The Personal Excellence Blog » Conscious Living

Discover Your Real Life Purpose

Celes — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:39:59 +0000

This is part 6 of a 7-part series on how to discover your real purpose in life.

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.” Rumi
“Decide upon your major definite purpose in life and then organize all your activities around it.” Brian Tracy

You have read the story of how I discovered my real purpose. You have read the 6 important factors in identifying your purpose. Now, it’s your turn to define your purpose for your life

Steps To Define Your Purpose:

Firstly, take out a piece of pen and paper. On top of the paper, write “My Real Life Purpose”
Now, think deeply over the following question: What is the purpose I want to define for my life? What do I want to live for?
Write down the all the answers that come to mind. If you ever find yourself stuck, just keep writing whatever random thoughts are on your mind. Think of it as retrieving the needle in a haystack. In order to get the needle, you need to get the hay out. All these random thoughts are the hay that are standing between you and the needle.
Keep writing and press on until you finally reach the answer that evokes your strongest emotions and resonates with the depth of your soul.

Notes:

There is no right or wrong answer: There is only the answer which is the most true for you. To date, I have never had any client with the same purpose statement as another. Some of their purposes are: “To love myself and others unconditionally”, “To live my best life via being persistent and taking continuous actions on my goals”, “To do the right things right”, “To be my best and touch others’ hearts”, etc. All of you are unique individuals and thus your purpose will be totally unique to you.
Taking time out to think: If you find you need more time to think, then take some time out to mull over it. Spend an hour, a day, or even a week. Bookmark this page and return to it when it’s time. But don’t overstretch the thinking process or complicate the thinking beyond what it should be. Because you are the person who determines what your life should be lived for. No matter who you are, when you are doing this or where you are in life right now, you already have the power and onus to define your own purpose for your life. Set a deadline on when you want to have the answer to this question and mark that on your calendar.

As you write your purpose, frame it into a purpose / mission statement. There are no hard and fast rules on how to do this, but below are some good pointers:

How To Write Your Purpose / Mission statement

Simple; 1-2 statements. It should convey 1-2 key points. Keep it within 1-2 statements. Your purpose should be long enough such that it means something to you and concise enough so it’s easy for you to remember.
Action-form. It should be framed as an action, such as “To live to my highest potential and be the best I can be”, “To bring love and joy to everyone in the world”, etc. Your purpose is trigger you into action continuously.
Use words that resonate with you. All the words used in your life purpose statement should ideally resonate with you.
Direction, not destination. Just like how you can never ever reach north, your statement should be an action which is an ongoing journey.

My Life Purpose

Here is my life purpose today, same as what I shared in my personal story. The purpose is two-fold:

1) “To unite the world as one single consciousness: To touch others’ lives, enable them to achieve their highest potential and live their best life.”

2) “To reach my highest level of consciousness: To achieve my highest potential and live my best life; To live consciously and freely in truth, love and power.”

After Defining Your Purpose

The most important thing to realize is even after defining your life mission statement, it will change in the future. Just like you evolve as a person throughout the journey, your perceptions of life’s meaning will change too.

Make sure to review your purpose statement periodically (e.g., every 3 months at the beginning, followed by 6 months, then yearly) to ensure that it resonates with who you are. It is possible that you have undergone changes or obtained new revelations in your world beliefs which makes your purpose irrelevant to you. This is just like how companies need to regularly review their mission statement to ensure that it has not been made obsolete.

Now that you have discovered your new found purpose in life, you need to start integrating it in your life. In the last part of this series, we will discuss on how to reconcile your current life with your new purpose.

This is part 6 of a 7-part series on how to discover your real purpose in life.

Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform In 2010?

Celes — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 09:30:20 +0000

© maurice

Happy 2010 and welcome to the new decade! Today’s article is about choosing the area of your life to transform for this brand new year

By now, some of you are probably armed with your list of 2010 goals to make it a blast. Some of you may not have thought about your goals yet. If you haven’t done so, it’s not too late to do it now! Take out a pen and paper, and spend the next 15 min (or more if you need to) writing everything it takes to make your 2010 the best year ever yet.

You might want to read Part-3 of Goal Achievement Series on Establish Your Goals, which shares 10 key principles behind powerful goals.

Finish the exercise before continuing on with this article. I’ll wait for you here until you are done.

Done? How many goals did you come up with? When I did the 2010 goal setting exercise with my clients, most of them came up with 10+ goals. I personally have a list of 14 big goals for the year. The most I’ve encountered so far is 40 goals, and it’s by a 16 year old girl!

In general, the more goals you set and strive for, the more you will get out of life (assuming these are empowering goals). However, it’s also obvious the more goals you set, the harder it will be to achieve all, simply because the increased number of goals will divert your energy. That’s where setting a focus for your year comes in.

Power of A Yearly Focus

Setting a focus for your year means to identify an area of your life you want to disproportionately focus on improving throughout the year. This focus can be an area of your life which you feel you have been neglecting in the past and want to start working on. It can be an area which, when improved upon, will enable you to have the best experience for the year.

When you set a focus for the year, it doesn’t mean you can only have goals in that area. You can continue to set other goals that may be out of the focus, just that a majority of your goals will be related to your focus in some way or another. For example, perhaps your focus for 2010 is to improve yourself, and then you will have different goals related to that, such as to be more productive, more sociable, increase your income, lose weight, and so on.

