planning method

Jul

2020

3 Tips on How to Deal with Change

Reading Time: 3 minutes

There are a lot of tips and tricks on how to deal with change and they all have some things in common. All of us are undergoing change and have to deal with change at different stages and aspects of our lives. We recognize that change is necessary in order for us to evolve. We also know that most humans suck at dealing with change. Each one of us copes and adapts to change in different ways.

Here are some tips on how you can deal with change more easily instead of feeling helpless about things. This is actually a process that is very helpful to get you in the right mindset. You can tailor it to your specific situation too.

1. Anchor Yourself

It is an overwhelming experience when change sweeps over us. Change can occur so fast that we may feel things are getting out of control. This feeling of being overwhelmed by what’s happening around us can stress us out or leave us feeling helpless and frustrated.

The best thing to do is to take care of your own well-being first. Focus on how to make yourself feel better again so you can have a stable foundation to anchor you as you think your next steps through.

Here are some things you can do to anchor yourself so you don’t get swept away by the whirlwind of change.

Don’t forget to observe daily health habits.
Do something you love and do it mindfully.
Meditate and visualize the things that make you feel good.
Talk to a friend and talk about the fun times or do something fun.
Do some exercise to release tension and stress.
Write down the things you are grateful for.

2. Construct Your Strategy

Change can show us our inadequacies in a very painful way. However, it can also be an opportunity to identify what our strengths are and how we can address our weaknesses. Before that process can take place, we need to put things in perspective first.

When you’ve taken the time to anchor yourself you can now think about your next steps — you need to come up with a strategy. Think of your strategy as constructing a building from the ground up. You start by figuring out what resources you already have on hand and what else you will need for each phase of the construction. You need to see which of these are easily accessible to you right away and which ones need other requirements to obtain.

This is also the time to figure out what things you can and cannot control. One of the things you can control is your reaction to the situation. Try to be objective about it but consider other people’s feelings when you talk to them to create a strategy together. You can influence other people’s reaction so it is better to have an open mind on both the negative and positive effects of the change.

Try to accept the things that you cannot control and consider the things you can use to help improve the situation.

Think of what you can do at the present moment to make the situation better or at least to improve the future situation. Think, short-term, medium term and long-term. This way, you have a strategy for dealing with any type of hurdles that may come your way. While you aim to accomplish the long-term results, be sure that your strategy is well-defined and flexible enough to accommodate some adjustments when necessary.

3. Thread Slowly but Surely

The time of great change is also a time of uncertainty. Keep in mind that the change you are going through may continue to unfold for a long time. So focus on the present moment and take things one day at a time. Just like threading in water, don’t exhaust yourself by paddling too hard only to find out you’ve moved only a small distance. Instead of reaching the shore, you end up drowning because you are too exhausted to swim your way to shore.

Don’t be too harsh on yourself and others. Be patient as you carry out your strategy. Pace yourself and make adjustments as you need to along the way. Rest when you need to so you don’t burn out. This way, you don’t get stressed out or frustrated when things don’t go as planned.

Keep yourself anchored through self-care practices so you have the mental and physical energy to sustain you through this phase. Celebrate small victories. You may feel disheartened at times but don’t lose hope. Remind yourself that the current situation is temporary and that this too will pass.

Change can be bad or good depending on our mindset. Hopefully, these tips will help you become better on how to deal with change in your life instead of being lost in the transition.

Feature Image: Original Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay.

May

2020

How to Plan for Your Success

Reading Time: 3 minutes

How is your year going so far? How are you progressing in your plans for this year? Maybe you need to adjust your plan. Maybe you need to make new plans. A plan is an important part to your success. It serves as a road map to guide you towards your goals.

If you do not have one yet or you need to make changes to a current plan, here are some tips on how to do it.

Define

First, you need to decide what your goals are. You can start by defining your goals for each aspect of your life. Ask yourself these questions:

Where am I in each aspect of my life right now?
What do I want to achieve in this aspect of my life?
How can I improve this aspect of my life?
Why do I want to achieve this goal for this aspect of my life?
How does this goal benefit other aspects of my life?

If these questions don’t work, then try to use your imagination. Ask yourself:

How does it feel like to have a successful life?
What does it look like to be the successful version of me?
What are the things that I do when I have become a successful person?

Simply put, how do you define your success?

You can put your goals on a vision board to remind you of your goals daily. You will end up with several goals but you will need to prioritize. Decide which aspect of your life you need to take action on right now and which can follow later. Focus on 2-3 key areas so you don’t get overwhelmed. Remember, you’re taking baby steps to improve your life so choose the top 2 or 3 for now.

