The next leg

When I first started writing Up From The Ashes I started posting my goals for the week every Monday. Some recent reader feed back has suggested that I bring this back (you can also read this as a kick in the ass from my sister.) So here we go, every Monday I will post up my goals for the week and I encourage you to share your goals with me in the comments. Starting next week I will also post how well I did on the goals I set for myself. In the past I have called this series of posts the goal post which I like but feel is a self-indulgent pun, and called shots which is an RPG nerd reference that is also self-indulgent. What I am trying to say is I can't find a name I like for this feature so if you have suggestions don't hesitate. The current title refers to the fact that I look at my goals as the next leg of my journey, so I think I will stick to that for now.

Goals for the week of 2/22/10

• Finishes rough draft of Faith paper for critical thinking class
  
• Find five clients for coaching business
  
• Work out 4 times in seven days
  
• Start getting up earlier and going to bed earlier
  
• Schedule and plan for new D&D game
  

So there are my goals, what are yours?

Your goals should be yours

When we decide it is time to grow as a person we often run about setting goals. We look outside our elves to books, to teachers and to blogs to tell us what we should work on. While these sources are great as sign posts if we do not look inside our selves we are still only working on the world's definition of successes. To truly find happiness and be successful we need to do it in a way that is as unique as we are and as personal as our private thoughts.

When deciding if our goals are our own we need to make sure that they meet certain criteria. Do they support our dreams? Are they in line with our values? Does it feed your passions? And dos it honor your commitments?

Dreams: When you day dream and let your mind wander over to the things you would like in your life where does it go. Think back to when you were younger and you knew you would do something great; what was it you dreamed of doing, how would you change the world?

Passion: What exits you what drives you on what gets your blood up? Passion gives us energy to push on to fight when the going gets tough. From passion comes resolve.

Values: We all have guiding principles. These core values help us make decisions and feel that we are doing the right thing. When we work towards a goal that does not fit our values we are left feeling like phonies and fakes.

Commitments: We make commitments to other people and to our selves every day. We must take these commitments seriously because they have a huge effect on how people see us. They affect how people expect us to act and therefore how we will act when we are around them.

When we set goals we need to think about these things and decide if this goal is something that comes from inside us or if it is the product of advertising and promotion. If we do change in to the person we want to be we will not be happy no matter how much work we do.

If you want to see these ideas in action, what it looks like when our passions, dreams, commitments and values all line up and are put in to action watch Jamie Oliver presenting his TED Prize wish.

Fear and nervousness outside the comfort zone

Conventional wisdom states that we only grow when we step outside our comfort zone this is different than facing our fears however. Our comfort zone is filled with all the things we are used to doing, the things we understand, and the things that are easy for us. When we step outside in to the wilds of discomfort we start to feel uneasy, and nervous. Why? Because there is a chance we might fail, and it might happen publicly. But as you spend time in the wilds you start to clear the land build a camp site, in other words make that territory yours and as the new skill becomes easier the wilds become part of your comfort zone.

In our society fear and nervousness are often confused. Nervousness is that quivering in our stomach that says I don't like this and happens when we think that something might harm us. Fear, real fear is a powerful instinctive force that we cannot resist without help and training. Fear shows up when we stop knowing that something can hurt us and know that it will unless we act. Stepping outside our comfort zone should not make us afraid but does often make us nervous.

When we try something new, when we reach for our goals we often feel nervous and anxious. We worry that we will fail that we will be laughed at or that people will mock us. What we must realize is that if we want to create a better life for our self first true failure is stagnation. The entire concept of creating a better life for ourselves is rutted in the principle that we are not satisfied with were we are today. I would rather try and fail publicly then to sit and stagnate. Why? I can walk away from the mocking voice of others; the voice inside my own head that tells me I am not achieving what I could is something I can not escape.

What are your thoughts? Let me know I n the comments and stay safe but keep growing and as always have a great day.

The friends of personal growth: part 5

We have spent a good bit of time talking about things to avoid when trying to make changes in our lives, procrastination, distractions, and doubts just to name a few. Lets call these the enemies of personal development. With the holiday season directly on top of us now I thought it would be nice to shift from talking about personal growths enemies and start talking about its friends.

The last guest to arrive at the party is Vision. Vision is the quiet intellectual friend who hangs out and quietly watches every one else. He sits patiently looking at what every one else in the group is doing but only gives his advice when asked four.

Vision is our guide on our journey of personnel growth, it allows us to see were we are going and were we wish to be. Vision let us see our selves as we wish to be and begin to lay the ground work for us to become the person we wish to be. The most powerful use of vision is to help us adjust our coarse as we travel.

