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2012 Personal Plan - Step 10 - Weave the Elements of Your Compelling Plan

Day 10 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012

I am seeing and hearing lots of evidence that some of you are getting ahead of yourself, or at least ahead of this process. If you are already crafting strategies, tactics or goals for 2012, you are speeding ahead. You are trying to put the roof on the house, when we haven’t completed the foundation and yet done the framing of the house. Love your can-do, get-it-done attitudes. But…

The ones who will get the most from this process will be those who proceed step-by-step.

From those who are doing so, I am hearing about some wonderful foundations being established. Some of you are already having breakthrough thinking by building a strong foundation as to all that you can do with the right plan and committed follow through in 2012. Awesome!

So let’s stay focused. The goal for the week is to have you create a compelling Vision.  Yesterday, inStep 9, you were to list the elements that you want to craft into your compelling vision statement. You were also to listen to the special audio that addresses the six barriers to companies and individuals creating compelling Vision statements. If you didn’t listen yesterday, here is another access point for that 20 minute audio.

I urge you to listen to this audio and absorb the message before trying to complete Step 10 because of the information that is applicable to the step that is included in the audio.

As described in the audio discussion of the six barriers that individuals experience that keep them from optimizing their thinking about their potential, many people suffer from conflicting ideas of what is most important in their lives. They compartmentalize their vocation, their family, their health, etc, and subliminally have these important elements fighting one another, rather than supporting one another.

Your personal Vision will be truly compelling when you truly believe that the various elements that are important to you are woven in a way that they support one another rather than fight each other.

Click HERE to continue reading the full "10th Step" article -- Weave the Elements of Your Compelling Plan.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 9 - Define the Elements of Your Compelling Current Vision

Day 9 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012

I hope that reflection on your life purpose (Step 8) was beneficial. Now that you have done so, you may enjoy reading about my own search for meaning. Just keep in mind that the life purpose you craft needs to fit YOU. Do NOT craft a life purpose to please others, or to impress others. What you want to discover is the life purpose that creates passion, for YOU, in all that you do. One that will help you to Live in the Zone throughout 2012.

Here is a summary of my search for meaning in my own life and my current thinking as to my life purpose.

Now comes what I believe to be the most challenging step in the 31 step/days process. This is where the magic happens for you. Step 9 is building a compelling Current Vision for yourself that you would like to carry through 2012. You begin the process in this step and then will refine the product of this step in steps over the remainder of the week.

Because this subject is so challenging, I have supplemented this writing with an audio which provides addition guidance on how to complete the steps involving this all important area. I urge you to listen to this 20 minute audio on creating a compelling
Current Vision after you have read through the following description of Step 9. The audio link is at the bottom of this post.

Note the reference to a “Current” Vision. Whereas one’s life purpose tends to become a permanent part of you (not that it can’t change, but changes are likely to evolve very slowly), one’s vision needs to change with the times, as well as with the changes you will experience in your life.

Your Current Vision should come from a fresh look at how you can use the strengths identified in Step 4to support your living your life “on purpose.” Please, please, please don’t short change yourself by defining your Current Vision as what you currently are (unless you feel you are currently optimizing your personal performance). Take a fresh look. And, don’t yet factor in your Planning Assumptions (Step 5). Think bold!

Think about your Desired Legacy (Step 7). Think about your Life Purpose (Step 8). Consider the feedback you have gotten about your awesome strengths (Step 4). Reflect on all you did get accomplished in 2011 (Step 3).

What kind of person would you like to be in 2012 such that if you passed unexpectedly, friends, colleagues and loved ones would remember you as living a life on purpose? Living a life where you used your strengths admirably. Living a life compatible with what you want your legacy to be.

Click HERE to continue reading the full "9th Step" article -- Define the Elements of Your Compelling Current Vision. 

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 8 - Craft Your Life Purpose

Day 8 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012

Having given thought to your desired legacy (Step 7), it is now time to focus on the closely related issue of your life purpose. For Step 8, you will develop a one sentence description of your life purpose.

I want you to know that I have my flak jacket on to shield myself from the critics who have told me that it is ludicrous to ask people to define their life purpose in 24 hours. (How ironic that some of these critics are professionals teaching people to do all kind of things without even considering their life purpose. How much sense does it make, for example, to learn how to use time more efficiently if you have not defined your highest life aspiration. You may not be able to select the perfect life purpose in 24 hours, but I believe that by following my process (today and in tomorrow’s lesson), you will create, at minimum, a great starting point for further exploration.