Your focus can be anything, from:

An area in your life (career, health, finance, spiritual, family, friends, love, recreation, personal growth)
A skill (communication, writing, public speaking, dancing, swimming, running, etc)
An aspect of yourself you want to cultivate/strengthen (self-love, being sociable, confidence, charisma, productivity, organization, discipline, having integrity, responsibility, etc)
A certain message you want to convey to yourself/the world

Benefits of Choosing A Yearly Focus

Why choose a focus for the year? There are two key benefits, really:

Benefit # 1: Transformational Results in Area of Focus

When I was in my brand management role in my past company, we would design every marketing campaign around a single big idea rather than separate different messages. It had been repeatedly proven that a single, powerful big idea registered with more people and triggered more action than say, having 4-5 different messages, which typically confused consumers and resulted in no action taken in the end.

Similarly for goals, by choosing 1 core focus for our year, you accelerate the achievements and progress within the area in the year, resulting in transformational results. The beauty of a focus is that by being conscious and aware of your focus, it helps you to move ahead with much more clarity. This clarity will drive you to achieve tremendously in this area. Compared to if we were to have a laundry list of 40 goals in some 10 different areas – nothing’s ever going to get done! Chances are, we are going to get overwhelmed before mid-point or we are going to totally forget about the goals we set and revert back to our past behaviors!

Benefit # 2: Sets In Place the Improvements Made

Besides getting more results, it also sets in place the improvements we have achieved in that area. Many people often have the problem of setting goals, achieving results in those goals, then having what they have achieved in those goals after they shift their attention else where. Yet when you spend a whole of 1 year working on an area, the improvements you obtain in that area are going to be deeply set in at the end of the year.

Let’s say you make health a focus area and you achieve a tremendous amount of improvements in the year. Throughout the year, you improve your diet, you exercise regularly, you wake up early every day. By the end of the year, not only would you have made dramatic leaps in your health, but the changes would also become a staple in your life because the actions have turned into habits. You are now more ready to focus on new areas and introduce new changes in your life.

My Focus Areas Through The Years

2007-2008 – Personal Growth

For me, in 2007-2008, my focus area was personal growth through corporate work in my ex-company. Throughout the course of my work, I was consistently requesting for the biggest and the best projects to stretch myself. I strove to exceed expectations for every piece of work I was given. I signed up for the best trainings within the company so I was ahead in my learning curve. I also connected with the seniors in the company to learn from them. In the end, I was able to rotate across 3 different assignments in my 2 years in the company, when the norm in the company was 1 assignment per 2 years. All in all, this allowed me to gain a massive amount of knowledge and learnings, which then enabled me to quit and pursue my passion thereafter.

2009 – Establishing My Passion

In 2009 which was last year, my focus area was establishing my passion to the world. As a result, majority of my biggest achievements last year was centered on my passion, such as setting up The School of Personal Excellence, being featured on media, establishing The Personal Excellence Blog, becoming a full-time life coach, speaking and giving workshops and so on.

Because I was so fervently pursuing my passion, it made me realize 2 things which I shared in my previous 2009 reflections article: #1 Helping others is what I want to do for the rest of my life. #2 The reason why I do what I do every day is because of you.

2010 – People, Love and Relationships

This year, my focus is going to be centered around people, love and connections . Putting other people’s needs in the forefront, loving everyone wholly and unconditionally, and establishing meaningful, authentic and real relationships. On hindsight, this is definitely no coincidence especially having discovered the driving force behind pursuing my passion is really helping others grow (see above).

So what is the scope of this focus? Everything, really.

The World: Reaching out to even more people to help them live their best life. Knowing my readers, clients and workshop participants more deeply as individuals.
Familial Bonds: Strengthening my connections with my parents who have always been forever doting on me since young, yet I have hardly ever reciprocated the love.
Friendship: Knowing my current friends even better as individuals.
Networking: Getting out there and knowing others better. Online: connecting with more fellow personal development bloggers and knowing current blogger friends better as individuals. Offline: Connecting with more experts and counterparts in the industry.
Leadership: In 2009 I had been pursuing my passion largely on as an individual. This year marks the first year where I’ll be pursuing my passion with a team of people – incredibly talented, stellar individuals no less, whom I handpicked over all others. So far I’ve been practicing leadership on an indirect basis and have not directly led people yet. In the past, I have been managed by many different managers of different styles and have experienced the pains of poor leadership, as well as the joys of strong leadership. Thus, it has always been my personal resolution to be the best leader I can be and ensure I bring the best out of anyone I come into contact with. This will truly be an area of growth for me in 2010 and I look forward to seeing how it pans out!
Love: In the past, I had been emotionally closed towards relationships for different reasons. The past few years have seen the unlocking of these bonds, one after another. I believe I’m now emotionally open towards being in a relationship, so let’s see how things go moving forward and how the universe reacts

To be honest, I’m really excited about this because people and relationships is something I had never overtly set as a goal in the past. Since then, the past 4 years from 2006-2009 have been a long journey of inner growth, from understanding myself, uncovering blind spots, increasing performance, surpassing personal limits, increasing my consciousness, living in the now, and many, many more. Having done so much inner growth and understood myself to a certain degree, I believe I’m now ready to transfer my attention to the outside world by focusing on the others around me.

In fact, after making the decision to focus on this goal, several blind spots have become apparent to myself. For one, my responsibility towards others. While I’ve always been responsible for my own self, I have not effected the same rigor to others around me. In retrospect, I’m beginning to realize my actions implicate others more than I have recognized. Another blind spot is my empathy towards others. I feel there is room for me to be more empathetic towards others – being sensitive to them, putting their needs first, understanding their feelings and knowing them as individuals. I look forward to seeing more blind spots and addressing them as I move ahead.

