About a month ago, I decided to try Steve Pavlina's 30 Days to Success plan. This was my 30 day resolution:
Starting 2/12/07, I will spend at least an hour a day taking some action related to improving my financial situation. This action cannot be reading or planning.
And now that it's over, I can honestly say that I've changed my life for the better. I'm not going into all of the positive things I accomplished in the past month, but here are just a few:
-I'm in the process of negotiating a change in my credit rating that will eventually enable me to refinance my mortgage
-I bought a new car and dealt with the lease on my old car
-I have my finances fully organized in financial software
-I have dealt with probably the most pressing issue that has been causing me so much anxiety for the past two years, I won't go into details, but here's something I wrote myself this morning during a journaling/brainstorming session
I am at the point where I have faced my worst fear. There are loose ends to take care of, but the worst is over, and it is now a matter of organizing and prioritizing things I have to do. One thing I have realized is that you will never have a stress free life full of problems, but the very act of acknowledging and taking action on your problems greatly minimizes the amount of stress. For instance - as a result of spending so much time organizing my financial situation, I've discovered about 3-4 potential projects that I now have to deal with, such as fixing a mistake on my credit report that will screw me up later on when I want to apply to refinance my house, or realizing that I have a month to take care of my taxes. I don't know how much personal development work I've done. I even skipped weekly reviews for a couple of weeks. And I had one bad weekend where I was so nervous about talking with XXX that I didn't do anything. I also have been eating, let my workouts slide, and have not been practicing guitar. All in all, I *still* think that I accomplished more in the past couple of weeks than I have in the past couple of years. Keep going, Red. I believe in you, can't you feel your life getting better all the time?
I'm glad I did this. As you can tell, less stress in the one area of my life where I feel I have the least amount of control has led to greater confidence/self acceptance, etc in other areas of my life. I'm going to do it again, the way I work is really sporadic, which is something I need to work on - instead of working an hour a day for a week, I will work 7 hours a day for 3 days in a row, then take two days off. This is wrong, and this behavior will inevitably lead to burnout - I've seen it do so in the past. Another thing I've learned, and it really took this experience to teach me the value of this idea - is that, if you always keep your priorities in mind, and decide what to do at any given moment based on your values and priorities, then you can never go wrong.
Anyways, as I said - today I'm starting another 30 Days to Success cycle - this time my assignment is a little more wide ranging and ambitious:
According to the theory of free time - you have about 4 hours free time on weekdays, 14 hours freetime on weekends max - so, 48 hours free time a week total if you are not wasting any time. Starting 03/10/07, I will make sure that I spend at least 40 hours outside of work per week working on projects related to: Career, Finances, Personal Relationships, Guitar, Physical Health, Psychological Health, and Home. I will document the time spent on various projects weekly, and I will make sure to not spend more than 20 or so hours on guitar, which I tend to get obsessive about.
2 comments:
Good luck man. If you've read my blog lately, you'll noticed that an LTR is killing my self-improvement time in a 30 Days to Success month.
In courtship, I have less time available to do the things I want to do alone when we always sleeping over at each other's places.
Which made me speculate how in the world do husbands and fathers move ahead in their career when their wives and kids demand attention outside of the 9-5 grind. You'd think spending ungodly hours in the office would build their resentment to leave.
Cosi va il mondo.
Well luckily for me I am not in a committed relationship at the moment, or unluckily for me that is. :)
I have a few ideas about these points you raise:
-There is the depressing idea that maybe husbands, fathers, boyfriends that manage to keep moving forward at a rapid pace in their careers do not have that great of a relationship, or that the work kills the relationship eventually. You know the stereotype of the workaholic who comes home one day to find his wife has left him and served him divorce papers.
-But surely this is not the case for everyone. Surely out of all the successful guys in relationships out there - someone has found a way to maintain a happy relationship while at the same time kicking ass at his career. I think it goes back to what I talk about with priorities. If you have a good grasp on what your priorities in life are, and you are a hardworking guy who is on top of your responsibilities, then you will find a way to make it work if you try to live a balanced life.
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