The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – NOW FREE!

Ultimate_Personal_Success_Plan-Todd-NielsenAs we passed the half year mark I reviewed my long-term and annual goals and realized that if I wanted to achieve some of my goals, I needed to really help others achieve their goals. I have been using the Ultimate Annual Success Plan this year and it has been enormously helpful in assisting me to achieve my goals. I decided that it was time to give back to my subscribers and help make the second half of this year – your best year ever.

In case you are not familiar with the Ultimate Annual Success Plan, it is a Microsoft Excel Workbook that is meant to not only help define your goals, but it will help you to align, track, measure, and execute on the plans to reach your annual goals… and beyond.

It is something I have been working on for 3 years, and it continues to evolve and improve. I hope it can help you achieve your goals as well.

Below are a series of 5 videos that take you through the entire workings of the success plan. To get the Ultimate Annual Success Plan for Free just subscribe and your discount code and link will be sent to you.

Video 1: Define Your Goals

Video 2: Monthly Planning

Video 3: Weekly Planning, Tracking, & Review

Video 4: Dashboard & Notes Report

Video 5: Wrap-up & Extending the Tool

I hope and pray that this tool will help you be successful this year, and for years to come. Subscribe now to receive the link and discount code. If you have the discount code, you can order below.

Success Plan Triple Lines

How to Get the Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan for FREE

Success Plan Triple Lines

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan Excel Workbook sales for $79.95, but as a subscriber you get it for FREE!

If you are already a subscriber you should have received a discount code, if you have not subscribed, type your name and email below and a discount will be emailed to you right away.  if you have already subscribed and do not have a code, please contact me.

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Together – lets make this the best year ever!

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Get It NOW!

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan Todd NielsenSuccess Plan – The last couple months have been a whirlwind of activity, especially surrounding the Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan. I’m happy to say that the plan is finally completed, and it ROCKS! The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan is a Microsoft Excel Workbook that is meant to not only help define your goals, but it will help you to align, track, measure, and execute on the plans to reach your annual goals and dreams.

I had planned on creating 12 posts around the content of the Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan, but with 3 pending book deals, the chaos of the holidays, and other end of year madness, plus the desire to create greater value for you – I changed the plan. I’ve also been planning to offer the e-book for a couple months, but have become disenchanted with that idea; because honestly, I felt it wouldn’t be very valuable for you.

The new tool, plus the videos below are much more powerful than any e-book. The 5 Videos below are meant to explain how the plan works, and what you need to do to create your own. You will want to watch these short videos and then scroll down to learn how you can get the Ultimate Personal Success Plan Excel Tool.

If you are ready to download the success plan and want to come back and watch the videos later, scroll down below the videos, to get started!

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan Training

The following 5 videos are meant to explain, “The Success Plan,” and “The Tool” together. It will take more time than reading a blog post to get through these, but we are talking about a tool and system to help you reach all of your goals for the year, so take as much time as you need to set yourself up for success. You can  refer back to these videos anytime after getting the tool to refresh your memory.

Video 1: Define Your Goals

Video 2: Monthly Planning

Video 3: Weekly Planning, Tracking, & Review

Video 4: Dashboard & Notes Report

Video 5: Wrap-up & Extending the Tool


Success Plan Triple Lines

How to Get the Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan

Success Plan Triple Lines

Those that have seen and used this tool over the last couple of weeks, have told me that giving it away would dilute its value. I’d rather have a few people achieve their goals with my tool, then have thousands of people download an e-book that just sits around on their hard drive.

What I have decided to do is to sell the Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan Excel Workbook for $79.95, but provide a HUGE Subscriber Discount of $50.00 to reward my subscribers that have been awaiting the eBook. So this amazing tool will only cost $29.95 for subscribers …at least until the end of January 2013. 

I cannot provide this kind of discount forever because it will be too much work for us to handle the volume and support at such a low price point. So this deal ends on January 31st 2013. On February 1st, 2013, the discount will be reduced or eliminated for subscribers. So don’t delay! If you are already a subscriber you should have received a discount code, if you have not subscribed, type your name and email below and a discount will be emailed to you right away.

