Do You Plan for Your Happiness?

Posted on February 19, 2014 by Jay Rooke, One of Thousands of Entrepreneurship Coaches on Noomii.

Do You Plan for Your Happiness?

Tell the truth: did you spend more time planning 1.) your last vacation, or 2.) how to be happier this year? Instead of just letting another year happen, are you willing to approach the next 12 months differently? What if you started with your end goals in mind and began writing the roadmap to a higher-performing you?

Many of my clients struggle with maintaining the discipline to make consistent and deliberate planning sessions for what they want out of life. Deliberate planning lacks sex appeal, but it’s the lowest hanging fruit available if you want to have a better sense of control in your daily life, as well as increasing the probability that you will achieve your goals.
I walk through the following exercise in greater depth with my clients, but here’s the nuts of bolts of getting back on track: Go to your calendar and block off annual, monthly and weekly board meetings—with yourself.

Here’s how to do it:
The annual meeting is where you declare your big picture goals, e.g., get a new job, move, lose ten pounds, find your life’s purpose, etc.

Then, in your monthly board meetings, you reference back to your annual goals and identify what needs to get done that month to move you moving towards your objectives, e.g., identify grad school program, retain a personal trainer, begin meditating, etc.

Lastly, utilize your weekly meetings for the fine-tuning of how it all gets done, and schedule calendar invites that make it happen, e.g., Saturday: research schools from 9-11 a.m., Monday, 8:30 a.m. email personal trainer for initial consultation, Recurring invite: meditate daily from 7-7:10 a.m., etc.

The bottom line: If you want to hit your target, start with the end in mind. The benefit of adopting this philosophy is threefold:

1. Starting with the end in mind forces you to articulate and define your goals. It’s tough to hit your goals when you don’t know what they are; moreover, you deny yourself the celebration of your accomplishments if you don’t know when you’ve achieved them. When my clients have loosely defined goals, I encourage them to get more specific. I.e., “I want to lose 9 pounds by March 15,” or “I want to run the Thanksgiving 5k” are immensely preferable to: “I want to get in better shape.”

2. Starting with the end in mind requires you to outline the steps necessary to achieve your goal. I see a lot of clients endure self-inflicted wounds by skipping this step. Mapping out the mission critical action steps forces us to accurately assess the time and resources required to achieve our goal. Many times it forces us to renegotiate our timeline, or redefine what counts as success. (This is a good thing because it keeps us from chasing unrealistic expectations.)

3. Starting with the end in mind breeds confidence. And who doesn’t want more of that? Have you ever watched a frenzied squirrel try to decide whether or not to cross a road in traffic? When you’re not living deliberately, your internal energy looks like that squirrel. When we sit down with a calm mind and healthy energy to plan our upcoming behavior, it provides us the luxury of having conviction and poise in the present.
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Imagine how differently you would show up if you spent less instances second-guessing yourself? What if you spent less time thinking about what you have to do “next” and more time being present instead? How would your relationships change? Failing to plan and live deliberately is the landslide that blocks the path to your optimal performance. We can’t focus on being awesome when we don’t trust that we’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing in the present.

This all seems too easy, so where do folks go wrong? Enter the saboteur! We all have an inner critic, or saboteur, that typically represents our anxieties, fear, pessimism and cynicism. The saboteur is a staunch guardian of the status quo. It’s the voice that keeps us from dancing at a party so that we don’t look “silly.” Warning: this voice is probably the biggest impediment to your success.

I work with my clients extensively to help them identify their personal saboteurs and gain awareness around where theirs show up. If you want to get to know yours better, start by paying attention to your word choice. Whenever you use words like “should,” “ought to,” “need to,” etc., it is typically the voice of your saboteur leading the charge. When your saboteur is controlling the ship, you play small in life; instead of thriving and living out your potential, you drift through life as a shadow of yourself.

Deliberate planning can be a very effective saboteur slayer. Here’s how: because you were smart and planned your year/month/week out in advance, and identified your goals (instead of impulses), you can be in the present with full confidence that the activity you are engaging in is exactly what is needed to achieve your self-defined success. Can you envision how much it would enrich your life if you could feel that energy on a daily basis?

Disclaimer: although living deliberately makes your life easier, it is not necessarily an easy life. There will still be hard decisions, for sure, but when your inner critic or saboteur rises up, you will be well equipped to disarm his or her derailing energy because you have a master plan to lean back into. Your personal board meetings are essentially a tuning fork to make the right decisions and be present in the moment. Remember: when you don’t create your schedule, other people do. When we plan, we feel in control of our lives; when we don’t, we surrender control of our lives. I’m by no means suggesting you micro-manage every second of your week. The goal is to identify targets and to move towards them.

One of the universal qualities of high performers is that they possess a well honed ability to say no. Most of us need help in better developing this muscle. Working from a plan moves us closer to that ideal of higher performance because it makes it easier to say “no” to distractions and rabbit holes when you clearly know what you’re saying “yes!” to.

Give yourself the gift of peace and happiness this year—do some planning, and then enjoy being present in your life. The alternative is costing too much, isn’t it?