While I still have other goals in other areas (such as losing some more pounds toward my ideal weight, learning to manage my energy to maximize my productivity output), the focus on people and connections is the key anchor that holds all my goals together. This key focus is going to be the guiding point for my daily thoughts and behaviors every day in 2010 moving forward

With this new focus for this year, be prepared to see a whole lot more articles on people and relationships this year too

Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform This Year?

How about you? What is your 2010 Focus? What is the key area in your life you want to transform this year to make it the best year ever?

As mentioned above in point #4, your focus can be a message itself. One of my readers (hey Tatt! ) was telling me that 2009 had been a year where he had grown a lot as a person – particularly on the professional front and his health. His focus for 2010 is boost his productivity through “focusing on the big things“. Another reader, Kimberly, said that her 2009 had been focused on others, and she now intends for 2010 to be “a year of focus for herself”, which I thought is a fabulous idea! To be able to truly help others, you need to first meet your own needs first and foremost. One of my clients’ focus for this year is “To live life to the fullest”, which is the central message behind all the 2010 he is going to achieve.

There is no right or wrong answer on what your focus is. It just needs to (i) be a single theme you want to focus on in the whole year and (ii) resonate with what you feel is biggest block towards living your best life this year.

Decide on your 2010 focus, then start living true to it immediately. You will find that with a focus for the year, everything starts becoming a whole lot more coherent and things flow more naturally. Focus on this area and target to make the biggest progress and evolution this year than you ever have before

2009 Reflections: 2 Biggest Things I Learned, 15 Key Highlights and A Big Thank You To You

Celes — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:21:08 +0000

My first snowprint . Taken when I was in China, Jiu Zhai Guo last year

2009.

What a year.

2009 marks the first year whereby I’m full fledgedly pursuing my passion to help others achieve excellence and live their best life. Subsequently, 2009 marks the first year where I’m in a total state of “flow” in every single moment I live. Everything feels so natural and surreal. It seems as if 1st Jan 2009 was light years ago, as if I’ve been doing what I’m doing now for the longest time ever. I don’t remember when’s the last time I ever felt this way about anything. It feels… like I’m living in a dream. It’s so amazing that it’s indescribable.

I learned many things for myself this year. Some of these have been documented in my articles throughout the year. Many have been duly recorded in my life handbook as part of my personal journey of growth. All the learnings I have gotten – I intend to share on the blog in the future, in its own time and place.

Rather than flood this post with a tsunami of realizations and learnings, I decided to share the two biggest things I have learned for myself this year.

Two Biggest Things I Learned in 2009

1. I realized helping others is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

If you have read my personal story of how I discovered my life purpose, you might have noticed a large part of how I arrived at my life purpose was through logical deduction. In 2006, I realized the pursuit of monetary, material possessions and recognition as ends in themselves was meaningless, because these were impermanent and would disappear one day. From there, I concluded I would focus on personal growth as my life mission – developing consciousness of myself and others, since it is the only thing that is permanent in the world.

Today, 1 year after pursuing this passion/mission/purpose, I can now conclusively say that apart from mental resonance, I’m now in full emotional resonance with my desire to help others grow. I don’t just know it. I feel it in my heart, fully and wholly now. There’s nothing in the world I would ever trade for to stop doing this.

The continuous, heartwarming feedback from readers, 1-1 coaching clients and workshop participants have affirmed my realization. Since the start of the blog, readers have continuously told me how the articles have empowered them in their journey of personal growth, such as taking action on their dreams, getting over life’s setbacks, loving themselves, making bold & necessary changes in their lives and quitting their full-time jobs to do what they love. Clients have told me how amazing they felt after the coaching sessions, how they discovered more about themselves through the sessions compared to all their life so far, how they have created changes they never thought possible before. All these are the best rewards I can ever get for what I do today.

2. I realized the reason why I do what I do every day is because of you.

This realization really came as a result of a serendipitous and spontaneous question that popped in my mind a month ago or so. “What if one day, there is nobody else in this world but me? Would I still be as driven towards life and personal growth as I am now?”

The answer that came back was a quiet, yet resounding, “No .”.

It then struck me that the primary thing that drives me every day is really, you. In the past 2 years since discovering my life purpose, I had been equally driven towards my personal growth and growth of others, with slight inclination towards the latter. Today, it’s clear that it’s the love for all of you out there and the desire to help you live your best life that drives me. As I shared last week, the reason why I openly share about myself and my life to the media and the world is because of you. If none of you exist, I wouldn’t be as driven or passionate toward my own growth as I am right now. The real reason why I strive to grow and be my best self every day is so I can better help you and others grow and live your best life.