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I’ll Be Your Personal Performance Partner and Coach + Receive The Success Plan for FREE! (Read Below)

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Need More Information about The Ultimate Success Plan?

Here are other posts I have written on the topic:

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – My Confession, A Lesson Learned, & A Super Cool Sneak Peek
The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 4 – Goals, Vision, Focus
The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 3 – Define Your Focus Areas
The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 2 – How High Are You Aiming?
The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 1 – Let’s Get Started!

Still need more information? Leave a comment below, leave me a voicemail to the right, or send me a message here. I’m dedicated to your success and pray that I can be of service to you; in order to make 2013 the best year ever.

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – My Confession, A Lesson Learned, & A Super Cool Sneak Peek

Success-Plan-EmbarrassedFor those that have been following the ultimate success plans posts, you know that this has been a pursuit that I have been perfecting for over 3 years. I have a big and embarrassing confession to make though. You see, when I first started preparing to write the Ultimate Personal Success Plan e-Book and the posts for this new version; I actually wasn’t sure how it was going to end. Due to some successes, failures, and struggles I had in 2012, I knew I needed to make some changes to the plan, but I wasn’t sure what to do. So I delayed, and delayed as long as I could.

The really embarrassing part of this is that I consult with organizations on creating a culture of execution in organizations, and here I found myself, utterly failing to execute because I was not sure of the direction I was going in. I tell my clients when they are struggling with this same problem that it is usually better to start executing in any direction, than no direction. I also felt compelled, OK stressed to start the posts because many were asking me for it.

So I took my own advice and just started writing, i.e. executing, in hopes that the answer would work itself out. Two weeks and 4 posts into the writing and I still was not sure exactly where this was going, nor what I was missing. Then it all came together. A friend sent me something that gave me an idea. That idea then blossomed, and then blossomed again, and again, and again until I had created something I was passionate about and confident about. Now I truly feel like I have the recipe for the ULTIMATE ANNUAL PERSONAL SUCCESS PLAN, and IT’S AWESOME!

Everything that has been written so far is valuable for this plan. So don’t worry if you think I wasted your time. I have greatly extended the power of the plan and built huge changes to make for a more successful year, but more than that, I have created an execution structure for your success plan. The images below are of a self-contained excel workbook. This is a thing of beauty, because it not only lets you define everything, and there are some important new parts to define, but it lets you track your progress the whole way. It has a completely self-contained dynamic database to keep the sheet clean throughout the year.

Images for the NEW Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan!

This is the page where you will define all the parts of the success plan for the year. I’ll be writing more about the components in another post.

Success-Plan

 

This is the monthly goals sheet. This is where you will track your your progress each month. Again, I will be writing more about this in another post.

Success-Plan-Monthly-Goals

Next is the most important sheet and the one you will use the most. It is the Weekly Planning, Tracking & Review sheet. This is the first part of the sheet. There is a drop down that connects to an internal excel “database” so you can track your goals all year long.  It’s super cool, and provides part of the execution structure I mentioned earlier. I will explain this in more detail in a later post.

Success-Plan-Weekly-Goals-Part-1

The second part of the sheet is for tracking habits and reviewing your week. How can you be a success without mastering your habits and constantly reviewing your progress. More on this in a future post!

Success-Plan-Weekly-Goals-Part-2

Below is a report for reviewing all of your consolidated reports from the weekly review section. This will be great to tracking yoru progress over the course of the year. More in another post…

Success-Plan-Notes-Report

You can’t have a cool excel workbook, nor success plans, without a dashboard. This dashboard tracks your achievement ability over the course of the year. Much more on this is forthcoming…

Success-Plan-Dashboard

 

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. I hope you are excited to have the best year you have ever had!

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 4 – Goals, Vision, Focus

Success-Plan-Vision-Goals-FocusSometimes the best laid plans get derailed, which is exactly what happened to me last week. I had a epiphany that completely changed the outcome of the Ultimate Personal Success Plan. It took me a week to figure out exactly what I was going to do, but the result of this blast of revelation makes the Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan so much more powerful. So for a week posts were not published and I have been pretty silent as I developed this plan, more on this later…

So let’s get back on track now you should have a bunch of notes and thoughts from the previous three posts.

