Today’s guest post is courtesy of Richard at Lifestyle Design Unleashed.

When a surgeon goes to do an operation there are a number of pieces of equipment that he or she will most likely need. Scalpels. Clamps. Trays. And so on. If they go in with a skateboard, a banana and a doorbell instead then the surgeon is obviously going to be far less likely to be able to make a success of the operation.

And so it follows with lifestyle design. There are a number of traits which, if you can implement them, will help you greatly in designing and then creating your ideal lifestyle, so I thought it might be beneficial now to run over a few of these to serve as thinking points for you.

I’d love to hear your opinions and feedback on these elements, so I encourage you to leave a comment at the end of this post and also to suggest any traits that you think I’ve missed out.

Motivation To Make Changes

The first key to successful lifestyle design is having the motivation to make changes. I assume that if you’re here now, reading this blog, then that is you. But I’m not just talking about a passing interest in designing your lifestyle—instead I mean a burning motivation that keeps you awake at night dreaming about the possibilities.

I heard a useful phrase recently which went something along the lines of “a dog on the hunt doesn’t stop to scratch its fleas”. In other words there are always going to be small annoyances or things that get in your way while you’re on this lifestyle design journey, but if you have enough motivation and you’re focused on the end game then these minor issues won’t slow you down.

Passion For Life

There are two aspects of lifestyle design really—the negative and the positive. The negative elements are all those things you want to escape from, to avoid, to eliminate. Maybe that’s a boring job. Maybe that’s debt. Maybe it’s something as simple as a cold climate.

But the other side are the positives. What are you going to add into your lifestyle? When you’ve got rid of all those negatives, what positives are you going to add in?

What countries would you like to visit? What new skills would you like to learn? What food would you like to try, what languages do you want to learn? Who do you want to meet and what do you want to achieve?

Too many people know what they don’t want (I want to be able to quit my job) but struggle with what they do want to do. Remember that eliminating your job by setting up a lifestyle business, for example, by its very definition, opens up a huge amount of free time, and you’ve got to do something with it.

It’s worth, then, considering what you will do. Maybe go to some evening classes to see what appeals to you. Maybe go and meet some new people and just get chatting until you start thinking “wow, I’d love to try that”.

Find the things you’re really passionate about in case you aren’t already aware which will create even more motivation to make the necessary changes to your life.

A Vision Of Your Potential Life

I remember listening to an audio tape years ago which included information on an architect. When he designed a house he could visualize it so strongly that apparently he would go out to the plot of land with his clients and walk them through the house in such detail it was like the house was already built.

He could see every aspect of it in his mind’s eye. He joked that it seemed too real to him that sometimes he would knock his elbow on a piece of furniture!

This vision—this ability to see your potential future in your mind’s eye in glorious Technicolor—is yet another step in achieving your goals. After all, if you don’t know what you’re aiming for, how will you know when you get there?

So don’t just make a list of what you want to eliminate and what you want to add into your life. Imagine yourself actually living that life. What does your home look like? Where is it located? What do you look like? What do you do? Who do you know? Make this vision so strong that you too can walk into imaginary furniture.

Debt Free

Debt has a nasty way of taking away options. And the fewer options you have the less freedom and control over your life you have. If you’re up to your eyeballs in debt, then you may well be stuck in your job until you’ve paid it off. You may not be able to afford the vacation you want, or to buy that house you dream of. Debt repayments can eat up a lot of your monthly income, which means you need to earn more.

Without debt though, all those monthly repayments disappear. Depending on your point of view, you either need to earn less (meaning your lifestyle business can support you that much sooner) or you have more expendable income to spend on the things you really want.

In short, getting out of debt is an essential part of the lifestyle design project.