When we make our plans and deiced were we wish to be we often set our hart on a path and refuse to deviate from it. often when we are working to change other aspects of pour personality and attitude shift, so that when we arrive at the goals we have set for ourselves they no longer fulfill our needs. The solution to this is turn our sight inward and look at were we are and at the same time look to were we want to be. As we take sight of these two points we can keep shifting the destination to suit the person on the journey.

Keep your goals fluid, keep your eyes open for how you are changing and the changes in your dreams. Enjoy the party, talk with personal growth and it's friends and make them your friends as well. Have a great holiday and a beautiful day.

The friends of personal growth: part 3 The plan

We have spent a good bit of time talking about things to avoid when trying to make changes in our lives, procrastination, distractions, and doubts just to name a few. Lets call these the enemies of personal development. With the holiday season directly on top of us now I thought it would be nice to shift from talking about personal growths enemies and start talking about its friends. So far we have met Honesty and Dedication.

The next friend of Personal Growth to show up is the hipster of the click, it likes to call it's self The Plan. The plan shows up to the part and everyone at the party flocks to it wanting to know what is going on, what happens next and how we are all getting there.

After we have been honest with ourselves and dedicated ourselves to the goals of personal growth, we need a plan to make the change happen. Planing is the proses of turning our dreams in to goals. The plan has to be fluid and flexible while still setting out the road markers that help us find the way to were we want to be. There are to aspects to this kind of planing the long view and the short view for the plan to be effective.


The long view

When we talk about long view planing we are not always talking about were we want to be in five years or ten years. We are talking about the big changes we want to see in our lives weather they happen in a few months or in a few years. The long view covers the things we have to change if we want our life to better and represents the place we want to be in our lives. The long view can be as concrete or as abstract as you like in the beginning but as you move towards realizing it you must allow it to crystallize in to a precise concept and goal other wise there will be no clear steps to take to reach it.

For example when I started working on this blog a few months ago my long term plan was to "I want a creative job. I want to work from home.I want to take control of my finances.I want to own my own home. In four years I want to be in a position to bring a son or daughter in to my family." Since then my goals have solidified a bit and I have decided I want a job in journalism as I see this as a creative outlet that can help generate the stable income I want to realize the other goals on my list.

The short view

The short view planing is all about how do i make it to the long view. These are the day to day goals set specifically with reaching the long view in mind. If the long view is our destination then the short view plan is the turn by turn directions on how to get there. Again fluidity is important here, the ability to adjust and adapt are plans to the situations and opportunities that we encounter along our journey. We have to be prepared to take detours and stop at the rest stops along the way. When we try to control our journey to much we loose sight of the real purpose behind personnel growth: Being happy.

When we put the long term and short term aspects of The Plan in place and satay Dedicated to the path we have chosen form our own Honest self analysis we set our selves on the the path to truly being happy. So wtith these thoughts in mind we will leave The Plan to talk to it's fans and move back over to the door to be introduced to Personal Growths next friend.

Called shots

Lat week was a pretty good week for goals, I got to work on most of them.

*Find a place to volunteer Still working on this :)
*Develop a set schedule for myself I have worked this our pretty well I have my scheduled worked out for my classes now i just need to stick with it.
*Get my class schedule organized and register for classes class registered for at 12:01 this morning
*Work on new writing project Not yet but fiction writing is a proses and hard for me to force.
*Add a new feature to the blog The new feature is up and running, it is called Random sources of inspiration. The idea of it is I run into interesting quotes in stories movies and TV shows and share them with you along with my thoughts on it.

This weeks goals
*Learn something new
*Start adjusting my self to school schedule
*Start a writers group
*Fine tune the look of Up from the ashes

Called shots

So another Monday evening another look at last weeks goals and time to set goals for this week. Last weeks goals were a bit hit and miss, I allowed my self to be distracted from what I wanted to get done by my commitments to others. But this is a choice I made this week and the things that did not get completed were not anything that was time critical so this week I will refocus and try some of them again. How about you how did things go on your goals this week?
Last weeks goals

* No soda for another Done and done
* Prepare to get myself on a schedule. This one is a bit of a stall because I am scared of failing at the schedule. I did not do much work on this but will put more effort into it this week
* Stop procrastinating even on little things. This was my big successes for the week and a real life changing attitude to have.
* Find a place to volunteer. this is another one that did not get met.
* Develop a work flow pattern for when school starts. This is one of the goals that got pushed to the side. I still have a month before classes start and won't have my schedule until next week.