  1. You should have all your focus areas defined and narrowed down to 5 to 7 important areas. My focus areas for the coming year are:  Family, Spirituality, Health, Professional Growth, Writing, & Renewal.
  2. You should have a document of your hopes and dreams and thoughts for high-level goals for 2013.

We are going to use that information to narrow down and define the path for the next year. There are three things that we will focus on next. They are the Annual Goals, the Focus Area Goals, and the Annual Vision. Let me explain these.

The Annual Goals

Last year I did not have top annual goals, I only had the vision and the focus area goals. The fallacy I found is that the vision did not really define an absolute and definite ending in mind. It had an end in mind but it was somewhat subjective. My focus area goals were measurable and very well defined, yet the vision left room for argument. I still think the vision is very important, we’ll talk about that in a moment. This year I have added annual goals to the line-up. In order to keep myself focused I chose to not have more than 3 annual goals. These will not be easy goals, but I wanted to focus so precisely that it would make me keep those goals front and center. After the last post you might consider this a bit contradictory with what I said about the focus areas, but in reality the focus areas should help in defining your annual goals.

These three goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. In other words they should be a S.M.A.R.T goals. My annual goals for this year are personal, but they go into three areas of my life: family, financial and professional. They reinforce my focus areas and will help to bring greater purpose to them.

So your homework is to define 1 to 3 top annual goals for the next year.

The Focus Area Goals

Last year I had 8 focus areas and between 2 and 5 goals per focus area and it was just way too much. I felt very unbalanced and overwhelmed.  Sure I got a lot done, but the sacrifices were too much. So this year I simplified it even more. I limited myself to only 5 focus areas, I suggest you do the same. This was not easy to do, because it meant sacrificing something for the success of something else. Not only did I narrow the number of focus areas, but I also limited the number of goals per focus areas to a maximum of 3 per area. In some cases this was even harder. These goals should be definite and measurable, so you know when they have been achieved.

***Warning!  I want to make you aware of one thing that I find difficult and many people I have worked with also find difficult. When writing your annual goals and focus area goals, be very careful about goals that span the entire year. For example instead of saying “I will exercise 5 days a week for 20 minutes,” perhaps think about changing the goal to: “I will exercise for 100 minutes a week.” I am all about setting up positive habits, but life comes in ups and downs and I have seen too many people give-up on their goals, when they have a little failure on these habit type of goals.

So your homework will be to define the 1 to 3 focus area goals for each of your focus areas. 

The Annual Vision

The annual vision should be written in past tense as if it already had occurred. The annual vision is not so much a goal, as it is a place where you will end up at the end of the year. It might describe the person you became, the accomplishments you achieved, or even the way you feel after the successful year you have experienced. It encompasses, at least in part, your focus areas and your annual goals, but it is not a repeat of them. Like the other thing I have laid out, this also needs to be focused. I suggest keeping it to 3 sentences or shorter.

For example, my vision for 2013 is as follows, “This was the most successful year I have ever had. I grew closer to my family, and became a better husband and father. I  achieved the most financial success I have ever had in my life and established myself as THE execution expert for organizations. My health and spirituality have increased exponentially, making me a better person both inside and out.

If you look at these three areas you can see that they are creating alignment from top to bottom. That is a critical aspect of this plan and will help to make your goal achievement more powerful and focused.

For your homework, develop your own 2013 personal vision.

Summary & Things to Come

These three things will take a bit of a different role this year, but you have to have these three things established before you can move onto the other areas. I am really excited to share with you the epiphany I had this last week. It includes a whole new mechanism to track and accomplish your goals. I actually had to hire a programmer to make this functionality. I showed this to someone that is highly successful and has succeeded a lot in their life and their response was, “WOW, when can I get it!