15 Key Highlights of 2009

Passion/Career/Business

1. Decided not to return to corporate work and fully embrace my passion now (March).

From there, turned my passion into my full-time career

2. Started The School of Personal Excellence (TSOPE) in September

TSOPE is the first school to help you achieve your goals and dreams. If there is only 1 thing I have to single out as my key achievement for this year, this will be the one

3. Built and established The Personal Excellence Blog, reaching out and touching the lives of people around the world

To date, we have over 140+ free, quality personal excellence articles, almost 2k unique readers every day and 1.7k subscribers
Started The Personal Excellence Blog Facebook Fanpage, with over 2.7k fans currently! Do join us if you haven’t already

4. Became a full fledged life coach and established myself in the profession

Equipped myself with coaching skills through self-learning and experience and became a better coach through the year. Developed my own robust coaching system based on my learnings in life and personal philosophy.
Gave personal 1-1 coaching to nearly 50 clients this year, helping them transform their lives and achieve results in their personal goals and dreams
Since I started coaching in Apr, 1-1 coaching rates have increased by over ten-fold due to the overdemand. The 1-1 coaching continues to be overbooked today, though I plan to remove the waiting list in 2010 due to urgency behind some clients’ requests

5. Started officially speaking and training in the area of personal excellence

Gave speeches, trainings and workshops in various schools and organizations
Spoke to an audience of almost 1,000 people!
Became a better speaker through self-learning and direct speaking experience. Look forward to more developments in this area in 2010

6. Interviewed and featured in local and regional media 12 times

It first started with My Paper in late March, then everything rolled on from there To date, I’ve been covered by almost every media outlet locally and it’s something I’m extremely grateful for.
Check media section for a full list of media coverage and the clippings/recordings of the interviews

Health / Fitness

7. Experimented with raw veganism for 21 days (May-June)

Decided to return to cooked vegan food for now since it’s too hard to upkeep a raw vegan diet in the modern society

8. (Almost) achieved my desired weight / look

Still a few pounds left to lose and toning to do. After that, I gather I’m finally done with weight loss goals after all these years

Relationships

9. Improved my relationships with my parents!

Hugged my parents for the first time since I was a kid! Also gave my family members each a personal card expressing love and gratitude for everything they have done for me. This was a huge deviation from the norm since we hardly ever talk, especially between me and my brother. I think they must have thought I was popping pills.

10. Initiated and re-established contact with people from my past

Most of these were people whom I had negative encounters with previously and didn’t continue contact afterward. Figured that as I’m going to be coaching others to release personal blocks, I needed to first walk the talk!

11. Established and fostered strong friendships in the personal development industry

I’m very thankful for the work I do, because it enables me to become acquainted with such incredible people. Moving forward in this journey, I look forward to meeting even more of such people.

12. Got to know over 2k new readers and friends on both Facebook and Twitter, thanks to the blog

If you have FB and/or Twitter but haven’t added me yet, please feel free to do so!

13. Mutually parted with my best friend of 10 years

Our friendship had served its role in the earlier years, and it had come to a point where it was preventing us from living in full alignment with purpose and our highest selves. In the end we mutually parted to progress in our life journey.

14. Forgave and finally completely let go of someone who had been in my heart for the past 4 years

I never did realize this was preventing me from receiving new people into my life. When I finally realized that, I consciously let him go from my heart, and what resulted was a feeling of liberation I had never felt before.

Spirituality

15. Strengthened my connection with my higher self (subconsciousness)

While I had not actively worked on my spirituality this year (deprioritized for now as I want to solidify the foundations of my personal growth first), my intuitive connection has definitely strengthened over the year. This becomes especially apparent through my 1-1 coaching and new people I meet. This actually doesn’t come as a surprise, since everything I’m doing now is directly aligns myself with my higher self and hence strengthens my connection with my subconsciousness.

A Huge Thank You to All of You

Thank you so much to all of you who have reached out to me at one point or another to send me your well wishes, feedback and appreciation, whether through email, facebook, twitter or in person. Thank you to all of you who have helped spread the word of The Personal Excellence Blog and/or my message to others around you, be it your friends, your family and other people. Thank you to all the personal development bloggers – Armen, Kristi, Vincent, Jonathan, Dragos, Dani, Mark, Albert, Luciano, and many others who have in one way or another helped drive awareness of this blog to many others.

Thank you . Thank you to all of you for your continuous support. Thank you for giving me the chance to do what I do today. Without any of you, I wouldn’t be who I am or what I am today. Because of you, I’ve become a better person than before. Because of you, I’m living the best life I’ve ever lived. You guys are my strength, my pillar and my life. Thank you for being who you are and for being alive. Because of you, I will go on to create even bigger things, things I never thought I would achieve.

Reflecting on Your 2009

Just like I have been doing 2009 reflection with my coachees the past couple of weeks, I would like to invite you to do the same. There’s always something to learn from everything, and what’s most important is to crystallize the learnings so you take something valuable from all the past experiences. Reflecting enables you to bring these learnings forward and improve your experience of life. It’s all about living your best life! .

Take out your pen and paper and think about the following in the context of 2009:

What are your major achievements and notable events this year?
What have you learned for yourself this year?
What are your key goals for 2010 to make it a huge blast?

Many readers and clients have told me they found 58 Noteworthy Resolutions For The New Year very helpful for them as they set their resolutions/goals for 2010, so you might want to check that out too as you set your 2010 goals.

Comments are open if you would like to share your reflections with the rest!

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010!!!!! Let’s work together to make 2010 a BIG BANG!! I’m feeling so excited about 2010 ahead – I have absolutely no doubt this is going to be the best year ever for all of us!!

58 Noteworthy Resolutions For The New Year

Celes — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:45:23 +0000

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” – Edith Lovejoy Pierce

A brand new year is coming, festive songs are in the air and everyone is gearing up for the new year ahead! I’m really psyched up for the upcoming year because there are so many exciting things I have planned for next year.

How about you? How do you feel about 2010? How do you want it to be? What kind of experiences do you want to create? What memories do you want to build? What impact do you want to have for yourself and others?