For many people, discovering their life purpose is indeed a lifelong quest. And, I hope it will become that for you, as I strongly believe that having an open mind with regard to our life purpose is a wonderful thing, worthy of reflection from now until you pass. I encourage you to read on this subject, attend programs designed to help you discover your purpose, meditate on it, or do whatever will best help you deepen your understanding of this all-important topic. The forty day process in Rev. Rick Warren’s best seller, The Purpose Driven Life, is an excellent self-study program that costs only the cost of the book (less than $15).

For me, the journey to get clarity with regard to my life purpose has been a long one. I look back and now chuckle on the energy I put into pursuing dreams without ever getting to this most important issue. My life was a series of quests to achieve milestones that were, in retrospect, largely ego centered. It is nice that I achieved uncommon success in automobile racing at such an early age. It is nice that I was the youngest officer in the history of a major bank and then the youngest consulting partner in history at one of the major accounting firms. Etc. Etc. But, is that what life really is about? Isn’t life something more than beating someone else to a spot? I now realize that those milestones were just preparation for my real life purpose.

Tomorrow, I will share with you my own statement of life purpose (as well as providing you with your Step 9). But, for today, I want you to reflect on this issue for yourself, and then draft a one sentence statement of your life purpose.

Like in every step so far, put at least a hypothesis down in writing. You can always polish the description later. What is most important is that you see how all of the elements in this process weave together. Getting hung-up, on any step, with perfection will get in the way of the iterative procedure I have designed into the process by encouraging you to take a bite-size step every day. (If you are struggling with perfectionism with regard to any step in this process, please see this wonderful quick read guest post by Janet Vanderhoof Perfectionism: What a Killer! )

When you have your own life purpose statement draft – and only then (please do not peak) – take a quick look at the front page of the Dave Carpenter web site and see if you can discern my life purpose and how it weaves through my vocational activities (and even beyond that).

Click HERE to continue reading the full "8th Step" article -- Craft Your Life Purpose.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 7 - Design Your Desired Legacy

Day 7 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012.

Congratulations. If you have completed the previous six steps you are now 20% of the way to a personal plan for  that will accelerate your success in 2012. If you have some loose ends from the first six steps, set a goal of having them tied-up by the end of the upcoming weekend. (If you are just arriving to the process, it starts here.)

Over the last week, we focused on building a foundation for your 2012 Plan. Many of you report being inspired just with this prep work. That is great, as that means you are feeling the power of all the strengths with which you are blessed.

For the next seven days, we move into what many find the most challenging, and most rewarding, part of the 31 day process. Over the coming week, we each will be defining our respective Legacy, Life Purpose, and Current Vision. You can get an overview of how this work fits into the process with this week-by-week summary.

Before introducing you to Step 7, Designing a Legacy Worth Living, I want to caution you. The work we will be doing over the next seven days is very, very important work. Many people spend weeks, months and even years searching for the meaning of life. Many benefit by getting a coach to work them through reflection on these important subjects. The fact that we will be motoring through these challenging subjects in one week is not meant to marginalize the work of coaches who work people through longer processes. I, myself, have benefitted from years of study on these important subjects. I strongly recommend that you use our one week on these subjects as just a starting point for your study of these important areas.

My philosophy is that all of us need a personal plan. And, none of us can really afford to wait for months to get one. I believe it is better to have some plan, even if it is one that you will be tweaking through further work, than to go into the new year with no plan.

So set aside thoughts of perfection and instead focus on moving forward. Follow and complete each step over the coming week and I am confident that, one week from now, you will have an invigorated sense of purpose and a much clearer sense of your personal vision.

Hang on, as we have some very introspective work to do together in the coming days.

Steve Covey has long recommended to “start with the end in mind.” And I believe that profound advice applies to the life planning that should precede any serious annual planning.

So let’s fast forward to the end of your life and ask: "What is it that you would want friends, colleagues and loved ones to say about you at your funeral?"

Now, I know that sounds somewhat morbid. But, since none of us control when we will pass, it is important that we know NOW what we would want people to say so that we can start living our life in accord with our legacy NOW.

All of us have the power to shape our lives in a way that will support our desired legacy. In my experience, most people don’t do so because we assume we know when we will pass and that we have plenty of time to focus later on our legacy. Well obviously, none of us know when we will pass. So it becomes important to start living the legacy you desire. NOW!