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 3 – Define Your Focus Areas

Focus-Areas-Utimate-Success-PlanAfter the last post, I hope you have a bunch of things written down that you want to accomplish in your life and in more specifically in the next year. We are going to come back to that list shortly. I firmly believe that success in certain areas of one’s life can equal extreme failure in other areas of one’s life, if one is not careful. For example, how successful would I really be if I wrote 4 books next year; but at the same time, alienated my family and friends because I never spent time with them? I also believe that the synergy of success from one area, can fuel passion and greater achievement in another area. So take that same example, if I met the needs and wishes of my spouse and family, and thus ended up improving my relationships, that joy and success would carry over and make me more passionate and motivated to duplicate that success in another area of my life, like writing books. Plus I would probably have more support from my wife and family for doing so.

It is important then to figure out what are those areas of your life that need attention. You cannot have  a couple of annual goals without taking into account the areas of your life that will require attention during the year and like I mentioned, it would be a failure to achieve your annual goals, but then ruin your relationships, your health, or some other important area.

This next exercise will help to bring more focus and balance to your annual goals. You need to determine the “life areas” that you want to focus on, together, that will in-turn make you successful all around.  At this point we are not concerned with the specifics of what kind of goals you will have under these life areas; you just need to determine what they are. Here are some examples:

Annual Goal Focus Areas

There could be a lot of other options, but you don’t want to have more than 7 or 8 focus areas to work on. More than that and you might be spreading yourself too thin, ideally around 5 focus areas is ideal. These focus areas are really important, because they help define what your will be your balancing act of the next year. Plus they will help you determine your top annual goals.

The annual goals will encompasses all these things. It helps to focus you, and it helps you to determine what is not important in the coming year. This list of focus areas is not all-inclusive, as there are bound to be many directions you are pulled in, but this really helps to limit that pulling from the many areas of your life and to focus on what will make you the best you can be at the end of the coming year.

Here is your homework:

  1. Think about the focus areas that are important in your life. Ask yourself, what things if I accomplished this year would make me feel more successful and have a greater sense of satisfaction with my life? You may want to read this  with your spouse, children, or other stakeholders, and go through the exercises together. Ask what areas you and your stakeholders feel would produce the greatest level of satisfaction?
  2. After you come up with all your focus areas, you need to now focus further. It is likely you will come up with a lot of areas. You need to slim this down to only 5 to 7 focus areas. More than that and it will be difficult to create any balance.

In the next post we will discuss annual goals, annual vision and drill down more on the focus areas. Good Luck! Please share your thoughts below, your wisdom might help another.

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 2 – How High Are You Aiming?

Aim-High-Climb-HighOn June 1st of 2012, I released a guest post on a personal branding site that went viral. I couldn’t believe how much it was shared on Twitter and other social networks in such a short amount of time. I was invited to start-off the first day this Personal Branding Blogathon, put on by Peter Sterlacci at http://www.PeterSterlacci.com. I think the reason the post went viral is because it touched upon the desire that we all have in life – TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.  As we begin this journey of creating the Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan, I want to share a portion of this post with you, because I think it will help you in determining how high you really want to go with your own goals. If you don’t know how high, it is hard to create a plan to get there.

The full text of this article is located here: http://petersterlacci.com/2012/06/01/screw-dents-im-aiming-immense-gaping-hole/

Screw “Dents”… I’m Aiming for an Immense Gaping Hole!

“I have many regrets about the life I’ve lived—coupled with equal failures to accompany those regrets. But the biggest failure—and the regret that leads them all—was the failure to grasp my full potential earlier in life.

“ I’ve always worked hard, but I haven’t always worked smart. I’ve sought success, but I didn’t always plan for that success. Since I failed to grasp all that I could become; I never defined what success looked like, nor focused my actions toward it.

“A handful of years ago I experienced a “renewal.” After selling a company I had founded, I began to realize that I needed something more. I desired more: wisdom, success, and meaning—in every area of my life. I consumed knowledge, and I worked even harder. I wrote my first book, started a very successful leadership blog, and extended myself into every opportunity that pushed me higher.

Success came slowly, but it wasn’t enough. Soon, I realized I needed to focus my energy. I could not find any guidance to help me do this in a way that was right for me, so I created The Ultimate Personal Success Plan. For two years, I have used that, updated it, and tweaked it to fit my aspirations.

