Lifestyle Mastery Boxed Set

by Scott Allan

  Now make a list of the traits you want and seek to discover these character qualities in your role models. Remember, you can have more than one role model. I have had several and each individual contributed uniquely to my personal growth and development.

  Surround yourself with a team of positive and inspiring people. Make it your goal to create a global alliance of positive role models.

  Connecting with accomplished people enables you to become a role model yourself. There are no limits. Forging a powerful alliance with great men and women, who are focused and dedicated to making a difference, will significantly influence your life and the lives of those you meet.

  Remember that every good deed is remembered and the changes you strive to implement today directly influence the world and everything in it.

  Here is a list of positive character traits:

  High level of commitment

  High level of conscious awareness

  Empathy

  Integrity

  Humility

  Honesty

  Positive mental attitude

  Contribution and service

  Purpose in life

  Inspires and motivates through right action

  Responsible and reliable

  Insightful

  Open-minded

  Passionate

  Wise

  Cultivated vision

  Diligent

  Disciplined

  Considerate and thoughtful

  Emotionally and spiritually intelligent

  Respectful of others feelings and needs

  Successful and hardworking

  A sense of challenge and adventure

  Promotes self-efficacy

  Treats others as equal

  Encourages global relationships

  When you seek out the people who are committed to building the future, you commit yourself to joining an alliance of global winners. Think deeply about those you desire to emulate and apply your energy to focusing on the person you want to become. Do everything you can to create the changes you have always wanted to integrate into your life and, most of all, remember you don’t have to do it alone.

  Action Plan

  What kind of person is your ideal model for success? Briefly describe their traits and explain why this person is the best choice.

  What changes would you have to make to rise to the same level? What new values would you have to integrate? What is the first step you can take to start making these changes today?

  Do you want to become a role model? What actions would you take to achieve your own goals as a model of success for others? How would you inspire them?

  Write about an influential role model who has made considerable changes to the world through their efforts. What values did they possess? What obstacles did they overcome? How did they influence the world? How does the rest of the world view this person?

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Power of

  Priority Planning

  “I learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything … at least not at the same time. So, think of your priorities, not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.”

  — Dan Millman

  Priority planning is the systematic organization and execution of primary tasks and activities directed toward achieving critical objectives and goals. By focusing on the high impact areas of your life first, you will become more efficient at organizing and managing your life.

  This system of priority planning relates to putting what matters most at the top of the list. When you identify the key elements you need to focus on in any given situation, you will have set the precedent for your success in all worthy endeavors.

  Regardless of whether you are trying to organize a family vacation, create a new product, or improve the working order of your office, when you follow a system of priority-focused tasks, supported by a detailed vision, the acquired results have tremendous potential to redirect the pathways of your life.

  The journey you take to get there becomes a dynamic learning experience as you train yourself to concentrate on becoming victorious in those areas of your life that make the biggest difference.

  By identifying with the work, tasks, and activities that capture your attention, you’ll be able to determine what matters most and what needs to be done about it. You can then put together a list of action steps to support each task that leads to a successful outcome.

  Here are some questions to consider:

  Do you need to spend less time at the office and more time with your family?

  Have you been focusing on the little stuff, while the big stuff goes neglected?

  Is there an unfinished project that has been sitting in a drawer somewhere that requires attention?

  Do you get caught up in things and find that, even after working a full day, you have achieved nothing?

  Are you easily pulled into other people’s emergency situations?

  How much time and energy do you spend doing things for other people just to keep them content and happy? As a result, do you feel you have less time to take care of your own stuff?

  Do you have a list of organized tasks to perform each week? Are these actions in alignment with your goals and life purpose?

  What areas of interest capture your attention? Do you spend enough time in this area of your life?

  Identify what matters the most to you and redirect your energy to concentrate on these areas of your life that have the potential to make the biggest difference. This could be comprised of unfinished work, an idea for a new project, or areas of your life you’ve neglected.

  You can get started now by looking around at the unfinished work, disorganized office, or distractions that you spend too much time on.

  Significant changes can only take place when you organize your thoughts and actions to focus on whatever has the most potential to add significant value. When you make a hard note of what matters the most, all the little stuff stealing your time and energy loses significance.

  Focus your mental energy on making significant progress in the areas that give you the most return on your investment. A lack of focus results in poor choices.

  Determining Your Priorities

  Knowing your priorities is critical to staying focused. By concentrating on tasks that are in alignment with your present goals, you are laying down the foundation for developing a powerful support system that puts everything in perspective. If you lose focus on things that matter, you will fall prey to things that don’t.