Step 7 is to create a list of the six attributes that you would want people to use in summarizing what your life was about.

What is really, really important to you when one looks at the totality of your life?

Click HERE to continue reading the full "7th Step" article -- Design Your Desired Legacy.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 6 - Scan for Opportunities for You in 2012

Day 6 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012.

Congratulations. When you have completed this step, you will be 20% of the way through the 2012 Plan process. 20% of the way to a plan that will inspire you and serve as a guide for your accelerating your success in 2012.

Before serving-up this final element in building a foundation for your plan, I want to give you some tools to bolster that you have done in the last couple of steps. For those of you who want some addition resources for learning more about your strengths (the focus of Step 4), I highly recommend the Kolbe Index, described here, and/or the excellent test in Tom Rath’s Strength Finder 2.0. (Both of these relatively low cost assessments are used in my Accelerate Success program for high performers.)

For those who are have completed the drafting of your own planning assumptions (Step 5), I have included a copy of my own planning assumptions so that you can see how I have taken expectations or predictions about the world and molded those expectations into planning assumptions that are a solid foundation for my personal plan. My planning assumptions need not be yours…and I would not expect that they would be. I am sharing mine so you can see how planning assumptions can be massaged to provide solid support for the plan that will be developed over the month.

So let’s review what you should have in place, or shaping-up into place at this point. You hopefully have a planning buddy (Step 1) and should be using your buddy to bolster your progress through the process. And, you hopefully have a Board of Advisors selected (Step 2) and awaiting your submission of your draft plan for their feedback. You should have listed your 2011 Accomplishments (Step 3) and celebrated them.

Also, by now, you hopefully have received most of your feedback on your personal strengths (Step 4). When you have all the feedback in, you should summarize your strengths on one page as described here. And, you have a draft list of planning assumptions (Step 5) which you can now polish using my own assumptions as a guide.

Besides the aforementioned clean-up, today is a day to focus on opportunities. Specifically, Step 6 is to identify three of the best opportunities for you in 2012. This is one of the more challenging and important steps so please follow this guidance very carefully.

Click HERE to continue reading the full "6th Step" article -- Scan for Opportunities for You in 2012.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 5 - Draft Your Planning Assumptions

Day 5 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012.

Today is a turning point in your commitment to develop an inspiring personal 2012 plan for yourself. For some of you, the initial excitement and novelty of this process may already be wearing thin. The press of an already jam-packed schedule may be stressing you. It would be easy to just say “the heck with this process.”

Please don’t quit the process. The process is not a simplistic one. It is modeled after some of the key elements successfully used in both corporate planning and in personal planning used by very high-end personal coaches. It is a process that, when you follow through to completion, will result in a plan that will undoubtedly accelerate your success in 2012.

Also, remember that if your commitment waivers then you will likely also be reducing the likelihood that your planning buddy will complete their plan. Stay the course, for your sake and for the sake of your buddy.

Hopefully, the feedback from Step 3 (Celebrate Your 2011 Accomplishments) and Step 4 (Reaffirm Your Personal Strengths) has you believing that you have within you the capability to have a strong 2012 IFyou have a strong plan from the get go.

Step 5 is a little more pedestrian than the previous four steps, but no less important. Successful plans are built on a foundation of realistic “planning assumptions.” The Step 5 task is to create your list of planning assumptions for your 2012 plan.

None of us operate in a vacuum. Everything that we do has some connection to the many things happening in the world beyond are ourselves. Things like the health of the overall economy, changes in technology, the health of ourselves and of our families, etc., all impact what we will accomplish in 2012. Note, I said “impact;”  not “determine”. We can’t control many of these factors, but we can control how we relate to them.

Click HERE to continue reading the full "5th Step" article -- Draft Your Planning Assumptions.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 4 - Reaffirm Your Personal Strengths

Day 4 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012.

I hope that all of you spent yesterday honoring yourself by completing your prioritized list of 2011 accomplishments (Step 3). I am thrilled by the number of you that have communicated to me – either on Twitter, or on Facebook – with how good it felt to get some perspective on what you did get done in 2011.

Well if you liked what you learned yesterday, you will love this step in the planning process. It is time for you to hear just how blessed you are with experiences, talent, and attributes. Today is the day for you learn more about how well thought of you are by friends, colleagues, mentors, or clients.

