The ABC’s Of Effective Yearly Planning

Happy Wednesday to You!

I hope you’ve all been having an enjoyable week, and that you enjoyed my last post sharing my New Years art.

Today, I’d like to share the A, B, C’s for effectively creating your 2014 dreams.

As my picture (above) suggests, the first question we should all ask ourselves as we begin the New Year is, “Who Am I?”

It is very common for people to continue to either be passive about their life and circumstances (often convincing themselves their situation is inescapable, or that they are victims of circumstance…), which usually results in Groundhog Day year after year…

Though this may seem like a BIG question to ask yourself, it is THE QUESTION to ask yourself, for without having a clear sense of who you are:

• What your authentic likes and dislikes are
• What you need to feel safe in the world
• What you are naturally gifted with as a person; the capacity to love, create, nurture, inform, inspire, lead, follow, manage, etc.
• What makes you feel loved?
• What ways do you like to be loved?
• What is your relationship with nature?
• Are you a social, outgoing, extrovert, or are you more at peace within yourself, or enjoy being alone (introvert)?

When we take stock of who we are today, we have a clear basis from which we can begin recreating ourselves into who we choose to be today.

The issue of getting clear on who we want to be now is a common challenge for people; many feel stressed because they hold themselves to the desires and standards of others instead of being brave enough to create what they want in and of themselves.

To address this challenge, I wrote a little ebook to guide you in the process of recreating yourself called, Paint A Circle Around Your Arrow And Hit The Bull’s-eye Every Time, which is available here:Paint a Circle Around the Arrow of Life and Hit the Bullseye Every Time!

The ABC’s Of Effective Yearly Planning

In my vlog today, I share the ABC’s of creation, which are very relevant to recreating ourselves and planning for our new year’s dream weaving. Though we refer to these essential steps as the “ABC’s”, we actually apply the acronym backwards for practical application. Let’s review our ABC’s as CBA’s briefly:

C = CLARITY

Whenever we are developing our new dream for the year, it is essential to take the time to get clear without ourselves. When we have clarity, we are more likely to be realistic and make intelligent decisions in our life planning.

To help you get clear on the 10 essential components of a Legacy/Overarching Dream, I created PPS Success Mastery Lesson 1. How To Find and Live Your Legacy (Dream), which is available to you here:

Some essentials to be clear on with any project are:

1. How much time do I have to invest in this project?

2. How much money do I have to invest in this project?

3. How much energy to I have to invest in this project?

4. What is my willingness to complete this project; anything less than a 7/10 for willingness usually suggests your dream isn’t strong enough in you to do the work that is necessary. Be honest and don’t start projects you aren’t really motivated to complete.

5. What, if any equipment, supplies, resources will I need?

When you are the project, if you don’t feel you have the time, energy, or willingness to complete yourself as a project, I suggest that your new project become oriented around improving your own vitality first and foremost, or every year that goes by is likely to bring less and less energy, motivation, and vitality.

First Things First! Get Healthy!

If you feel I’m talking to you right now, here are a few good resources to help you get vital again, and smile more:
1. The Last 4 Doctors: How To Get Healthy Now! ebook
2. How To Eat Move and Be Healthy! book/video
3. You Are What You Eat Audio + Workbook

B = BELIEF

We can have all the plans in the world, but if we don’t have adequate belief in ourselves, the risk of non-completion rises in accordance with one’s lack of belief.

Creating a new you, or a new, more harmonious way of living and expressing yourself this year is much like taking a high dive from a cliff; if you don’t believe in yourself, you are more likely to manifest your belief than your hope.

Effectively planning and gaining the clarity I’ve suggested above is the first step in enhancing belief in yourself because where there is clarity, there is room for understanding, and even empathy for yourself if needed.

Often, we get caught up with where we are now, and let that become a roadblock to getting to who and where we choose to be.

As Arnold Patent shares in his Universal Principles, “we must first make peace with where we are now and allow it to be perfect in the moment.”

Regardless of our situation at the beginning of any year, or dream weaving project, we will always be better off making peace with our situation than struggling, complaining, fretting over things, etc.

All such activities are distractions from your new dream, and also suggest a lack of belief in one’s self, that change is possible.

When you have the clarity to carefully assess your overarching plan, and set realistically achievable process and outcome goals as I share in PPS Success Mastery Lesson 3. Goal Setting, it is much easier to believe in yourself.

You can see the possibility or a realistic outcome. This enhances both belief in yourself, and your natural flow of energy toward and into your dream project(s).

For those of you that are challenged to believe in yourselves, a simple, practical tip is to identify people who’ve created something like you want to create in their lives, and spend time with them.

By being around confident, active, creative people, we learn how to believe in ourselves by learning how to create what we want.

A = ACTION

Once we’ve established a clearly defined dream for our year, and we are confident in ourselves because we know this is what we want and that we are willing to make the changes necessary to facilitate the experience, it is time to take action!

Surround The Dragon

Often, when we begin planning for the New Year, or a new project, we can feel overwhelmed with the number of tasks that need to be done.

Many abort their projects because they don’t think they have the resources, time, energy, or equipment availability to finish. This is usually a mistake that leads to the burden of non-completion, and if it happens to often, usually results in lower self-esteem.

The concept of “surrounding the dragon” is one I learned from studying Chinese medicine many years ago. The general theme is that if you do all the things you can do “now”, circumstances often change in the process.

We tend to think of our projects from an input-output orientation; if I do this, or invest this much…this is what will happen.

As you are probably well aware, this is not the typical way things happen in life, thus “Murphy’s Law”, which states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.

What’s missing here is the process of creation that exists between the input and the output phases of creation.

Surrounding the dragon is a means of progressively chipping away at the process of creation, staying engaged, committed to doing what you can do now, even if its only effective planning, or working on key relationships, such as building your dream team.

If you’d like to join me in person as I share the ABC’s of creation, you are welcome to watch my video here.

I also wanted to let you know about a fantastic online conference, The Future of Nutrition January 27-31, sponsored by the Institute for the Psychology of Eating! Marc David and I met before the holidays and we had a wonderful conversation around my topic, Nutrition: A 1234 Approach. Check it out, its Free and I think you’ll find a lot of value with my perspective.

I hope you all enjoy recreating yourself in 2014. I’ll be right there with you, making a newer, wiser, healthier, more creative, and more loving me, since that’s the first responsibility I have to myself.

Love and chi,
Paul Chek