What else is important for your lifestyle design journey? Please leave your feedback and visit Richard at LifestyleDesignUnleashed.com

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Success Traits For Effective Lifestyle Design

I’ve been reading one of the most influential books of my life: Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. This 1937 classic contains the principles that led people like Andrew Carnegie, Charles M. Schwab, Thomas Edison, and many others, to great wealth and success. As a young man, Napoleon Hill met the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who instilled in him his most important business teachings. Over the course of twenty years, Hill interviewed about five hundred of the most successful businessmen and leaders in the U.S. and the world, to understand more about the common beliefs that helped lead to their great success.

What these 500 individuals had in common is also what forms the foundation for the newer book and now movie, The Secret. While they give a decent introduction to a very powerful idea, I feel that the practitioners in that film greatly oversimplify this principle which many of the world’s rich and powerful share.

After talking at length with my sister about the concepts in Hill’s Think and Grow Rich—what some call mind over matter, visualization, the “Law of Attraction”—we decided that the most effective way to describe the “Carnegie secret” succinctly is this:

You become that which you think about most.

You also attract the things and accomplish the goals that you think about most. But the first step to great success is to know specifically what you want out of life: financially, personally, socially, etc. In other words, what you occupy your mind with most prominently will eventually, in one way or another shape your reality. I find that most people I talk to, even though I love many of them dearly, don’t really know what they want to achieve in life. But if you think about it critically, the principle fits with most of what we know about life. People who concentrate solely on achieving some sort of success may fail ten times before they become a great success seemingly “overnight,” but those who don’t fill their heads with grand aspirations rarely see great success, and those who stop concentrating on their highest goals and start believing that they can’t achieve their aspirations eventually give up.

So we can see how this works both positively and negatively. Once you start telling yourself that you can’t do something, you’re right! So be careful that you don’t concentrate your thoughts on what you don’t want out of life, because eventually you will attract those things to you. This even explains hypochondriacs and placebo effects. The mind works hard to align belief with reality. Instead phrase all of your goals positively, believe sincerely that you can achieve what you want in life, and fill your mind with vivid visualizations of what it will be like when you’ve actually attained your goals.

Hill says that definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. You may eke by with a decent living without any definite major purpose for your life, but you will never excel without concrete, specific goals. Hill says that financial goals in particular should be specific, measurable, and timely. Set specific goals for how much money you want to earn, specifically by what date, for example. But the example holds true for any sort of wealth, not just monetary. And most importantly, be clear and realistic about what what you will give in exchange for that wealth, what value you intend to share with the world in exchange for your success.

Figure out what your purpose is. Decide specifically what you want in life and what you are willing to give in return for it. Visualize your success and repeat to yourself often what you intend to achieve. Then back it up with massive action, and you’re certain to reach the heights of success, wealth, and influence.

Otherwise you’ll have to settle for what falls in your lap. Sometimes that’s decent, but you can’t say you never got a chance if you don’t know specifically what you want out of life: what you want to BE, DO and HAVE. When you know what you want, you will be prepared to recognize and take advantage of the opportunities that life presents to you.

(Oh P.S. the title is a silly geek reference to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!)

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: The Secret to Life, the Universe, and Everything

My favorite positive affirmation is that there is NOTHING you cannot DO, or BE, or HAVE! I like to repeat that to myself daily. But one must do some dedicated goal-setting, and a lot of goal-getting to get there!

This was supposed to be a New Year’s post, but unanticipated changes due to my travel schedule forced me to postpone writing it. That’s okay though, travel will teach you a few valuable lessons about embracing change and rolling with the punches. The nice thing about resolutions is that New Year’s Eve isn’t the only time you can make them!

In fact, you can set positive new resolutions for your life anytime you choose! New Years just gives us a great opportunity to reflect on our achievements in the past year and set some meaningful new goals for the year ahead. But you can do this anytime you choose—you can make yearly goals on your birthday, or on tax day, or you can set resolutions every six months, every quarter, or you can even set monthly goals! You get the picture…

It’s already three weeks into the New Year, why should I set resolutions now?