Before telling you how you going to hear about your strengths, it is important for you to understand why knowing your strengths is so important to this planning process. I grew up in the consulting world learning that the foundation of any good planning process was SWOT analysis. SWOT is a widely used acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Through my 25+ years of consulting and mentoring, I have come to believe that too much planning – for both business and for individuals – focuses on the notion that it is important to fix weaknesses. For my clients and my mentors, the focus is on how to better utilize strengths. Instead of trying to fix weaknesses, I recommend that people focus on learning to embrace their weaknesses (this is a subject that will be covered later in the process).

Look at that list of accomplishment for 2011. You accomplished what you did because of your strengths. And that will be the case in 2012. What I want to help you to figure out is how you use your strengths even better in 2012. If you use your existing strengths better in 2012, your results will improve. If you use your existing strengths much better in 2012, your result will improve dramatically.

Click HERE to continue reading the full "4th Step" article -- Reaffirm Your Personal Strengths.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 3 - Celebrate Your 2011 Accomplishments

Day 3 of 31 days to Create Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012.

By now, you have hopefully recruited your planning “buddy” (Step 1). And, you are well on your way to recruiting your Board of Advisors (Step 2). Your advisors will serve as reviewers of the draft plan you will have developed by mid-month.

The third step in this 31 day planning process is one we hope you will find very, very rewarding.

Today, take a breath and reflect on your accomplishments for 2011. What you accomplished in 2011 is an important foundation for the exciting plan for 2012 that you are building with this process.

Most high performers are frequently very tough on themselves. (Clearly, you are a high performer or you wouldn’t be investing in yourself by taking time to build a dynamic 2012 personal plan.) Often, high performers focus more on what they haven’t accomplished, as opposed to celebrating what they haveaccomplished.

Today is a great day for you to celebrate your 2011 accomplishments in various areas of your life. For today, set aside thoughts of what may remain incomplete.Just revel in what you did accomplish in 2011.

Click HERE to continue reading the full "3rd Step" article -- Celebrate Your 2011 Accomplishments.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 2 - Recruit Your Board of Advisors

Day 2 of 31 days to Creating Your Inspiring Personal Plan for 2012.

Welcome to the second step in the one step-per-day process that will have you creating, within 31 days, a personal plan for 2012 that inspires you to make 2012 your very best year ever. If you haven’t yet found your planning buddy, reread Step 1…you are not looking for some planning genius. You just need someone who will work with you, through the daily process so that you both have a plan one month from now.

Now, if you already have your buddy, you have demonstrated you are a get it done type person. Congratulations!

So let’s pick up the pace. Step 2 is one of the most powerful in the 31 step/days process. For Step 2, you need to recruit your very own “Board of Advisors.” This will not be as difficult as it may initially seem…so hang in there. This step might even take you a couple of days to put in place, but that is OK as you will not need to actuallyuse your Board until a couple of weeks from now.

As you know, every successful company has a skilled Board of Directors (for liability reasons, some start-up companies use a “Board of Advisors” and that is from where they get their input; the Board of Directors is more ministerial.)

As the “CEO of You, Inc.” you deserve to have input from some sage advisors. None of us can be all knowing. We will call this informal group your “Board of Advisors.”

Click HERE to continue reading the full "2nd Step" article -- Recruit Your Board of Advisors.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

2012 Personal Plan - Step 1 - Select the Right Planning Buddy

My long-time friend, Mentor and Success-Guru, Dave Carpenter, has rolled out an AWESOME Personal Planning Tool for 2012.

Dave has broken the planning process into 31 “bite size” steps. Close to 5,000 people have successfully used this step-by-step process in past years. These participants benefited by ringing in the New Year knowing they have a great plan for success in the coming year.

Each step will take you an average of 15-20 minutes to complete. Using the one step per day approach, as you enter the New Year, you will have a plan that inspires you and taps into the strengths with which you are blessed (as part of this process, you will learn more about your strengths from trusted friends and colleagues).

The program starts with Step 1 - Select the Right Planning Buddy (click to begin).

At the end of every step is a link to the next step so you can easily proceed at your own pace. If you fall behind, just get back into the process as you can. There are even a couple of catch-up days built into this 31 day process.

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Andy Robinson, Executive Career Coach
Co-host, Career Success Radio Show
A leading authority on career success; 15-year executive coaching veteran
Contact: [email protected], 239-285-5575

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto.com