Divide

Now that you have your goals, you also need to define the milestones for each goal. These become your smaller goals which you can divide according to a schedule. For example:

Long-term goal – the major goal that you need to accomplish in a year, or 3 years.
Medium-term goal – the smaller goal that you need to accomplish in 3 or 6 months time to help you get closer to the long-term goal.
Short-term goal – the even smaller goal that you need to accomplish each week or even daily so you can reach your medium-term goal.

When creating these goals, be sure to follow the S.M.A.R.T. method of goal-setting. This way, you can ensure that your goals are realistic and can be accomplished in a specific period of time.

Give yourself space to adjust to the new schedule. Don’t expect that you can just do it right away or perfectly each time. You’re the one setting your target dates so don’t be too stringent on yourself but don’t be too easy on yourself either.

Dedicate

You have your goals and you have a schedule on how to accomplish them. It’s time to put the effort into getting things done.

The short-term goals can be considered practice. These help to set you up for the medium-term goals and so on. Your short-term goals may consist of daily tasks that you have to learn to do consistently. Dedicate yourself to this and try not to miss a day.

You’re trying to discipline yourself into your new routine but don’t be too hard on yourself. If you miss a day, don’t beat yourself up about it and just resolve to do better the next day. You don’t want to burn out while trying to accomplish the goal. Of course, don’t forget to have fun while dedicating yourself to your goals.

Debug

While you’re trying to accomplish your goals, you may find out that some things don’t work well for you or don’t suit you. This shouldn’t stop you from going forward in your goals. This is the debugging process where you work out the kinks in your plan to make it easier for you to accomplish them.

For example, if you find out that exercising in the morning doesn’t work for you, then reschedule it for the afternoon or evening. Just replace your morning schedule with something else on your daily goals.

You will find that you need to do this constantly for your short-term goals. That’s why it is important to incorporate some time for adjustment when setting your goal targets. You may even need to reset your target date for some goals and that is just fine.

You can use this method for whatever goals you have, big or small, and in whatever path you are in your journey to success. The important thing to remember when planning for success is to be consistent. Keep showing up to accomplish your plan starting with your daily habits.

Don’t be too hard on yourself when you fail at times. Accept that some things won’t work out; try a different approach until it works out for you and keep moving forward.

Feature Image: Original Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

May

2020

What Is Your Definition of Success?

Reading Time: 4 minutes

When you are asked what is success, what is your answer? Do you have a sure and ready answer or does the question compel you to pause and think? Most people have a ready, but not necessarily sure, answer to this question.

The most popular answer is either to be wealthy or to be happy. If this is also your answer, have you thought about how much wealth you need to have to be able to say you’re successful, or how do you know when you have succeeded in achieving happiness?

Wealth constitutes what you have when someone takes all your money away.
— Jordan Peterson

If you pause and think about this question, then you might be considering what exactly being successful means. As a way to answer the question, let’s first try to define what it is not.

What Success Isn’t

Most people would consider failure as the opposite of success. But if you review the lives of many individuals we consider “successful”, most of them had their turning point to success after a series of failures, or right after a major failure or a combination of these events. Take a look at these people:

Walt Disney – fired from the Kansas City Star because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.” Formed his first animation company but had to dissolve it because he could not pay his rent. Went on to be nominated for 59 Academy Awards for his work.

Oprah Winfrey – born into poverty, was pregnant at 14, fired from her first TV job because she was “unfit for television.” Became the host to one of the longest-running talks shows on TV and now has her own media empire.

Bill Gates – his first company with two other partners failed but this didn’t stop him from trying again. He founded Microsoft, one of the worlds biggest companies and he is now one of the wealthiest men in the world.

JK Rowling – found herself divorced, on welfare and with a child to support by the time she finished her first book. Her book was rejected by all 12 major publishers until a year later when Bloomsbury accepted it and gave her a small advance fee. Her series of books is still enjoying huge success.

Failure is Part of Success

Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.
— Winton S. Churchill

From these few examples, there are some noticeable patterns for achieving success:

Failure is just a stepping stone to success.
Focusing on a major goal and not giving up is important.
Success is not concentrated in just one career path or industry.
Wealth is a consequence of achieving success.

An important thing to take note of is that each of them had different major goals in life based on their personal talents or interest or what we may call as their passion. They set out to do something which they already love to do. This fueled them to keep on working even when facing setbacks.

Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
— Winston S. Churchill

Although their goals were personal to them, it also had a huge impact on a large number of people. Their actions in pursuit of their goals fulfilled a need, addressed a lack that people were trying to find a solution for. This attracted people to support them and their activities which boosted their momentum towards their goals.

Success isn’t just about what you accomplish in your life; it’s about what you inspire others to do.
— Unknown

They did not set out specifically to become wealthy but it was a by-product of achieving their goals and thus, being successful in their particular field.

Stop chasing the money and start chasing the passion.
— Tony Hsieh

What Success Is

Using the observations we have from the examples we reviewed previously, we can define success roughly as follows:

Success is the state of an individual who has achieved a major life goal that they pursued diligently by overcoming failures, which also benefits a large number of people.

Obviously, success is something that you define personally, so you can reword this definition the way you think is more appropriate to you. The more important thing is that you understand the whole concept.

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.
— Conrad Hilton

Arriving at a state or position in life where you can call yourself successful means that you have achieved a “major life goal”. “Major” is emphasized here, because in order to reach this goal, you have to succeed in the smaller goals first.

Think of it as succeeding in your daily health habits, like eating the right food, which leads to your success in your major health goal of losing weight and achieving a slimmer body.

How To Be Successful

From these patterns, we can further say that the method for success is as follows:

You define your major goal in life.
Your goals should benefit other people.
You work diligently to pursue your goal.
You don’t give up when you fail.

Now that you have a blueprint for success; it’s time to take your first step to determining your own definition of success.

Start Your Journey to Success

One of the first things you can do to start your journey to success is to define what you mean by success. There are many ways to go about this so choose the one that works for you. Here are some guide questions you can ask yourself to get started:

Take some time to think about your answers to these questions and write them down. An important tip while doing these exercises, and even while you’re pursuing your goals, is to maintain a happy demeanor.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
— Albert Schweitzer

This means that you “choose to be happy” every day and not wait to succeed to become happy. By deciding to be happy every day, you will be able to bounce back from failures better and you will be more open to learning from new things from other people and experiences.

We hope this helps you gain clarity on what success means to you and also help you take your first steps to your journey. Cheers to your success!

Feature Image: Original Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash.

Mar

2020

How to Make SMART Goals

Reading Time: 4 minutes

We are constantly dreaming and making wishes for what we want our future to be like but most of us procrastinate when it comes to actually writing down our plan for how to achieve our goals. We all know where we want to go but we don’t have a plan on how to get there. This causes us a lot of anxiety in our everyday lives. More often, we see the prize but we are not prepared for what it takes to achieve it. Having a vision is not enough. You need to know how to make SMART goals to complement your vision.

In order for us to lessen the anxiety and worries that plague us about our future, it is necessary that we come up with a plan that will give us a structure and provide guidepost to follow so we can track our progress. A vision board serves as a reminder of where you want to be but you need a plan on how to get there. One of the best methods to do this is to make S.M.A.R.T. goals.

What are S.M.A.R.T. Goals?

S.M.A.R.T. goals allow you to define what steps you need to achieve your goals and allows you to measure your progress as you advance thru each step of the plan. This acronym stands for the following aspects of goal setting:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely / Tangible

According to Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “A goal without a plan is just a wish.” Allen Lakein said, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”, and Napoleon Hill said, “Plan your work and work your plan.” So let’s start planning the S.M.A.R.T. way.

SPECIFIC

Create a specific goal statement. A goal stated in general terms will seem difficult or even impossible to accomplish so make sure that you make your goal statement specific. Your goal statement should answer the following questions:

Who is involved?
What do I want to accomplish?
Where will this happen/be implemented? – This may not always apply especially for personal goals.
When should this happen/be implemented?
Which things are needed? – These are the requirements and the current limitations.
Why should I achieve this? – Your reason for the purpose and/or benefits of accomplishing the goal.

As an example, a general goal would be “I want to get physically fit.” A more specific goal would be “I want to lose 15lbs by November 15 by working out at home 3-4 times a week so I can look and feel better as well as gain more confidence in social gatherings.”

Another example is if your general goal is to get out of debt, a specific goal is “I will pay an extra P2,000 a month to my credit card bill for 12 months.”

MEASURABLE

Create the specific steps that you will do to achieve your goals but make sure they are measurable so you know that you are making progress. This also means that if you see that you are not making progress doing a particular step, then you can change that specific part of the plan.

Your measurable steps should answer questions such as how much, how many and how will I know when it is accomplished.

Include specific amounts, measurements and dates so you can better track and monitor your progress each step of the way.

