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Welcome to Ultra Life
Tips!
These monthly tips are designed to provide support
and serve as a reminder that, the power to be great is
within all of us.
I hope that you find them timely and
inspirational.
Happy New Year
Sincerely,
Jeanne Giddens, M.Ed., CAGS
Ultra Life Coaching
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Goodbye Resolutions, Hello Life
Plan. |
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 January 1st has come and gone, and many resolutions have been made in the New Year. 2008 has prompted renewed commitments to wellness, through gym memberships; renewed commitments to career goals, through job changes; and renewed commitments to love, through dating services.
My life coaching studies have given me a new way to view resolutions, that I would like to share with you. As a result, I no longer make resolutions, but instead, I design my life on a continual basis and review often, to make sure that my thoughts and behaviors line up.
Now, when the end of January hits, I don't feel bad about not keeping a resolution because my life plan is always a work in progress. |
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What Does Your Life Plan
Look Like? |
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I find that when people are not excited about their future it is often times because they don't have a life plan. They are going through their lives, day after day with no direction or goal for themselves.
If you absolutely have no idea what you would want to accomplish within the year take a look at the bigger picture and work your way backwards. Answer the question. What do I want my life to look like in 20 years, 15 years, 10 years, 5 years? When you get to the 5 year plan list the steps that you need to take to reach the goals of this plan. Determine what the first few steps would be and see what you can realistically accomplish within 6 months to one year. From there you can break it down even further so that you have a plan and time line for each step.
Be careful not to set the bar too high or too low, both can result in stopping your momentum.
Setting the bar too high can obviously lead to disappointment and frustration, and with out the proper support can cause you to give up.
Setting the bar too low can lead to boredom and loss of interest, which likewise can cause you to give up.
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Setting the
Bar Too High. |
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Let's take a look at an example of setting the bar too high.
Sally wants to write a non-fiction book on a topic that she has a lot of knowledge about. Her goal is to have this book written, published and on book store shelves within one year. Sally has never written a book before and is not aware of the process. When she researches the process of writing a book and finds out all of the steps that are involved, she becomes overwhelmed and gives up her dream of writing a book. If Sally were my client I would explore her beliefs regarding the timeline for her goal.
How many dreams have you let go of because you became overwhelmed with the time that something takes?
Think about it this way, it takes the average person 12 years to graduate from high school if you begin with 1st grade, without skipping grades, or being held back. Let's say that on your first day of 1st grade your teacher tells you that her goal is to get you to graduate from high school. You think that sounds pretty good, so you work really hard to learn everything the teacher teaches. Then, on the last day of school you find out that 1st grade is only the first step and you have to pass through 11 more grades to reach the goal of graduating from high school. From your vantage point it might seem impossible and you might be very tempted to give up.
Thankfully graduating from high school was presented to us as the overall life goal, with smaller more manageable goals and steps to getting there. So the 12th year of our education is marked with getting a high school diploma, which is the overall life goal.
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Setting the
Bar too Low. |
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Believe it or not setting the bar too low is just as much a problem as setting it too high.
Let's say that Tony wants to open his very own novelty and memorabilia store. He has a garage full of items that he has collected over the past 10 years that would easily fill and stock the store. Tony wants to be the chief cook and bottle washer for his business, and feels that he needs an advanced degree in business before he opens, to be successful. Tony has enrolled in a masters program at a local business school that requires him to take 20 classes in order to obtain his masters degree. In thinking about how he will proceed, Tony decides that he will take one class per semester. After two years, he has taken four classes, and the idea of him opening his own place is no longer exciting. He thinks that he will drop out of the program because he is going to scrap the idea of opening his store. If I were working with Tony, I would ask him to re-examine the steps he thinks he needs to take in order to open his store.
Let's go back to 1st grade for a moment. The same teacher that dashed our dreams about graduating from high school is now telling us that she is going to prepare us for 2nd grade by teaching us how to say the alphabet. You already know the alphabet and after a couple of months, you get bored and start goofing off in class. This gets you in trouble with the teacher and eventually you get kicked out of first grade for disrupting the class. Since you can't even get through 1st grade you can just forget about graduating from high school!
That of course is a humorous exaggeration, but you get the point of the consequences of setting the bar too low. |
| The Bottom Line. |
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 Resolutions are like diets, they only work for a short period of time. Making a lasting change in your life requires looking at your life differently. Don't wait until January 1st to declare your life plan. Start today, and mark daily weekly or monthly progress steps.
If you do this; midnight on New Years Eve will soon become a night of celebrating the past, enjoying the present, and looking forward to the future.
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