The advent of a new year simply serves as a good reminder to reflect on all the progress you’ve made over the last 12 months and take what you’ve learned, and build a roadmap for the coming year and beyond.

It’s actually better that there has been time for the hype of the New Year to pass by. A lot of people intentionally avoid setting new goals on January 1st because they see New Years “resolutions” as oh-so-cliche. Or perhaps you set a traditional resolution and already fell off the wagon. Revisiting what “resolutions” mean now might give you an opportunity to set more meaningful goals this year. So, stay with me here and embrace the change. Don’t think of this as a New Years post. Instead, we are going to focus on goal-setting for this year.

We’ve already seen how powerful it can be when you set goals for yourself. You won’t succeed at every goal, but review your personal development progress at the end of each year to see how much you do accomplish! Simply setting the goals for yourself will greatly increase the likelihood that you’ll get much closer to your dream lifestyle in all these areas of your life.

But I can never keep my resolutions anyways. Why should I care?

So, as you can already see from my experience getting this post out much later than I intended, embracing change means that you don’t always get to do things exactly when you planned. But that’s okay, just because the timing changes doesn’t mean you should throw away the whole plan! Just having made the plan in the first place makes you about sixty percent more likely to follow through on the action than if you hadn’t made plans and set a time in your head in the first place. So the timing has changed. So what? You can still follow through. That’s what goal-setting is! It’s setting a plan—not a commandment set in stone. Don’t give up on your goals if you miss your timeline.

Another thing about your goals is that they may change over time, or things may happen that prevent you from achieving them. Or you may simply not put in the effort to complete all of your goals by the end of the year. But what matters most is that you set them. The act of making meaningful, clearly-defined goals, and writing them down, will put you ahead of 95% of people out there, and it will certainly point you much closer in the right direction toward attaining the lifestyle that you desire in the year ahead. I guarantee that if you set ten goals for yourself in 2008, simply the act of setting goals for yourself will put you MUCH closer to achieving your dreams! As Abraham Lincoln said, “A goal properly set is halfway reached.” Get clear on what you want to accomplish in the next year, and focus your energy towards those ends, and you’ll likely achieve many of your goals.

Okay, okay. So how do you actually do this?

Now it seems to be a popular thing to try to create 100 life goals or 100 goals for the new year. (Just do a Google search for “100 goals” and you’ll see how many communities there are out there talking about the number 100!) Maybe it’s just that the number ‘one-hundred’ has so much appeal… There’s nothing wrong with wanting to go about it that way I suppose, but I think that’s going about it backwards. You’ve already started out by adding another goal to the top of your pile of things to do: To create 100 goals! But does having any particular number of goals really objectively have any value to you? No. In fact, the number is fairly meaningless, so don’t start out with any particular number to reach.

Instead, try starting with the bigger picture in mind. As Stephen Covey said in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.” To do this, we will examine what roles we play, and what we want those areas of our life to look like in a year from now.

Brainstorm your personal Roles & Areas of Focus

The necessary first step is to brainstorm your life roles, and other important personal areas of focus. Some goal-setting systems will tell you what categories to set goals for, but I believe you will come up with much more meaningful “categories” if you reflect personally about what roles you play and what areas of focus are most important to you. This is the system that Tony Robbins uses in his Personal Power seminars, and many other professional coaches (like my friend Tim Walther) use successfully in goal-setting workshops with thousands of people every year.

Think about your work, your family, your hobbies… What roles do you play? For example, when I brainstormed, my roles included freelance web designer, business owner, professional networker, peer mentor, writer, traveler, and artist. But perhaps you are a mother, a CEO, an accountant, rock climber, church member, or amateur filmmaker. The roles that we play are different and unique for each individual. But what “hats” do you wear? What roles are important to you that you want to improve upon in the next year?