“Then recently, I saw the title of an article that had something to do with making a dent in the world. I didn’t read the article, or see who the author was. But the concept stayed with me; the thought kept piercing my mind: “What kind of dent am I making? I was struggling with the way my life was going. The success I was having was good, but it wasn’t enough—or maybe it just wasn’t …meaningful.

“As I pondered this one night, thinking about how a dent is the result of an impact (a hammer striking a wall, a heavy object dropping to the ground), and how the size of the impact determines the dimension and depth of the dent, the thought struck me:

 “Screw ‘Dents’…I want to make an ‘Immense Gaping Hole.’”

“What’s the gaping hole that I want to create in the world? I am still working on that, but I want to make a difference in people’s lives, do something useful, create something meaningful …be somebody who makes other people’s lives better, and of course improve the quality of my life and that of my family.

“So I find myself again redefining my Ultimate Personal Success Plan, almost halfway through the year. In doing this, I recognized that my aspirations needed greater impact. I couldn’t settle for slow, small impacts.

 “Now is the time to start ripping open a cavernous, gaping hole! Because simply making “a dent,”…just isn’t adequate.”

 

I share that message because I want you to do some hard thinking about what you want out of your life, and more importantly, what you want out of the next year of your life. This is a tough question that took me months to figure out. But exploring the path of determining who you are, and where you are going is amazingly fulfilling, and clarifying.

Pondering this question, can be both enlightening, yet at the same time stressful. The idea of what we want out of life (or the next year) or what we are capable of, are often limited by our own thinking. So as you explore this question for the next few days, it is important to bring others into your thought process.

I am not suggesting that you do not have a grand enough dream, but often what we want is highly influenced by what other people close to us want, and often other people have a greater vision and hope for us than we will ever have for ourselves.

When I created the last version of the Ultimate Success Plan, I knew that it would be a crummy plan if at the end of the year my wife was unhappy. I had to review my plan with her and make some adjustments. My vision of being a good husband is severely limited in my mind, but the vision (or hope 🙂 ) that my wife has for me – is greatly expanded.

You may have portions of your plan that have to do with lifestyle, health, career, spirituality and a bunch of other things. Balancing all this can be overwhelming if you do not take the time to talk with important stakeholders or “experts” about your goals in that area. Perhaps you need to speak with an “expert” for a health portion of your plan, which could be a personal trainer or nutritionist. For a professional growth area, it might be a coach or mentor.  For a financial success area it might be a financial planner. A stakeholder in a relationship area might be the person you want to develop the relationship with, like your spouse, or a friend.

When setting your goals, set your sights high. I hope you realize what you are capable of, because all of us, including you – are always capable of more, and better. Set that vision high, and make sure to work with stakeholders and experts, because they may have a vision of you that is even higher than your own!

So your homework for the next few days is to to write down all your hopes and dreams for 2013. Aim high, but make them realistic. When you think you have them figured out, talk with key stakeholders to verify that you are not short-changing yourself. The elements of what you create will come together as we move farther along with the creation of your success plan.

Please leave comments or questions below if you need help. If you are willing, please share some of your dreams and aspirations as well. Don’t forget to subscribe to get notices of all the posts as soon as they are released.

The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan – Part 1 – Let’s Get Started!

The-Ultimate-Annual-Personal-Success-PlanSuccess Plan, Personal Success Plan, Annual Plan, Resolutions, Goals… nope, lets combine it all into The Ultimate Annual Personal Success Plan, now is the time! As many of my readers have seen I have been working on an e-book for the Ultimate Personal Success Plan. As I have been working on it there has been one thing that kept bugging me. – I hate e-books… Usually when someone gives away an e-book, I download it, I browse through it, and then it goes in a folder where e-books go to rest and ultimately sit unopened forever more.

So I decided to do something different than what I had set out to do. I decided that I would release the Ultimate Personal Success Plan content as a series of self-study blog posts. Delivering the content this way will allow you to take the content in bites and be able to digest it, ask questions, and have time to really put the time and effort into developing each part for yourself. I will still give away the completed e-book at the end of the blog post series. The completed e-book will be greatly enhanced by participation and questions that come up during the course of these posts. This will allow me to add this content to the e-book for those wanting the compiled version of all these posts.