This weeks goals.

*Find a place to volunteer
*Develop a set schedule for myself
*Get my class schedule organized and register for classes
*Work on new writing project
*Add a new feature to the blog

Monthly goals
*No soda for a month

Called shots

Well here we are at another Monday evening. Time to take a look back at last week and see if we measured up to the tasks we set for ourselves. I think i have had a good week in that department though I must say the goals I set were not that rigorous.

last weeks goals

* Keep up with the posting schedule, 7 posts this week. Accomplished this one with out to much stress
* Start writing a new short story. A new story is started but i am not that exited about it. I will work with it a bit more and see if something comes out of it
* be open and honest with those I love. This was the hard one for me this week. I find I have trouble always being open with others. I try to hard to be self reliant and don't like to share my motivations for making the choices that I do.
* Go another week with out soda another week soda free
* come up with a new title for this feature trying out a new title today still not happy with it. Any suggestions people have for a new title would be welcome.
* create a new look for the sight well as you can see i managed to get this one done. I am still playing around with a few things and having to teach myself a bit about css in the proses. Let me know what you think of the look.

This weeks goals
* No soda for another
* Prepare to get myself on a schedule. This one is a bit of a stall because I am scared of failing at the schedule.
* Stop procrastinating even on little things.
* Find a place to volunteer.
* Develop a work flow pattern for when school starts

Living life with my goals out in the open last week was an interesting experience. There were times were I was week on certain goals and wanted to let things slide but knowing I had to come back here to day and report on my achievements made me stick to it.

I would relay like to hear about your goals for the next week and since i have a few extra Google wave invites I will be running a contest. Two commenters at random will be chosen to receive an invite.

The goal post

As I promised on Friday here is the first installment of the Monday goal run down. I know the name is a horrible pun and feel very self indulgent for going with it but some times self indulgence is necessary. I promises I will find a better title next week.

Last weeks goals

• Cut out soda: this one when well another week without soda and I am not really missing it, I feel very good about this.
  
• A post a day during the week: I accomplished this one as well and manged to squeeze in one extra
  

This weeks goals

• Keep up with the posting schedule, 7 posts this week.
  
• Start writing a new short story.
  
• be open and honest with those I love.
  
• Go another week with out soda(once I hit the month without soda free i will drop this as weekly goal and move it to a monthly schedule)
  
• come up with a new title for this feature
  
• create a new look for the sight
  

So what about you did you do your homework and come up with some goals for the week? If so share them in the comments and good luck with them, I know you can do it.

The path of our journey: Goals

A few days ago I talked about values and how they were the cardinal point on our personal compass. Today we are going to talk about why we need the personnel compass in the first place. The journey from where we are now to the place we want to be will be defined by our goals. Think of it like this: The end of each goal is the place where we make the next turn on our trip. If we do not know our north from our east we will get lost, the same is true in the journey of life without orienting ourselves to our personal compass we become lost in the wilderness of living. Without a compass we may become lost but without a goal we will not travel any farther.

But what exactly is a goal? It is more than a desire or a dream, it is not something we hope will happen, it is instead something we have put our mind to and said “I will make this happen.”

Goals must be realistic: When we set unrealistic goals for ourselves we do not increase our motivation, instead we create an atmosphere of defeat. While striving for something that we cannot achieve may make us go beyond what we thought we could do in the end we will still have fallen short and our natural reaction will not be to say look what I have done but to look at what we did not accomplish.

Am I saying that we should not set large or hard to achieve goals for our self. No! Without challenges there is no reward and there is no growth. Without reward and growth there is no point in going through the hard ship of personal growth. So look at your big goals then break them down in to smaller steps. Set goals of accomplishing those steps, building momentum towards the bigger goal and then one day when you are standing on top of the mountain you have climbed you can look back and say "I did that and you know what it wasn't that hard or that bad. Bring on the next one."

So what are your goals? Share with us in the comments.

Learning to succeed

Ok so it is easy to say I want to be successful in life but how do I start?

We begin to be successful in life by learning how to succeed at the little things. Over time a series of small successes grow in to larger goals being accomplished. With the accomplishment of goals comes confidence and sense of well being. With confidence comes the ability to tackle larger problems and make bigger changes in our lives.

For example I am trying to cut soda out of my life (again). So starting today I have decided I will not drink soda for a week. When I have accomplished this goal I will start on a new one while maintaining the victory I have already achieved. So what are you going to do this week to teach yourself how to succeed? Let me know in the comments.