Roles tend to sound like titles or jobs, even if you don’t get paid for them! They are how you relate to other people. But besides your roles, what other areas of focus are important to you personally? For most people this will include things like personal finances, health and recreation, social life, and so on. But maybe your areas of focus include nutrition, or spirituality, or professional development and training…

Take some time to brainstorm and reflect on what roles and areas of focus are most important in your life, and once you have them all written down on a piece of paper, imagine one-by-one what each of those areas of your life could “look like” in a year. This is called visualization, and it’s an important tool in attaining your desires. Visualize how much progress you could make towards positive relationships with your family. Or how much you could improve upon your strengths at work. Imagine yourself in a new profession, being paid to do something you love. Or even picture yourself on vacation to some beautiful exotic location! But don’t imagine these things passively—visualize yourself participating in making those changes…in experiencing those improvements and accomplishments. Write down a sentence or short paragraph next to each role and each area of focus about what that “picture” looks like.

Now set some goals!

Now that you have your big picture and you’ve thought about where you’re going with each of your personal roles, you finally have some direction. Visualizing what each of those areas of your life could look like one year from now should give you vivid images of what you want to DO, BE, and HAVE. So the final piece of the puzzle in making meaningful resolutions this year is to break those visualizations down into smaller steps you need to take to get there. What are the next actions that will get you closer to your desired outcomes? If you want to buy a new laptop, how much money should you set aside each month? If you want rock-hard abs, how many crunches are you going to do each day?

The best way to set goals that are longer-term than your weekly To Do list items is to start practicing SMART goals. SMART, in this case, is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. You can review these questions in your head as you set goals, or you may want to write them out for each major goal you set.

Specific — Is it something concrete, that you’ll know when you’ve completed it? This is one big reason why “resolutions” fail. People often set ambiguous goals that are too broad to be actionable or too unclear to know when you’ve fulfilled the requirements. For instance, a popular New Years’ resolution is “to get in shape.” But how are you going to achieve that? That is only a very murky version of the visualization that we’ve already practiced above. Now make it specific!

Measurable — How will you measure your progress at the end of the year, or how will you know when you’ve achieved your objective? Think about what specific criteria you’ll have to fulfill to reach the specific outcome you want. And a good way of measuring may be to keep a notebook of your progress toward the goal, or involving your friends in keeping you on track.

Attainable — Is it realistic and possible for you to achieve this in the year ahead, or are you reaching too far? Do you have too much on your plate already? Set goals that will make you stretch, and learn, and grow. But don’t set unrealistic, far-fetched goals that will only discourage you when you don’t meet them.

Relevant — This is actually my favorite of these questions to ask when you’re doing these mental exercises, and it is the first one that I ask because it is the best filter because I think it is the most important. Put simply, is the goal important? Is it really going to get you closer to your dreams, and is it really worth investing your energy in? Or should you focus on other, more important goals?

Time-Bound — When will you complete this goal? Specifically? By October? In Q1? On your birthday? Remember what I said about being flexible with changes in timing toward the beginning of this post, but attaching a time to your goals makes them immediate and important. Remind yourself regularly that you have a goal to meet. When do you plan to start, and what is your target date for completion?

You may come up with a hundred goals for 2008, or you may come up with just two or three really important goals for the year. I go through my list and eliminate all the non-SMART goals, and I try to focus on the ‘attainability’ aspect of my goals and think about how much I can realistically accomplish in just one year, so I have about 3-4 top concrete goals for each of my 10 roles/areas of focus.

Examples of My Personal and Professional Development Goals for the New Year

In my own brainstorming, I found that my most important Roles included Web Designer/Consultant, Entrepreneur, Blogger, Peer Mentor, Traveler, and Artist. And other Areas of Focus for me included things like Social & Relationship-oriented goals, Health & Recreation, and Financial goals. After I settled on these nine top areas of importance for my life, I visualized how I’d ideally like to see each of those realms in a year from now… What sort of progress would I like to make? What things would I like to learn? How successful can I be in a year? And I not only asked these questions, but I tried to actually put myself in that future reality—what will it feel like? How will I get there? Is it truly important?