With every upcoming year, I’m always sure it will supersede all previous years to become the best year ever. One reason is because I set goals – Goals which I know will improve the quality and fulfillment of my life. I’m a huge fan of goal setting. The best way to determine how your next year to be is to set goals AND act on them. As Zig Ziglar said, “You need a plan to build a house. To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal.”

For this same reason, I recommend you to think about what you want for yourself in the year 2010 and set them as goals. Here is a list to kickstart your thinking process . Of course, goal setting isn’t restricted to just the start of the year – you can refer to it anytime of the year for goal setting endeavors. There’s never a ‘best’ time to set goals – it’s all the time!

Check out the Bucket List article (101 things to do before you die) for more ideas!

Stop procrastinating and create the life of your dreams now
Become more organized in your life and work
Wake up early every day
Be on time for all appointments
Further your education – Get a diploma/degree/masters in a subject of your interest
Learn a new language
Maintain an exercise regime of at least 3 times/week
Express gratitude to people who have made a difference in your life
Take part in volunteer work for a cause you believe in
Cultivate at least one new skill that will enable you to perform even better at work (presentation skills, public speaking, effective writing, etc)
Be emotionally generous
Drop caffeine from your diet
Reconnect with at least 5 friends you have lost touch with over the years
Make at least 5 positive, like-minded friends and foster strong relationships with them
Spend more time with your family
Take your family out on a vacation
Revamp your room into your personal, inspirational haven
Lose X pounds / Lose X % body fat – Achieve your ideal weight
Achieve your ideal fitness level
Run a marathon
Be your real self
Read at least 30 books that enrich you (2+ books/month)
Read one meaningful self-help article a day (Here’s my list of some of the best personal development blogs)
Visit the holiday destination of your dreams (there’s no need to defer it to the future!)
Deliver your best performance at work ever
Get your biggest raise at work to date
Double your business revenue (for business owners)
Get a career switch to a better career
Or better still, pursue a career of your true passion
Earn a million dollars
Earn a billion dollars (for those who have achieved #30)
Fall in love – Find and get together with the person of your dreams! (for singles)
Propose/Marry the person of your dreams
Start a family
Get your own apartment
Get out of debt (if you are in any debt)
Save at least $XX amount of money
Help others. Do a kind deed wherever you can.
Go backpacking
Take up a class in something of your interest (dancing, singing, roller blading, ice skating, swimming, photography, web design, rock climbing, piano, guitar, yoga, pilates, etc)
Drink at least 8 glasses of water a day
Reduce your alcohol intake or quit drinking altogether (for people who drink)
Quit smoking (for smokers)
Widen your social circle by at least 30 people
Learn to see the positive side of everything
Turn every challenge into an opportunity
Let go of any past baggage – Forgive and send love
Meditate for at least 15 minutes every day
Go on a Vipassana Meditation Retreat
Write your book in something you are passionate about
Visit a new location you have never been to
Stop beating yourself up for bad things that happen
Love yourself for everything that you are
Start your life handbook and use it document everything it takes to live your best life
Learn to laugh at yourself
Limit your mass media exposure – Stop watching television or reading the papers (remove negative stimuli from your environment)
Take time out to rest and rejuvenate every week
Live every moment to the fullest!

Note: Success in resolutions is almost always in line with cultivating habits. Be sure to read how to successfully cultivate a habit in 21 days, an all-time readers’ favorite article.

Any goals/resolutions you want to add to the list? Feel free to share in the comments area

How To Create Real Change In Life: Address Root Cause vs. Effects

Celes — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:29:33 +0000

One of the key differences between my philosophy of personal development and many self-help coaches/bloggers/speakers is my emphasis on finding and resolving the root cause, vs. just dealing with effects. Many self-help materials and teachings out there today only address effects. However, I believe very strongly in addressing root causes to bring about the largest and most sustainable change in the long run. Similarly, this philosophy underlines the materials I write, my coaching, and my training materials.

Why Address Root Cause?

Say you have a lot of weed growing in your lawn. If you remove the weed using a mower, does that solve the problem? Temporarily. Visually, the garden looks good. However, you probably already know that this is only at the surface level. After a short period of time, the weed will grow back.

So how do you fix this long-term? If you replied “By removing the weed from its root“, you’re totally right!

The same principle applies to our life. For everything we face today, there is a root cause behind it. Understanding the root cause is central toward resolving our issues. Once the root has been removed, the effects will be addressed accordingly.

Some examples of effects : cause are:

Low self-confidence today (Effect) : Faced a series of setbacks in the past (Cause)
Having low income today (Effect) : A mindset that repels money (Cause)
Emotional eating (Effect) : Seeing food as a comfort outlet (Cause)
Procrastinate from doing it (Effect) : Lack of desire toward a task (Cause)
Feeling of emptiness (Effect) : Lack of love from family since young (Cause)
Always late for appointments (Effect) : Overly idealistic in planning (Cause)

However, many people try to work on their problems by addressing the effects. For example, people who try to increase self-confidence by enforcing confidence through forced behaviors and self-talk, without first understanding why they lack confidence. People who try to increase their wealth through get-rich-quick schemes and ideas, rather than understand why they’re at that level of wealth. People who tackle procrastination through discipline, when their procrastination is due to something else.

Many self-help materials are centered on fixing effects too. Want to be confident? Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you are the best in the world! Want to be motivated about a task? Tell yourself you love doing it and it’s good for you! Want to overcome procrastination? Just do it!

