In my coaching practice, the value of a Life Plan is becoming more and more obvious. With that in mind, here's a post devoted to just that - the steps I've come to recommend for creating your own Life Plan.
Most of this wisdom comes from two great 'virtual' mentors - Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy - see the resources box at the bottom.
As coaches, before we can help a client succeed, we first must help them to clearly and succinctly define what success looks like for them. As we progress through this process of defining success, the clearer it becomes that what we're really defining, is a well-balanced and fulfilling life. And of course, as soon as we've gotten clear about what that looks like - we can create a plan to achieve and experience it.
If you're thinking that you don't need a life plan, and want to get straight into a business issue, or financial goals, or health improvements - take a moment and reflect.
What you actually spend your time on - your daily priorities and commitments - are ideally driven by your short term goals. Your short term goals come from your business plan. Your business plan comes from your business strategy and vision. Your business vision is part of your life plan. Your life plan outlines how you will achieve your 'ideal life'. And your ideal life, is driven by your values and beliefs, where you derive your meaning and purpose from..
This dependency is so important, that Daniel Harkavy calls it the Core Four:
- Life Plan
- Business Vision
- Business Plan
- Priority Management
You can see that once the life plan is in place, it feeds order and priority down through the levels, all the way to how you decide what to do on a daily basis.
So the first step - is to download Michael Hyatt's free adaptation of the process outlined by Daniel,in the form of an ebook.
You can get Michael's ebook here: http://michaelhyatt.com/life-plan
Next, listen to Daniel's brief audio commentary on the life planning process here: http://www.buildingchampions.com/resources/tools/
After reading the ebook, and listening to the audio, you'll realise that this is an important event, and worth preparing for as well as taking time out to complete.
At the top of the list of four - is the life plan. This is really about two things:
- Getting really clear about where you are.
- Getting really clear about where you want to be.
The way we achieve this is by dividing our life into specific areas - or 'accounts' as Daniel calls them. Theses areas signify what is important to us - that might be a relationship with someone close to us such as our partner, it might be money, it could be health etc.
Once we divide our life into these areas, we can start to work on them more easily. It's very hard to define 'a happy life', but much easier to define how much money we want to make, or how much we want to weigh, or how we will create space for self-development, or time with our spouse/children.
For each of these areas of our life, or 'accounts', we again apply this same process; of first defining what we want it to be like, and then defining actions that will create that.
This process of chunking down is what enables us to be very effective and specific, to make distinctions between the different areas of our life, and how important each of them are.
The Life Plan Experience
As both Michael and Daniel point out - the life plan is crucial, and so it's worth setting aside a whole day for the process. Yes, a whole day. Most people spend more time planning their annual holiday than their life! For the life planning exercise, go somewhere awesome, where the environment puts you in a creative and reflective mood. Aim to complete the exercises within one day. This is a full immersion experience, not just an exercise to complete. Make it a special day.
Importantly - do not take your laptop, your pager or your phone - stay offline for the day! You can do it, and it will enable you to focus without tempting distractions.
One of the keys to making this day a really successful day, is to take the time to move the ideas from your head - down into your heart. Get emotional about the life you want to create!
As you reflect on the individual areas of your life, pick three or four key activities that will enable you to accumulate net worth in that area or 'account'.
Once you have your life plan, the next step is to follow through with the goals and action steps you identified for each area/account. Book time with yourself to complete those activities - actually set appointments with yourself to do those things, whether it's going to the gym, spending time with your partner.
In Michael's free ebook, he also provides links to a free spreadsheet, which he uses to plan his year out.
On Daniel's site, there are some additional materials, for planning out daily activities also.
In closing - the life plan can quite possibly be the most important day of your life - where you give serious time and reflection, to what really matters, not just to you, but to those closest to you.
~ to your 'life planning' success for 2012
Paul.
Resources:
Michael Hyatt's free Life Plan ebook: http://michaelhyatt.com/life-plan
Daniel Harkavy's Life Plan audio and resources: http://www.buildingchampions.com/resources/tools/
Daniel's book which outlines the whole Core Four Process: Becoming A Coaching Leader
