actions every day, week and month until you have built new habits, new ways of being and a new feeling about your life.

So if your goal is to bring in 10 new clients, for example, your strategy might be to increase your number of prospects in your target market.  Your plans might include joining a new group with lots of your target clients in it, attending more events where your target clients will be present, or speaking at those events.  It might include making sure you actually attend the meetings of the new group by blocking that time in your calendar, having a plan for talking to at least 5 new people at each meeting, or spending 30 minutes a week identifying events where your target will be present, or calling organizers to find speaking engagements.  When you break your strategy down into specific actions, plans for overcoming habits, time pressure and your own thoughts, you are creating a plan to implement.

Plans are at the most basic level, so if you find you planned to do something important in the morning and you just can’t get up, adjust your plan to do it at a time that feels more natural to you.  Plans are the level at which you “play” on a daily basis until you find a formula that works.  It is the most flexible, but that does not mean you don’t need to have a written plan and a commitment to work your plan.  Unless it’s written down and scheduled or made concrete for you in some other way, a plan becomes just another “nice idea” that you didn’t do anything about.  So, while your plans can be flexible and changed when they are not serving you well and moving you toward your goal, you have to take positive actions on your plan regularly.

What will your plan be for this month?  For this week?  For today?  How will you make sure you follow your plan?  When will you review your ability to follow the plan and make adjustments?

There are always multiple strategies for achieving any goal, and these can be as personal as the goals themselves.  If you want to reduce the amount of soda you drink, you might think about when you drink it now, what triggers you to drink it, and what alternatives you might create for yourself.  Not having it at home could help someone who primarily drink soda at home, but if you drink it mostly at work from the vending machine while on a break with colleagues, your strategy would probably be very different.

If you are trying to replace an old habit, whether it be interrupting others in conversation or asking multiple questions at once before you get answers, you will want to find new behaviors to replace them with.  You might work on shutting off the internal dialogue that has you preparing what you want to say by listening to the other person and building a mental image of what they are saying and taking a breath in the silence before you say anything.  You might have a mantra before you speak of “one question”… and practice not speaking until you had the question you really wanted to ask.

A strategy is simply a decision about how to use resources to solve a problem.  It is a choice about what you will do and what you will not do in order to achieve a goal.  When you have given a strategy a good chance to succeed and find it ineffective, it’s time to come up with a new strategy.  Remember, experimenting is how we learn.  Failures are opportunities to examine what happened with a critical eye and design a new solution that may work better.

What strategies will you come up with to reach your goals?  How can you learn about strategies that have worked for others and might be useful to you?  How will you leverage your innate strengths and values to make your strategies right for you?

If your goal is to have a healthy body, for example, you might set a goal of losing 20 pounds by October 31st, 2010, or you might set a goal of reducing your soda consumption to no more than 8 oz per day by September 1st, or any other goal that helps you reach your definition of “a healthy body”. The exact goals you set will be very specific to you, and there is no “right” or “wrong” goal, just like there isn’t a “right” vision.

In a business context, your goal might be to improve effectiveness of your meetings, and the SMART goal could be something like: Have a clear agenda for each meeting 24 hours ahead of time and end each meeting on time and with a clear set of action items assigned to specific individuals with deadlines. Or: Have only one key issue per meeting, and keep meetings to under 1 hour. Or: Have meetings only when there is a need for discussion and decision-making or quick touch-base meetings, not just to “share” information better presented in writing. All of these are possible goals. The point is to make it specific to your image of what the goal looks like.

To start with, you need to get specific about what things would have to be present for you to feel you have attained your vision. If your vision is to have a healthy body, what does that mean to you? Is it about weight, body fat percentage, how fast you walk a mile, ability to touch your toes, how much you can bench press, how often you exercise, the kinds of foods you nourish yourself with, the measure of cholesterol or other blood chemicals? If your vision is to have effective meetings, what does that mean? Is it about wasting less time, enjoying meetings more, having fewer meetings, building accountability, increasing focus, or just about making clearer decisions in meetings? All of these are possible, and many many more. Sometimes it helps to close your eyes and place yourself in your vision and imagine how you will feel there, and what will have changed for you to feel this way.

Now that you have visualized it, what specific goals did you attain to feel that way? And how can you begin moving in that direction? If you have a specific business-related goal, what are some first steps you could take to work toward your vision?

While setting goals, it is important to remember to set Realistic goals (remember the “R” in SMART?). Too often, we set goals that are very ambitious, but perhaps too ambitious and when we are unable to achieve them as quickly as we planned, we feel that we have failed.

In order to avoid this feeling of failure, but still stretch yourself to push a little further than is “easy”, it is best to set yourself a series of smaller goals for the coming week or month. To stick with our health example, a set of first steps might be to have a physical, stop drinking sugary drinks, and start walking 30 minutes every day. While this might be possible, it might be challenging, so you might set a “minimum acceptable” goal of getting the physical, and walking at least twice a week for 30 minutes, and eliminating sugary drinks during the week. Finally, you might set a target somewhere between this minimum and your ideal, and aim for that. At least if you achieve the minimum, you will feel that you have made meaningful progress, and you may be able to do even more than that in the process.

For our business meeting example, you might start with small steps such as making a list of all the types of meetings you currently have, and identifying the purpose each is serving, and outlining which ones could be eliminated, which ones need to be improved, and what might need to be added. Your “minimum acceptable” goal might be to just have the list of current meetings and their purpose. And the target could be somewhere in between where you have the list of meetings and their purpose, and you identify which ones most need improvement. Again, you will at least be able to make the list, and feel you are “on the path” to making improvements, but also feel like there is some challenge in reaching for the middle and ideal targets.

If your goals are long-term, such a 1-2 year or more away, be sure to set up some interim goals. In most cases, it is hard to set a goal of getting a big promotion, getting married, changing your corporate culture or other multi-step challenges and achieve it in a couple of months, so break your goal up into shorter-term milestones that you can aim for and feel the satisfaction of making progress before you achieve ultimate success.

Now that you have established your goals, write them down. Track them. Review them at least weekly and see how you are progressing. If you find that you are slipping, think about what specifically happens in the moment you slip up, and how you might change your thoughts and emotions to break through the next potential slip and move forward.

More next time on developing strategies around each goal.

The surprising answer to motivational deficits are not individual relationships and physical environment or a lack of financial reward, but rather on your ability to control your destiny and the alignment of what you are doing to your personal values and vision.  Certainly all the variables in your surroundings help, and may make your work less onerous, but true motivation comes from internal factors:

• Control of your own work: how, when and by what method you achieve the goal
• Ability to do the job well: having the skills, knowledge and support to do a great job
• Alignment of the goal with your own personal values and goals

The first two are driven by management culture, and are key elements of engagement, but the third is only possible if you have a sense of your own personal vision.  In fact, having a personal vision, a passion for something larger than your own personal gain, is such a strong motivator, that it can overcome the first two factors and drive you to unprecedented success and achievement.

Think about Gandhi who began a career as a mediocre lawyer, and discovered his purpose to overcome the abject poverty of his people, and their feelings of inferiority, and rose to greatness and influence on the power of that vision.

How can you develop your own personal vision?

First, start with identifying your core values, then work on envisioning a future in which those values are all honored to their highest in your life and work.  This becomes your personal vision.  Now look at the work and life you have and start planning how this can change into the life and work you need to manifest your personal vision.

Your vision enables your most powerful self to emerge.