It’s understandable why people are inclined to deal with effects. Effects are the most immediately observable, so it’s easy to act on them. Upon doing so, you get an instantaneous change – an impression that you have progressed in your goals. On the other hand, trying to uncover root causes can be tedious, complicating and at times, scary – to the extent where people run away when they realize the problems underneath. Some people might not even know how to go about uncovering it.

When you keep working on your problems via the effects, you might get some results, but they will be limited. Just like clearing weed using a mower, more weed will continue to grow since the roots are still there.

Meaning, if you’re someone with low self-confidence, you can make yourself feel good for a period of time using NLP-based methods such as positive self-talk. However, these are just external actions that sustain a temporary state of confidence, as I’ve shared in How To Increase Your Self-Confidence. Efficacious as they give an instant boost, but not sustainable. Once you stop imposing the external acts to your internal state, your low confidence will start seeping through again.

If you are a poor person who strikes lottery for $1 million dollars, you may be rich for a period of time. However, if you don’t have the consciousness of a millionaire, you won’t be able to maintain that level of wealth for long. Once you finish spending the money, you’ll be back to your previous state of worth.

If you are a chronic procrastinator, you’ve probably learned for yourself that discipline helps curb the procrastination – only for that moment. No sooner do you stop enforcing your discipline does the procrastination bug start taking over you. The feeling of inertia is like a plague that just keeps coming. (I’ve talked about procrastination, its root causes and how to address them at length which you can check out in Overcoming Procrastination (5-part series).)

There is always a reason why things happen – more so than you may realize. It can be the bigger contexts like why you seem to keep attracting the wrong relationship partners, why you always seem to have irresponsible and incompetent people as colleagues or why you’re low in self-confidence, to the subtler things like why you’re always late, why you emotionally eat, why you lack motivation or why you possess certain character traits. Part of the journey of personal growth and increasing one’s consciousness is to come to the awareness of the interconnectedness of everything in your life, from your past, what’s around you to yourself.

Example: Low Self-Confidence

Building self-confidence is one of the more frequent goals I work with my clients. One of my clients has an issue of low self-confidence, which affects her in her every day life and her work. Because of her low confidence, she is afraid to branch out to pursue her own dreams too.

When we first started off, she had the impression that her low confidence was just something in her. However, as mentioned earlier in the article, everything in life is an effect of something else. There is a reason behind everything. If you understand what’s the root cause, you can address the effect.

So we started drilling down to the cause. We looked at why she felt low in confidence, when she started feeling this way, and what happened that led to that. We found out her low confidence could be traced back to an incident that happened when she was a kid – Basically, she didn’t perform well in her exams, resulting in discrimination from her teacher. She was subsequently also downgraded to another class as her results didn’t meet expectations. This one incident dealt a huge blow to her self worth – it led her to conclude that she was not good enough because she did not perform. From this one conclusion, it went on to create even more incidences that made her feel she was indeed not good enough, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With this realization, we then analyzed what happened in the situation to result in that conclusion. No sooner did we do that did it become clear that her conclusion was flawed. Firstly, the exam is just an assessment of her capacity to answer a set number of questions at that moment in time. It does not at all represent her full capabilities and abilities and should not be used as a gauge of her real worth. Secondly and most importantly, one’s self-worth is just what one defines is to me. There should rightfully be no prerequisite – such as attaining a certain grade, wealth, property or possessions – to be of a level of worth. The only reason why majority think this way is because society has attached one’s worth with these things. I’ve talked about this at length in How To Increase Your Self-Confidence.

With the flawed belief rectified, we are then able to start working on other aspects of increasing her self-confidence. Right now I’m enabling her to pursue her passion and her ideal career of her design, which I personally feel is very ingenious. I’m totally looking forward to seeing her progress and the exciting results she’s going to create!

How To Identify The Root Cause

So, finding the root cause is important. How exactly do you uncover it then?

Before you try to do this, realize that it’s not just 1 effect and 1 cause. It’s many effects, many causes, and a root cause (or a few, depending on the situation).

Meaning, it’s not: Effect <- Cause.

It’s: Effect <- Cause # 6 <- Cause # 5 <- Cause # 4 <- Cause # 3 <- Cause # 2 <- Root Cause.

Whether something is a cause or effect is relative. For example, a cause of an effect is a cause, but this very cause is the effect of a preceding cause. Using the flowchart above, Cause # 4 is the cause of Cause # 5. However, Cause # 4 is the effect of Cause # 3.

Obviously, the best case scenario is to dig out the root cause of every effect to lead to the maximum change. However, it can be difficult especially since it involves drilling really deep into the problem, being aware of all possible effects and causes extending between reality and our minds and (often times) digging into the subconsciousness. These are dependent on your level of consciousness. The higher your consciousness, the more you can trace back to the origins.

It’s very common to conclude a particular cause as the root cause, especially if you’re not clear on what makes up the entire spectrum of effects and causes. Sometimes you may simply run into a dead-end because you can’t think of any preceding cause. The best you should do is just try to dig as much as you can and identify the most fundamental cause, which will probably be sufficient to effect sizable change in your situation. Over time, as you increase your consciousness, the other causes will become more privy to you.