  Priority planning—creating action lists or setting up a specific time to engage in something—doesn’t have to be complex or difficult. When you focus on a project, goal, or challenging situation that needs immediate attention, you can determine what has to be done first and the order of steps required to take you from A to Z.

  “Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.”

  — Dale Carnegie

  The key to succeeding is knowing the next steps at any given time, the tasks required to complete the work, and subsequently putting together a task list of actions necessary to take you through to the final stages of completion. To get started, ask yourself the following questions:

  What do I have to do next?

  Where do I go from here to get to there?

  What could I be doing to make a significant impact on my personal productivity and efficiency?

  What could I do right now today that would serve to deliver the biggest impact while significantly increasing the quality of life?

  For many people, the greatest challenge lies in allocating the right amount of time to doing things in order of importance. It becomes necessary to schedule everything around your priorities, with your purpose as a constant point of reference. You can discipline yourself to make the time for these priorities, while keeping minor tasks on the outside, if only for a short while.

  This isn’t to say that the little stuff isn’t importa
nt, but what matters is that it doesn’t take precedence over the things that have the highest potential to deliver a positive impact on your way of life. It is essential to keep the big picture at the front at all times. This way, you will follow a logical series of steps to create a desired outcome.

  To be truly effective in the areas of your life that matter most, determine the order of your tasks and then allocate time for carrying them out. This method can be used and applied to any situation: planning a trip, developing a new product, building a business, constructing a house, or taking courses at school. Whatever you’re focused on, the quality of the results will be in alignment with the organization of the integrated actions and the amount of effort exerted.

  The key to accomplishing your dreams and objectives and getting from one point to another is to adopt a systematic approach for conducting your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. However, it does not end there.

  Priority planning entails effectively organizing your schedule around critical matters that make a difference. When you plan effectively, you are operating from a position of power where you don’t get sucked into the vortex of everyone else’s crises.

  Distractions and Priority Choices

  When we put the little stuff ahead of the things that matter most, there is a tendency to drift off course and lose focus as concentration falters. When this happens, precious time is wasted. The little things that matter the least often take precedence over what matters the most.

  Know what you have to accomplish each day. Stay true to your vision and take the actions required to accomplish your dreams in as little time as possible. With the wave of endless distractions in the world today, which makes unnecessary demands on your valuable (and limited) time, it is easy to lose sight of important things.

  Priority planning puts you in a powerful position to accomplish your most critical tasks first, without being pulled into doing things that lead to poor results or unproductive habits. If you don’t plan for a successful outcome, you will end up working for someone else’s plan.

  Remember you have the power to make a choice. You can decide what needs to be done and determine when it can be done. Find the time and place that works best for you. When the big stuff is handled, you can always deal with the countless small stuff that needs to be completed.

  Stephen Covey said, “The things that matter most should never be at the mercy of those things that matter least.” Although less critical things have their own place, they can often wait. You can prioritize those actions based on all the details that come your way. You can choose to act or react.

  Remember that you can’t do everything. You can, however, do what matters the most first by making priority choices. Leave the rest for another day.

  What is Distracting You?

  Right now, make a list of the people, things, or activities that distract you. Is someone constantly calling you to help them out of a crisis? Is it junk email? Do you spend too much time surfing the Internet for useless information? Do you just turn on the TV as a means to kill time?

  By digging deep and exposing the areas in which you waste time, you will be able to empower yourself to control impulses that rob you of energy. Everyone has at least one mode of escape. It is something that pulls you off course. By exposing this internal or external weakness, you take away its power. This is a critical step to gaining more time for doing the things that matter.

  Now, make a list of things that are consistently distracting you. Then, for everything on your list, write down an alternative action you can do in place of the distraction. For example, if you are distracted by incoming emails, you could simply turn off the auto-alert. You don’t have to respond or even look at every single email right away, do you?

  Remember that a distraction is nothing more than a bad habit at most times, and habits can be changed with practice and persistence. The key is to make yourself aware of what you are doing at all times. Formulate a new trigger. When you feel the urge to do something that you know is going to cost you time, money, or energy, create a diversion for yourself.

  If you are in the habit of wasting time watching TV instead of reading, set out the books you want to read so they are visible. Give yourself twenty-minute time intervals. Discipline yourself and take the high road. You will discover after weeks of persistent practice that the high road is the only road you desire to travel on.

