Living More Intentionally
SUMMARY
Do things often surprise you, and you look back and go, "Hey, what happened there?" Or do you take control of the situation and plan on where it is that you want to go?
Today, I want to continue our conversation in the second quadrant of Emotional Intelligence, Self-Management, by helping you to Live More Intentionally.
Intentionality is thinking and acting on a purpose. It's being deliberate. It is knowing what it takes to control your outcomes and your destiny.
To achieve this Intentionality, let me give you five key areas that you need to work on to get more out of the day, the week, the months, and the years.
By taking this on, you can finish strong as we finished this year and go into next year and get different results from the ones you got this year.
The first step is that you need to Know Your Purpose.
The second thing that you need to do is Plan Your Journey.
The third key principle here is to Create YOUR Balance.
The fourth area that you need to consider here is Horizons of Focus.
And number five is to Reflect and Refocus.
Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this conversation around all things Social and Emotional Intelligence as we move into the third quadrant of Social Awareness.
I'll see you then.
TRANSCRIPT
Do things often surprise you, and you look back and go, "Hey, what happened there?" Or do you take control of the situation and plan on where it is that you want to go?
Well, stick around with me in this episode, and I'm going to show you how you can finish really strong this year and go into next year acting more intentionally.
Hi, this is Grant Herbert, Emotional Intelligence Speaker and Trainer of the year and Master Coach Trainer. Today, I want to continue our conversation in the second quadrant of Emotional Intelligence, Self-Management, by helping you to Live More Intentionally.
Most people I work with are stuck in their daily grind - they get up at the same time, and do the same stuff every day, and do not feel like they're getting any further ahead of where they are, working outside what it is that they wanted to happen and they're feeling less than fulfilled.
They're reacting to crisis after crisis - when someone pushes the button, when something happens, and being reactive rather than planning and making things happen the way they want.
Where they feel out of balance, and they're chasing myths like "work-life balance," which assumes that work and life are separate; for some reason, work comes first, and if there's any time or energy left, you can have a life. Work is just part of life - and the result is comparison and regret.
At this time of the year, many people are looking back at what they haven't achieved and go, "Wow. Where did that year ago? I don't feel like I've moved any closer to my dreams, to my goals, to the things that I wanted to happen, to the things that I said back on the 1st of January I was going to do this year."
Well, next year can be different. When you shift some of your behaviours, and you go from being in that daily grind to a daily flow where you have planned out what you want to achieve daily, where you are on the front foot instead of reacting, where you're responding to things that you've put in place.
It's like in cricket where a batsman playing against a spinner can have things that are not certain. The ball's going to hit the pitch, but I don't know where it's going to end up. But, by stepping forward on the front foot and taking away that spin (that reaction off the pitch), they're able to drive the ball and get the result that they want.
And that's what you want to be able to do in your daily walk - in your life, in your business, and whatever it is that you want to achieve.
Where instead of chasing a work-life balance, you are perfectly balanced in every area of your life. Where it's not a case of everything needs to have even proportions.
Where your life, your plan, and what you decide are your priorities are getting the attention you want and need. And you end up feeling fulfilled because you have achieved something.
Instead of going, "Well, what happened?" You go, "Well, I made it happen."
That all happens by developing this competency of Intentionality.
Let's take a look at what Intentionality is.
I'm going to give you some key principles that will help you be more intentional - to get up every day knowing exactly what you need to do to move that needle towards the things you want to achieve. Instead of feeling like nothing gets done, you go to bed every night going,
"Hey, I did that. I got what I wanted out of the day. I didn't just let it happen."
Intentionality is thinking and acting on a purpose. It's being deliberate. It is knowing what it takes to control your outcomes and your destiny.
To achieve this Intentionality, let me give you five key areas that you need to work on to get more out of the day, the week, the months, and the years.
By taking this on, you can finish strong as we finished this year and go into next year and get different results from the ones you got this year.
The first step is that you need to Know Your Purpose.
What is your overall purpose?
What are your priorities?
Why are you doing what it is that you're doing?
So, if I look at my practice, my day-to-day life actually moves me towards my overall purpose.
Each year, one of the goals that I have is to help a certain number of coaches become certified in Social and Emotional Intelligence. I want to help them build a thriving practice where they have a more significant influence, make more income, and make a bigger impact in their world.
So, knowing that that's my purpose, I can then look at the activities that I could do, and I can put them in or throw them out based on whether or not they will move that needle forward.
I can say "Yes" and "No" appropriately. We looked at that back in Personal Power. If that's something you're still having a challenge with, I suggest going back, look at those episodes, and do that exercise where you realise that every time you say "Yes," you're saying "No" to something else and vice versa.
So, know your purpose.
So, why did you get up today?
It wasn't to exist; it was to excel.