Here are some helpful ways to find causes / root causes:

Recognize the root cause is internal. The root cause isn’t external. It’s always something about us – whether it’s our outlook, beliefs, personality, choices, behaviors, or even our past. The answer doesn’t lie outside. The answer lies within you. The deeper inside you go, the closer you get to the root cause.
Identify the common denominator of the problems you face. For the situations where the problem arose, put them together and analyze them. Look for the common denominator in these situations. While this may not be the root cause, it’s a potential link to the root cause.
Compare your situation with others. Having a library of experiences to compare against makes it easier to comprehend. Often what we think is the norm in our situation immediately becomes debunked when we spot a totally different trend in others’ experiences.
Go with your gut feeling. Our subconsciousness is much more intelligent than many realie. Many times our initial gut feeling about something proves to be the right one. The more conscious you are, the higher your level of intuition. If your intuition hasn’t been the most reliable source, it only means your connection with it is weak. Start off in first steps by first listening in for it, then tune up from there.
Increase your consciousness. Just simply growing and increasing your self-awareness will automatically make you more privy to things you were previously not aware of. The higher your consciousness, the more you can tell the interconnectedness between everything and the cause -> effect equation.

Of course, it may get a little mentally boggling to try to understand the reasons behind everything all at one go, so the best way to start off is to try it out on problems or blocks you’re facing. What are some obstacles you’re facing in your goals? What are certain negative patterns / bad habits / problems you want to address? Find out the root cause in those. Once you do so, you can change the effect. Else, you’ll just keep facing the same problem again and again. There is no running away from it until the root cause is addressed.

This whole process of finding the root cause will undoubtedly help you achieve a higher level of self-awareness and self-mastery. I always arrive at a series of revelations and epiphanies when I do this exercise and these subsequently enables me to move to a new state of growth. I’m sure these will be the same for you too

What’s On Your Bucket List? 101 Things To Do Before You Die

Celes — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:30:36 +0000

A few days ago, I was surfing online when I came across someone’s bucket list. It quickly inspired me to create my own bucket list as well and write an article at the same time.

What’s a Bucket List?

If you haven’t heard about the bucket list, it is a wish list of all the goals you want to achieve, dreams you want to fulfill and life-experiences you desire to experience before you die. The term is inspired by the movie The Bucket List (2007) about two terminally ill men (Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) who set off to achieve a list of things they want to do before they die.

Why Create a Bucket List?

Why have a bucket list? If you don’t live your days by personal goals and plans, chances are you spend most of your time caught up in a flurry of day-to-day activities. Ever feel your days are passing by without any tangible output to speak of? What were your accomplishments in the past 3 months? What are your upcoming goals for the next 3 months? Look at the things you did and the things you’re planning to do next – Do they mean anything to you if you are to die today? Having a bucket list reminds you of what’s really important so you can act on them.

Even if you frequently live by goals or to-do lists, they are probably framed within a certain social context e.g., performance, career, health (Read Gold, Silver and Bronze Tasks on how to create effective to-do lists). A bucket list opens up your mind to set totally context-free goals where you list down anything and everything you ever wanted to do, no qualifiers needed.

It’s just like planning ahead all the highlights you want for YOUR whole life. Even though goal setting is already my staple activity, I still found many new things to do while I was writing on my bucket list. It was an incredibly insightful exercise. What’s more, coming up with the list it gave me a whole new layer of enthusiasm knowing what’s in store ahead!

The objective of creating a bucket list isn’t to instill some kind of a race against time or to create aversion towards death. I don’t see our existence to be limited to just our physical years on earth – I see our physical lifespan is but a short speck of our entire existence which spans across an infinite amount of time. The whole point of a bucket list is to maximize every moment of our existence and live our life to the fullest. It’s a reminder of all the things we want to achieve in our time here, so that instead of pandering our time in pointless activities, we are directing it fully toward what matters to us.

Create Your Bucket List

If you don’t have a bucket list, I highly recommend you to create one. How much does it cost? Probably 30 minutes to an hour, or more if you get really caught up in the writing . What do you gain? Significant clarity and focus on what you want from your life. It’s an invaluable exchange.

If you already wrote your bucket list before, take the opportunity to review it. See if there are new items you want to add-on. If so, add them in. Check if all the items listed are still relevant. If not, remove them.

If you are curious, you can check out my bucket list before you start off

Now, take out your pen and paper or open up a text editing document. You can check out the following sites where people publicly share their bucket lists: 43 Things, Your 100 Things, Barefoot List, My Life List.

Start writing down what comes to mind as you read these questions:

What if you were to die tomorrow? What would you wish you could do before you die?
What have you always wanted to do but haven’t done yet?
What will you do if you have unlimited time, money and resources?
Any countries, places or locations you want to visit?
What are your biggest goals and dreams?
What do you want to see in person?
What achievements do you want to have?
What experiences do you want to have / feel?
Are there any special moments you want to witness?
What activities or skills do you want to learn or try out?
What are the most important things you can ever do?
What would you like to say/do together with other people? People you love? Family? Friends?
Are there any specific people you want to meet in person?
What do you want to achieve in the different areas: Social, Love, Family, Career, Finance, Health (Your weight, Fitness level), Spiritual?
What do you need to do to lead a life of the greatest meaning?

Come up with as many items as you can. The items should be things you have not done yet. Don’t stop until you finish listing at least 101 things! If you find yourself stuck, chances are you are mentally limiting/constraining yourself. Release those shackles – Remember, this is a list of everything you want to achieve, do, see, feel and experience in your life. Check out the next section for added inspiration.

101 Things to Consider for Your Bucket List

Here are 101 bucket list items to consider for your bucket list . Some of the items might spark off your inspiration for other things too!