  The Crisis Manager and

  Identifying Your Priority Fields

  “I do not equate productivity to happiness. For most people, happiness in life is a massive amount of achievement plus a massive amount of appreciation. And you need both of those things.”

  — Tim Ferriss

  Most people fail to define their priorities because there always seems to be something that demands their attention on the spot: A ringing phone, an unanswered email, or someone with an “urgent” problem.

  Finally, at the end of the day, when you actually want to sit down and work, you feel that there is very little mental energy remaining. You have just spent the last twelve hours being busy, and the things you really wanted to do have been left on the back burner.

  This is the crisis trap you fall into when the world demands your attention. The workplace, family, friends, society, and more, has caused your habit for setting priorities to diminish. In other words, whatever is in front of you at that moment is served first.

  While you are trying to put out a fire in one area, another is starting somewhere else. This eventually results in the formation of a “do it now” habit that keeps you busy. Instead of leading to any long-lasting achievement, the focus is on short-term results.

  Let’s look at priority areas of your life to apply your full concentration, so you can achieve maximum results and success.

  Goal Management: Do you know what your goals are for this week, month, and year? What about today’s priority action plan? You can refer to the goal portfolio you created in chapter three.

  If you haven’t done this yet, do it right now. It only takes a couple of hours to put all your goals and actions on paper, organize them, and then determine which actions to take first. The time you invest in creating a goal portfolio pays back huge returns in the months and years to come.

  Relationship Development: Are you spending adequate time building your relationships with friends, family, and coworkers? What about your relationship with yourself? The time you spend with people is an investment, both in their lives and in yours.

  It contributes to the quality of friendships, both personal and professional, that you will have for a lifetime. Developing relationships should be one of the highest priorities on your list.

  Personal Development: Are you taking care of your personal needs or spending more time fulfilling the needs of others? Are you learning anything new that could help you develop into a stronger, more effective, and happier person? I am not implying that you should disregard others’ needs. On the contrary, be as open to helping others as you can be. Just don’t forget yourself in the process.

  Life Planning: Creating a mission statement, building and maintaining a financial portfolio, or having a dream for the future and working toward that dream is all part of the life planning cycle. Do you have goals for your life? Have you created a mission statement? Do you have a financial target for the next five to ten years and a plan for achieving this target?

  Are you allocating enough time each week toward the activities you are passionate about mastering? Do you review these goals each month, and take the time to organize your actions at the beginning of each week? Spend at least two hours per week reviewing your life’s plans and goals and your progress.

  Having Fun: Yes, having fun and enjoying yourself is a priority, too. Bestselling author of The Road Less Travelled, Dr. M. Scott Peck said, “We must schedule time for fun. It doesn’t have to be the last thing you do at the end of a busy workweek. Go to a movie, read a book, or take your children to the park. Enjoy yourself and you will be fulfilling
one of the most important priorities for health: having fun!”

  The Little Stuff Around the House: Take some time to make getting organized a priority habit. Start with your home. Are there areas that need cleaning? Could you take some old clothes to the second-hand shop? Is there anything that needs to be fixed? Doing these things eliminates procrastination and you will feel better when you’ve taken care of things.

  Is there anything you have a burning desire to do but have been putting on the back burner? This could be a priority issue that you have chosen to avoid. Several years ago, as I was cleaning the house, I found the partial remains of an unfinished book (the one you are holding in your hands right now) and I immediately created a priority action list and went to work on getting it done.

  I broke the stages of the work down into micro-steps and set to work on each individual step, giving it my full concentration no matter how small or trivial it seemed. I made a checklist of the steps and ticked each off as they were completed. You can follow the same process for anything you want to get done.

  Take a walk around your home to see what is unfinished and make a list. You never know what’s lurking under your bed or inside the closet. Once you have a list of projects, choose one, make a list of actions if it is something that can’t be done right away, and set out to finish it.

  Uncompleted Tasks and Projects

  According to personal productivity guru David Allen, you have to regularly write everything that’s occupying your mind down on paper and subsequently organize a system for evaluating the actions required for handling everything. There may be dozens of unfinished tasks and numerous projects that have been on the back burner for years. You might be aware of them on a subconscious level, but you must specifically identify with these projects.

  Now, make a list of all the things you have been meaning to do but haven’t. You can categorize (projects, business, or chores around the house) all the items in this list and decide the action required for completing each of them. You can start right now by taking a look around. Note anything that looks disorganized or out of place.