It wasn't to be in a daily grind where you're just getting it done so that you can get home. No, it's not.
It's deliberate.
It's on purpose!
The second thing that you need to do is Plan Your Journey.
"Those who fail to plan, plan to fail."
If you set off on a journey somewhere in your car and you just drive off into the never-never, you have no idea where you're going to end up. And that's what a lot of people do in their daily life. They drive off. They just go into the day and go, "let's see where this leads me."
Sometimes that could be a good thing if you are unwinding and taking a week off at a secluded spot where you want to have some time to yourself and don't want it to be planned.
However, what you need to do is have a plan that tells you where you are going, the milestones along the way, the checkpoints (if you will), and the things that you need to do step-by-step so that you can go from one destination to the next and end up where you want to go.
So, do you plan where you're going, or do you just take off?
What you need to do to be more intentional and get more results that are the ones you want, is to PLAN.
It's to put it down on paper (in some form) and go, "this is where I'm going", and then be able to reverse engineer that from your end-of-year goal to what you need to do today.
The third key principle here is to Create YOUR Balance.
This whole idea of work-life balance does not exist. It's a myth.
And the same goes with the idea of having a balance of everything - being balanced and spending equal amounts of time and energy in my work, in my family, in my finances, and all those other things - that is old school teaching, and it doesn't work.
You see, I've been involved in my coaching practice for 14 years. If I was to have the same activity levels and the balance of someone who's just getting started, or indeed, if they were looking to do what I do right now, then it may not work for them.
So, it's YOUR journey that you are acting out on purpose. Therefore, it is up to you to decide what balance looks like for YOU.
It's a word that you use, and I think sometimes, it could be changed when you're having this conversation because it gives this idea that everything is weighed up evenly.
But for me, making sure that I invest a certain amount of my energy in a particular area more than in other areas works for where I am right now.
So, what about you? Where are you currently investing all your energy at the detriment of other areas of your life that doesn't give you the longevity, to have the stickability and energy to get to the result?
The fourth area that you need to consider here is Horizons of Focus.
What you are looking at here is:
Where I get started.
Where I am at the halfway point.
And what's the destination.
When you're putting together a plan, it often takes more energy to get something off the ground.
So, if you're looking at an airplane that is hurtling down the runway (and you're not quite sure if it's going to get up in the air because it's so heavy), and it seems to be going so fast. The runway is running out, and a lot of energy is being expended in getting it off the ground, and then, it gets up to its cruising altitude. It doesn't do that with the same level of energy exertion; it takes more to get it up there - it takes more for it to get at a cruising altitude, and it takes a lot of energy to pull it up at the other end.
So, looking at those horizons of focus for you, what do you need to do to get started?
What do you need to do to get up to and break through the clouds?
And what do you need to get to your cruising altitude so that things are happening, the momentum is building, and you are moving towards your goals with more ease and less effort?
So, look at your horizons of focus.
Are you constantly in takeoff mode or have you been able to get to a point where the momentum is pulling it forward?
And number five is to Reflect and Refocus.
Along the journey, you need to plan in time to reflect.
This is something that I now do on a daily basis. However, in a more structured way, I do this every six weeks, and then I do it at the end of each year.
That allows me to reflect on what went well, what is not working, and to tweak and adjust accordingly.
However, when you reflect, you need to use (I've talked to you about this before) Forward Focused Reflection.
So, it's still keeping your eyes where you're going. Keeping your eyes on the result that you're after and having a quick look in that revision mirror to see where you were yesterday, the week before, the six weeks earlier, whatever level it is that you're reflecting on.
When you reflect, you're reflecting on what went well, what lessons you learned from that, what didn't go quite well, and what you could do differently moving forward.
So, it's a positive exercise rather than one where you feel bad about yourself because you haven't achieved it.
Taking that time to reflect and refocus can allow you to adjust your flight plan slightly if there's a need to so that your plan still gets you from point A to point B. And the bit in the middle can have a few deviations without it throwing the whole plan out the window.
So, there you have it, the five key areas that you need to work on to be more intentional, more purposeful, so you can move from where you are now to where it is that you want to be.
And you can get there feeling more energised and more fulfilled because you're working on what's a priority for you. You've planned, and you've made it happen, rather than just thinking: "Wow, what happened?”
So, right now, at the time of my recording, this is the great time of year (six weeks to go) to get ready to finish strong this year and to move into next year with a purposeful plan, rather than making a New Year's Resolution that lasts for two weeks.
You can move into next year, and you can get more from the year than in the first six weeks than most people get from an entire year.
Well, that's it for me for another week. Join me again next week when we continue this conversation around all things Social and Emotional Intelligence as we move into the third quadrant of Social Awareness.
I'll see you then.