Travel all around the world
- All the countries in the world
- Visit all the Wonders of the World
- 1001 places to see before you die
Learn a new language
Try out a new profession in a different field
Achieve your ideal weight
Run a marathon
Take part in a triathlon
Take up a new sport. Some examples:
- Technique sports: Archery, Golf, Bowling, Billiard, Skateboarding, Skating, Roller-blading, Ice skating
- Water sports: Water rafting, Kayaking, Wakeboarding, Sailing, Scuba diving, Snorkeling, Swimming
- Group sports: Soccer, Rugby, Baseball, Basketball, Ultimate frisbee
- Racket sports: Squash, Badminton, Tennis, Table tennis
Go skiing
Learn horseback riding
Resign from a job you don’t like
Pursue your passion.
Start your own business doing something you love
Achieve financial abundance with your passion
Connect with all your teachers from your past schools – college, high school, junior high, all of it. Let them know how they have shaped your life.
Identify someone who has inspired you the most in your life. Let him/her know how much he/she has inspired you
Be a mentor to someone
Learn a strategy game
Do an extreme sport – Bungee jump, Skydiving, Parachuting, Paragliding, Ice climbing
Climb a mountain
Give a heartfelt surprise to someone
Make a difference in someone’s life
Perform a kind deed to at least 5 strangers without expecting anything in return
Write a book on something that means a lot to you
Fly in a hot-air balloon across a country
Sing your favorite song to an audience
Offer your service to a humanitarian cause
Make friends with at least 5 strangers on the street
Experience a sunset
Experience a sunrise
See the Northern Lights
Witness a solar eclipse
Go stargazing
Plant your own tree and watch it grow
Own a pet (or more if you desire!): dog, cat, rabbit, hamster, tortoise, fish, snake, frog, etc
Do public speaking in front of 10,000 people
Write a letter to at least 3 of your closest friends to let them know how much they mean to you
Throw a mega party
Get a complete makeover (change everything, from your hair style, hair color, image, clothes) and get a different look: one which you would never have thought of trying!
Learn wine appreciation
Join a social etiquette class and further refine your mannerisms
Be a matchmaker: Introduce your single friends to each other (the rest is up to them!)
Go on a blind date! (for the singles!)
Go for future education in a different specialization
Play a (new) musical instrument: Piano, Violin, Harmonica, Flute, Guitar, Drum, Trumpet
Win a lucky draw
Take up dancing: Salsa, Line dance, Tap dance, Tango, Ballroom dancing, etc
Learn a martial art
Go on a road trip
Go backpacking across at least 10 locations
Pack your bags and set off for a random location with no itinerary planned at all
Go swimming with dolphins
Live in a different country for at least 6 months
Act in a film (self production or otherwise)
Get featured on TV/radio/print/newspapers for an achievement you are proud of
Knit a scarf
Create your dream home (Read: Does Your Room Inspire You?)
Whip up the best meal ever for your loved ones
Bake a cake for someone special
Go deep into the heart of Mother Nature. Go trekking in a rainforest; Camp out in the wilds; Walk in a valley; Visit a waterfall; Swim in an ocean; Walk in a valley
See snow (if you haven’t before)
Live through 4 seasons of the year – Spring, summer, autumn, winter
Read a book on a subject you’d never have thought of reading
Volunteer at a hospice
Fly a kite
Fall asleep on grassy plains
Call the customer service (of a service provider you like) just to thank them for the great service
If you are a non-vegetarian, try out vegetarianism for 21 days and experience it for yourself.
After that, try veganism
Followed by raw veganism. Then conclude which is the best diet for you.
Fold a 1,000 origami cranes and give them to someone special.
Conquer your biggest fear
Go snorkeling and experience marine life up close
Tell at least 10 people about your bucket list and encourage them to do the same
Go on a meditation retreat
Experience an OBE (out of body experience)
Start a social movement on a cause you believe in
Watch cherry blossoms in Japan
Get closure on all your hurt, grievances and unhappiness of the past
Bury the hatchet with all the enemies / people you had conflict with in the past or now
Organize a picnic outing
Do something completely crazy and out of character
Fly first class
Hit bullseye on a dartboard
Visit a volcano
Fly in a helicopter
Have dinner with someone you had only dreamed of meeting
Tell your parents (and siblings too if you have them) that you love them.
Ride a roller coaster
Go on a cruise in the sea
Try out front-line customer service jobs such being a waiter/waitress for a month just for the experience
Fall in love
Be in love!
Get on a romantic getaway
Do a somersault
Visit a castle in England
Change the world
Help someone in need
Learn sign language
See the Mona Lisa in Louvre (Paris)
Go to a costume party and dress up as your fantasy character
Gain enlightenment

Here are some sites you might want to check out for inspiration as you create your bucket list:

Get Into Action!

After you finish your bucket list, here’s what to do next:

Start acting on them! Plan out the successful path towards these goals – For this, read my 7-part Successful Goal Achievement series.
Be reminded of the list all the time. Use environmental reinforcement – put them up in a prominent spot where you will see them every day / very regularly. Set it as your wallpaper, pin it on your noticeboard, print it out, stick it on your wardrobe/locker.
Share them with your family and friends. Inspire them to create their own bucket list too! This way, you also create accountability to your own bucket list.
Don’t limit your bucket list items to a certain definition. Sometimes opportunity present itself in a totally different manner. Keep your eyes peeled! The universe will start throwing things your way.
Review regularly. Cross out the list of things after you do them. See if some of the items have become irrelevant and if there are new things you want to add. Once every 3 months should suffice.