You have to see it, feel it, and name it to claim it. Whether it’s in your personal or professional life you need a success setting exercise for your life and career. Your life can be created and developed using a proven 6 step success setting exercise I learned from one of my own teachers and mentors Jack Canfield, a former psychotherapist and renowned author of The Success Principles and co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul (those are affiliate links but you can pick those books up at your local bookstore or library).
Ultimately, you have a choice to either stumble through and take whatever lands in front of you or you can opt to be active in the creation of the career and life experience you most want to have. Follow the steps in this exercise below to draw out a map of exactly what you want in order to create an action plan for getting out there and making it happen. First, you have to know what you want…
Creating Success Exercise for Your Life and Career
Follow these 6 steps to envision what you want and create specific goals with actions in motion to bring it all to fruition.
- Take a look at your finances. How much money do you want to earn this year and how much of that do you want to be net profit? How much money would you like to have in your savings? How much money would you like to have set aside for vacations or to provide your children and education opportunity? Don’t shy away from naming your numbers! If you’re a helping professional and this makes you feel uncomfortable, I strongly urge you to go get my Money Matters Training for Helping Professionals now. Money mind-set and financial literacy will make or break you and your business.
- What exactly do you want to achieve in your career? Do you want to receive a particular award one day? Do you want to publish a book? Do you want to successfully help 1,000 clients in the next 3 years? Be very specific about what your end goals are in your career. Write it down. See it. Feel what it will feel like when you get there. Creating success requires this exercise in particular.
- Consider your relationships. Are you wanting to form new friendships in your leisure time? Do you want to nurture a particular relationship that may have been neglected? Is there a family relationship you wish to repair and heal? Maybe there are referral networking relationships you want to forge and nurture. Be specific. Set those goals and give it a time frame so you can create a plan. And consider how it will feel when you achieve those goals.
- Your health and wellbeing need your attention. It’s one thing to talk about being healthy. It’s another thing to realize without your health, nothing else matters and in order to ensure your health gets the attention it needs you need to set some specific action-related goals. Schedule those medical appointments. Register for regular massage therapy. Put your workout sessions on your calendar just as much a priority as you make your clients. Consider your mental wellbeing. Have you scheduled “re-creation” time? Time to have fun, rejuvenate, rest, relax… re-create?
- What about your personal and/or spiritual growth? In order to achieve true success (my definition is to feel truly fulfilled in every sense) it’s essential you give thought and take action toward what kind of time are you allocating to causes in your community and the world that matter to you? Are you volunteering and contributing to the greater good? If not, where in your community or in the wider world could you give something back that you have? What gifts might you share with someone who is in need? Are there spiritual or personal books you want to read? Have you been meaning to learn how to meditate? Make it happen and take time to really feel into how you will feel in your mind, body and spirit when you do.
- Know exactly what you want it and WHEN you want to get there. It’s very important to be very clear about the timeline for reaching your goals. Don’t be vague and simply wish upon a twinkling star. After you’ve felt into how you want to feel as you set those goals and hold your vision of what it will look like, make a decision as to WHEN you want to achieve that goal and go after it. Set it on the calendar. Set incremental work dates along the way so you’re staying on track. This success setting exercise for your life and career is exactly what you need to round this out.
Be very clear about what you want and when you want it and practice sitting every day for 10 minutes envisioning every sensory detail of what it will be like you get there. Utilize your scheduling software or your paper calendar to plan and plot out the actions you are going to take to work toward your personal and professional goals. When you feel an embodied sense of true joy and fulfilling that is when you know you have achieved true success.
Want a simpler TWO Step success setting exercise for your life and career? The International Neurolinguistic Programming Center shows a simplified 2 step process for identifying what you want and what is stopping you. that is also very powerful and fits well with the above model. Check out that simple success formula HERE.
If you’d like some help with this process, I would be happy to have you schedule a professional consultation session to discuss your life and career goals. Go grab a spot on my calendar and let’s speak soon!