For example, a measurable step for the physical fitness goal would be to “exercise 30 minutes a day, 3-4 times a week”, “eat 6 small meals through out the day”, as well as “to lose approximately 2lbs per week.”

ATTAINABLE

Set attainable goals. Weight the efforts you need to make to achieve the goal. Do you have the time to make the effort? Are you willing to make that much effort in the amount of time you have defined? Make sure that the goal you set for yourself is acceptable to you personally otherwise you will only lose confidence in trying to accomplish it.

However, do make your goals challenging and avoid goals that are too easy. Set a goal that you can attain but will allow you to move forward in you plan.

As an example, maybe you would really like to go to the gym for a workout but there’s not one near your home and you need to travel early to get to work on time; you also can’t afford the extra gym fee. A more attainable option is to start your plan by buying some affordable gym equipment such as dumb bells and just work out at home instead.

REALISTIC

Make sure that the goals you set are realistic otherwise you may give up in the middle of the process. If you have financial or physical issues for example, take that into consideration as you make your goals. Try to focus on baby steps and give yourself an adequate amount of time to accomplish each step in your plan.

For example you are earning ten thousand pesos a month (P10,000). A goal to save nine thousand pesos (P9,000) a month is not realistic. In loosing weight, loosing 2lbs a week is an attainable goal compared to losing 5lbs a week. A realistic goal is more more motivating than setting the bar too high and not be able to achieve it at all.

Do your research first to make sure that what you are setting for yourself is realistically and humanly possible and break it into smaller goals if necessary. You can also ask yourself if you have achieved something similar to your goal in the past. If you have, then that is a good way to tell that your goal is realistic.

Set a realistic target but make sure it’s also challenging to you and not too easy.

TIMELY / TANGIBLE

Your goals should be timely. You should give yourself an adequate time frame to complete each step of the plan and achieve your goals. As in the goal statement example above, you should set yourself a deadline for when you should have achieved the goal.

Your goals should also be tangible, meaning you can measure the actual progress made or the exact difference from the “before” situation compared to the “after.” In short, you can experience everything with your senses to measure the progress you are making and should be making.

A timely goals allows you to know when you can give up on a step if it fails to produce results and when to begin the next step in the plan. It also allows you to know when you can celebrate a completed milestone in your plan.

So, what are you waiting for? Get a piece of pen and paper. Look at your vision board and start writing down SMART goals on how you can slowly attain the life depicted in your vision board. Do bear in mind though that it is not going to be easy. There will be a lot of challenges ahead but there is a way to how to make your journey a lot easier.

First published in Pinoy Smart Living on 03.22.2019
Original Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Feb

2020

Make Better Decisions with The 10/10/10 Rule

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Our daily lives are composed many opportunities to make decisions big and small, in all areas of our lives. Some decisions have immediate effects and some have long-lasting effects and consequences, as in some cases. There are some life rules that can aid us in making decisions in life, one of which is the 10/10/10 Rule. Try make better decisions with the 10/10/10 Rule.

This is one of the non-negotiable experiences that we all have to go through in life. Whether it’s in a pleasant or stressful context, the decision-making process is an important step to make so we can move forward to our next step or stage in life.

You cannot make progress without making decisions.
– Jim Rohn

The stress from decision-making usually comes from having to make a decision that is in conflict with our feelings at the moment, which is usually the result of a decision not being aligned with certain priorities or goals that we want to achieve. So how do we make the decision-making process easier and more effective?

Some of the harshest decisions that individuals need to make involve and affect the lives of many people. Top executives in big companies have to make such tough decisions regularly. So how do they do it? Wealthy people like Warren Buffet follow the 10/10/10 rule to make smart decisions.

The 10/10/10 Rule

The rule is simple. Each time you have to make an important decision, ask yourself these questions:

How will I feel about my decision in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 years?

This method allows you to examine your feelings about the decision you are about to make. If you feel that the decision you are about to make will result in you having negative feelings (e.g., regret, guilt, etc.) later on, or if it doesn’t align with your priorities, then you know that you are making the wrong decision or that you need to make some changes to the solution that you are considering.

This method allows you to look further into the possible consequences of your decisions and enables you to assess the situation in a long-term perspective. As you ask yourself these questions, you may find out that you have a more important priority than what you are looking at in the moment, or you may find a better solution (and make a better decision) to the issue you are facing.

Happiness can be defined as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.
– Dr. Stephen Covey

This rule works with small, daily decisions as well, such as whether you should give in to an impulsive purchase that you happen to find during a sale in a mall. Try it and see how it works for you.

Original photo by Vladislav Babienko on Unsplash.