Why The Personal Success Plan

For the last 3 years I have been obsessed with finding a format or a model that would help to organize, track and guarantee the success of my annual goals. I have a grand vision of success for my life, and I knew that if I did not consistently execute on my annual goals, that I would never reach the success I was dreaming of. This search was much harder than I had anticipated. I read books, purchased material on life-plans, kept up with blogs of experts, researched annual resolutions, and much, much more. In the end, nothing satisfied me, so I decided to create my own plan.

The plan started in 2011 on my blog as the “Personal Success Plan.” During that year I learned a lot about what worked and didn’t work in the plan I created. While I had a lot of success that year, the next year brought more changes. In 2012 I updated the model I was working on and created the “Ultimate Personal Success Plan.” Again this year I learned a lot more about how to achieve goals and create better success in my own life. These include a deeper understanding of various parts of the model as well as more background information to make sure that I executed on the plan. I also learned a lot more about managing the constant balancing act between my personal goals, family goals, and professional goals.

What is the Personal Success Plan

When I set out to create the ultimate personal success plan, there was one overriding principle that I really tried to maintain throughout the plan. That principle was, SIMPLICITY. If a plan is tough to manage, administer, or track, it’s doomed to failure. No one, not the least of those is me, wants to fail because we could not keep up with the work of maintaining and tracking a plan.

So the concept of a one-page annual success plan spurred into my mind. This one-page document would not be for tracking, but for defining what one wants to achieve. I felt that if I could not fit my annual goals onto a single 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper, than I was probably making too many goals. I further knew that this one-page, had to hold ALL of the information about my goals, the reason I was doing them, the high-level steps, my purpose, my destination, and everything else to clearly define what the year really was going to be about.

As I explore the plan, I will go deep into the components of the plan to make sure you have a comprehensive understanding. In all honesty, I did not have a good understanding of some components until recently, because in the middle of this year I basically scrapped my plan and changed course because of some personal changes I was making in my life. This caused me to do a lot of reflection and adjustment on various parts of the plan.

In this series of blog posts (Probably 12 Parts) and ultimately the e-book, I will lay out the changes for the NEW Annual One-Page Success Plan. It has various modifications this year that may seem to be only aesthetic, but are extremely powerful to one’s success. I’ll go very deep into each section, and into the tools and systems that you can use to monitor your success throughout the year. I’ll be providing worksheets that you can download for different parts, to build the elements of what will become YOUR personal success plan.

Furthermore, I will be providing many new constructive ideas for organizing your plan, figuring out what should be in it, and a lot more on how to actually execute and achieve your goals. So stay tuned and get ready to start working the next month on creating your 2013 Personal Success Plan.

Let’s Get Started on YOUR Personal Success Plan!

Don’t forget to sign-up for the email notifications, to stay abreast of each new post.

Please share your thoughts and hopes below. What do you want to make sure I touch upon? What have you specifically struggled with in achieving your goals?

Achieving Success with Personal Leadership

Personal LeadershipThe world is full of recipes for success, but many times we forget that success comes from within ourselves with work that we do. I would even claim that success is mainly about attitude. When you have the right attitude, you focus on the right things, obstacles are there to overcome, you feel better and work more efficiently. I am sure you know what happens if you have a bad attitude: nothing seems to work at that time. Here are some questions for you to ask to become more successful through your own attitude towards other people and life. Even though you may not have answers to every one of them, thinking about these matters will already take you towards your personal success.

Am I sure that those I love, feel loved by me? 

Love is the all-healing force of the world. Too many couples go days, weeks or even months without showing each other their love. Everyone wants to be loved, but even more everyone wants to love.  Any bad day will become better when you love someone so that it shows. And do not limit your love just to your spouse; tell your parents, best friends or to any other people that you love them and see the difference in your personal success!

Do I feel grateful every day for having whatever I have or get today?