So, once I had the broader picture of where I’d like to be in a year (yet still very specific mental images), I worked backwards to think what smaller steps I’ll need to accomplish to get to that point. I tried to frame each of my goals into the three areas of things I want to BE, DO, or HAVE, and I tried to frame them in the affirmative, to reinforce to my own brain that I will accomplish these things this year! I also tried to phrase my goals positively, focusing on what I should do to get there, not what I want to do less of. Here are the 24 major goals I’ve set for myself this year, broken down by my Roles and Areas of Focus:

I. My goals as a Web Designer & Consultant

• I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work.
• I WILL HAVE a new Apple desktop computer.
• I WILL EARN $60K as a freelancer this year.

II. My goals as an Entrepreneur

• I WILL BE the owner of my own web consulting business.
• I WILL HAVE multiple streams of residual income (through products, training materials, and partnerships).

III. My goals as a Blogger

• I WILL WRITE at least one high-value article each week for Thrilling Heroics (52+).
• I WILL REDESIGN ThrillingHeroics.com.
• I WILL DO one interview each month for Thrilling Heroics.
• I WILL COMMENT on other relevant blogs for one hour each week.

IV. Career Development and goals as a Peer Mentor

• I WILL CREATE a dedicated Mastermind group website with forums to enable remote discussion of personal & professional development.
• I WILL COMMUNICATE with Mastermind members monthly to follow up on their goal-setting and career planning.
• I WILL READ one personal development book each month.

V. My goals as a Traveler

• I WILL COMMUNICATE with international friends once each quarter.
• I WILL PARTICIPATE in online traveler communities like The Thorn Tree Forums and The Couch Surfing Project.
• I WILL LIVE in Thailand for 3+ months.

VI. My goals as an Artist

• I WILL SELL my photography professionally via an online gallery or stock photography community.

VII. My Social and Relationship-related goals

• I WILL CONTACT old friends on their birthdays.
• I WILL ATTEND Burning Man.

VIII. My Health and Recreational goals

• I WILL DO 30+ pushups each day.
• I WILL DO 3 half-hour cardio workouts per week.
• I WILL HAVE a great road bike.

IX. My Financial goals

• I WILL ELIMINATE any credit card balances.
• I WILL HAVE a $2000 emergency fund.
• I WILL HAVE my own self-employed medical/dental/vision insurance.

Remember, the more specific you get, the more likely you are to actually achieve your goals! I went through all of my goals to see if they were each Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely, and if they weren’t, I’d throw them out. I won’t include each step for ALL of my 24 goals here because I don’t want to bore you! But, I’ll demonstrate with my first goal how I answered these questions in my head:

GOAL: I WILL HAVE a dedicated portfolio site for my web development work

1. Specific: I will create an online portfolio with client testimonials, service & product offerings, and business contact information.
2. Measurable: I’ll know this goal is completed when I have a freelance site on its own unique URL that directs potential clients properly to my pipeline.
3. Attainable: I have built numerous websites in the past, so I will easily be able to build myself a business site (it doesn’t have to start out perfect!)
4. Relevant: This is important in order to establish an online home for my business and build instant credibility with potential clients.
5. Timely: I will complete this project before the end of February, 2008.

Now that you’ve seen my own detailed example of brainstorming Roles & Areas of Focus, visualizing outcomes, and SMART goal-setting for 2008, what are your personal resolutions for the new year? What goals are important for you to achieve this year? If you haven’t already spent time thinking about meaningful resolutions for the year, brainstorm on this and let me know what you think of my process in the comments.

When setting your career and academic goals for your business advancement, consider one of these online degrees that will help you manage your time better.

Please hit that comment section below and share your thoughts… Good luck goal-setting!

Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: Set Meaningful Personal & Professional Development Goals and Make Progress Towards Your Ideal Life