Every day when I go to bed I thank for at least three things. It really lifts up your spirit to be grateful for what you have or you got that day. And do not limit it only that; thank for what you are going to get also! You can be brave and thank beforehand for what you are going to get. Try it out for one week and see how it changes your thinking. When you face hard times, it is much easier when you are thankful for other things that you already have. And if those hard times will not kill you, they will make you stronger and that is something to be grateful! Thanking beforehand for what you will get will set your mind towards getting that thing.

Have I done my best to avoid unkind acts and words?

Think only positive. There is nothing to gain by revenge, doing bad acts, saying bad things or even thinking bad things about anything. You are what you think, so if you think well, you are good. And people judge you by what you do, so if you do unkind acts, people think you are bad. So, do yourself a favor and avoid all bad acts, words and thoughts. That will promote your personal success by being the person, who everyone wants to hang around with.

What can I do today to make the world better place?

All of us can do something to make this world better place for everyone, every day. What have you done or what are you going to do today? As you well know: what goes around comes around.

Have I helped anyone less fortunate?

You can read this, so for sure you are doing better than many other people in this world (many of them cannot read, do not have Internet, etc.) so what can you do to help less fortunate people? Giving is the start of receiving process…

Have I done and reviewed my personal success plan?

Better tomorrow is earned today. So, have you done and reviewed a good, sound personal success plan for better future? You have very limited time in your life, so you better use it wisely. Have you written personal mission statement? Have you set goals for this and next year? Have you identified your roles in your life? And did you write all that down and review it regularly so that you stay on the track?

What worthwhile I have yet to accomplish?

What is your dream? Are you working towards it? Did you know that only difference between a dream and a goal is that are you working towards it? What is out there something that you really want to accomplish? Have you done a road-map and are you walking along it? Many dreams can come true if you just work persistently towards it.

What wonderful memories do I have?

If you want to dwell in past, you should then dwell only in good memories. Get rid of bad memories by writing them down, learning whatever you can from them and then forgetting them. Enjoy the feeling of good memories and make bad memories tools for learning and getting over them. Only good memories are of value to you (bad memories have value in teachings, not in memories itself).

Does my integrity hold as well in public as in privacy?

Are you living a double life? If yes, then quit it. The reason is that if you live your life by any other rules than by your internal ones, you will have conflicts and loose energy in thinking what should you do in each situation. Establish yourself ground rules that you can live by in every situation. And review those rule, if needed. Deny those activities that do not suit your integrity and go full with the ones that are in inner peace with you.

Each of these questions are big ones and you can easily find many books to help you on your journey. Only thing you need to bear in mind is what you really want to achieve and keep on working towards it and one day you will succeed for sure!

Connect with Janne Ohtonen: Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Achieving Accountability With Talk of Infidelity

AccountabilityAccountability – I consider myself an expert on accountability and execution (I did write a book on it…), but recently I received a lesson in accountability that I will never forget. Each week after I do my weekly planning, I determine my 3 most valuable goals for the week and I then send these goals to my “personal performance partner,” in some circles this would be called an “accountability partner.” Mine is both a friend and a colleague. Each week he performs the same routine and sends his goals to me. We do this to keep each other accountable. So a couple days after sending my goals for that particular week, he sent me an email and asked me how I was coming on my number one goal for the week. That week was a very busy week, and I responded with this message:

“I have not done it . I got busy with a bunch of other things. I need to do it …so much to do. I am going to try and do it tonight.”

Two hours later I received a lesson in accountability that I plan on using over and over. This is what my accountability partner said:

“I don’t like the word ‘TRY.’ What would your wife say if you would have said ‘I will TRY to be faithful to you?’ Either make it your number one goal or don’t, but don’t try to fool yourself, as your smarter than that! Commit my friend!”

I almost fell out of my chair. I was stunned and laughing at the same time. I had never seen this tactic used in accountability. So do you think I completed my goal that week…..um, hell yeah!

Accountability & “Try”

I learned a valuable lesson from this experience, and it was not so much about accountability, it was actually about the word “try” and my ability to get goals done. There are so many distractions in life that take us away from achieving what is important. No one knows this better than a leader. We could have a number one goal for ourselves, a number one for our organization, a number one for each department or region, etc… Juggling these can be difficult

The particular goal for that week was not a very pleasant goal, but was necessary for the future security of my family. It took a lot of time, in a week that I did not have much time. I was up until the wee hours of the morning one day completing this goal, and while I was tired the next morning, I felt a lot better than if I would have excused my goal away and rationalized the non-completion of it. I learned two lessons from this experience: First that when something is really important to me and the “why” is big enough, that I will move mountains to complete my goal; and secondly that no matter the circumstances, I usually do have the will power and energy to make sure I complete my goal. It might not be easy, but focus can bring about amazing successes.

I have worked on accountability with many business owners that very easily rationalize the non-completion of their goals. With some, no matter how much I try to bring accountability into the goal completion, they will just make excuses for all that they did not get done. Usually though we have the power to overcome the word “try.” Sure there are valid reasons sometimes, for not completing goals, but many use these for what they really are, lame excuses.

I believe we have the power to define our future, and overcoming our mental blocks and excuses is necesary to bring about a future that looks the same way we imagine it to be.

Accountability Takeaway’s

1.   Find yourself an accountability partner that cares as much about your success as you do. Help to keep each other accountable for each other’s goal completion.

2.    Reading. My favorite book on accountability, and one of my favorite books period, is The Oz Principle, by Roger Connors, Tom Smith, Craig Hickman. I highly recommend reading this book, it will change your outlook on the meaning of accountability. This book is so important to me that my child will read it when he is old enough to understand it. So this is not a frivolous recommendation.

3.    When you find yourself making excuses for not getting goals done, think twice on if you really have the power and energy to complete it. Don’t give in to excuses. Focus, make a plan, and make it happen.

4.    When you find yourself failing on goals, review the reasons or the “why” to determine if it is strong enough to motivate you to action.

5.   If all else fails, compare your own “try” to something really bad and is against your values, like …infidelity.

On last thought. My accountability partner really knows me. He knew that I was making excuses and letting other things get in the way. It was not that I was not accomplishing things. I was accomplishing a lot of things, but I was ignoring my number one. Make sure you have a good enough relationship to get this serious in your accountability efforts, otherwise your good accountability intentions could backfire.

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So, now that you’ve read this article, how are you going to use this information to bring greater accountability to your goals?

Please take a moment and share your ideas in the comments section below, share this with your social media friends, and subscribe to receive A Slice of Leadership notices, and occasional leadership advice, articles, tips and freebies.
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A Successful Leaders Guide To Getting Lucky

Successful LeadersHave you ever been envious of successful leaders? Have you ever wondered why all the good things happen to them? Have you ever questioned yourself and thought, “why can’t I be as  lucky as those successful leaders?” Do you wonder why good things happen to those successful leaders and why good fortune seems to follow them around?

The Secret of Successful Leaders

Well, I will tell you the secret of successful leaders …they get lucky because they do the work to create opportunities that appear to others as luck. Yeah, it is not really luck is it. Shamrocks, rainbows, and rabbit feet will not make successful leaders. Luck comes from creating opportunies that come to us as we get out of our comfort zone, take risks, and do the work that is necesary to create those opportunities.

I realized this week that as hard as my personal success plan is for me, there was something I still was not doing. I was not getting out of my comfort zone and creating opportunites. My personal success plan is hard for sure. I have a ton of goals and they require a large amount of discipline and focus to achieve. But therein lies the problem, I am doing a bunch of things, but very few of them require me to get out of my comfort zone, they just require me to work harder. There is no doubt that they will make me better, but “better” has never really been good enough for me.

A Successful Leaders Takeway to Creating Luck

So I challenge all you leaders, wheter you consider yourself a successful leader or not, to dig deep, figure out what you want to achieve and what opportunies you could create by stepping out and doing one thing everyday that will help to bring greater success. Keep at it, keep at it, and sooner or later, you’ll get lucky too, because as Elmer Leterman said, “Luck is what happens when preparation, meets opportunity.”

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So, now that you’ve read this article, how are you going to use this information to create “luck?”

Please take a moment and share your ideas in the comment section below, share this with your social media friends, and subscribe to receive A Slice of Leadership notices, and occasional leadership advice, articles, tips and freebies.
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