alternative ways of finding success part II: creating your personal vision and system to live by
Uuuuuuughhhhhh.
That’s how I’ve been feeling lately. It seems like everyone recently is just totally over it. It’s the middle of winter, not even the middle of the semester, and ELEVEN MONTHS into this pandemic. So, yeah. I think uuuuuuuughhhhh is a pretty good description of life right now. If I am being honest, I was going to write about how to get out of a funk. However, feeling like I am stuck in a funk right now, I don’t believe I could give you enough credible advice about this topic to make an entire post about it. I do know, however, that in times when you feel unmotivated, it is good to re-evaluate your purpose and personal vision in life by setting a system to live by. Also, by establishing this system, you don’t have to start back at square one when you’re getting out of a funk. See “why I don’t have goals- alternative ways of finding success: part I”
Before we get into it, I want to remind you that mental illness is serious, and there are resources available to get you through hard times. DO NOT discredit or dismiss your feelings or lack thereof, or just ascribe your depression and/or anxiety to life’s current situation. Talk to your doctor if you are struggling and see what your options are.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8255
In part I, we discussed intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation, hedonic adaptation, intrinsic goal-based motivation versus intrinsic journey-based motivation, and setting systems. Today we will discuss creating your personal vision and systems, as well as another alternative to setting goals.
Just to clarify, creating a personal vision and setting systems are two separate things. The concept of creating a personal vision comes from Petr Ludwig’s book The End of Procrastination. Setting systems comes from Rowena Tsai’s YouTube video titled “the one habit that is changing my life: set systems rather than goals”, based on essentialism. I took the most value out of both of these concepts when paired together (in addition to my own beliefs and strategies), which is how I will be explaining these methods to you today.
Determining your Core Values
The first step in creating your personal vision, I believe, is determining your core values. (Rowena Tsai refers to this step as “identify what is essential” when explaining how to set a system in her youtube video.) This is not necessarily an exercise that Petr Ludwig includes in his steps for creating a personal vision in his book, but I find it to be a very important place to start. Your core values are what drive you through your day. Knowing what you value most in life gives you an idea of what you should be spending your time on (the things you value most, duh). It seems simple, but many people do not actually take the time to figure out what matters most to them. I have attached a basic core values list I found on Google. Feel free to look them up yourself as well. Read through them all once, then go back and circle the ones that speak to you the most. If there is something you know you value but isn’t on the list, write it in. Try to have 8-10 core values. If you have many more than 10, you will not be able to devote enough time and energy to each of them. We want to be aligning our activities with our values, so if you have 20 values, you simply won’t have enough hours in a day to implement all those values into your daily schedule. You may feel like you care about more than 10 things on this list, but pick the 10 that you know will drive you through your day. Next, number them in order of importance to you. We will use this as the basis of our outcomes for our system, as well as the focus of our personal vision.
Now that you know your core values, we can figure out our best options for how to spend our time.
Personal SWOT Analysis
This goes back to Petr Ludwig’s concept of a personal vision. In the business world (funny how we keep coming back to that…), companies use SWOT analyses to help them make business decisions. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Reflect on your current strengths and weaknesses, not what you wish they were, and write them in the boxes accordingly. Ludwig suggests spending 80% of your time growing and perfecting your strengths, and 20% of your time working on improving your weaknesses. Then, think about the opportunities you have to use these strengths (jobs, hobbies, etc.), and threats that might interfere with these opportunities (a pandemic). Applying your strengths to your opportunities is where you will find your state of flow.
Analysis of Motivational Activities
The next step Ludwig explains is to take this information and come up with a list of “motivational activities,” where you can apply your strengths. What are some things you can do daily that reflect both your values and strengths? What are you going to do to ensure you do these things? Ludwig suggests breaking these activities up into the following 4 categories:
Development Activities- health, education, skill development, rest
Legacy-creating Activities- physical (planting trees, building houses, starting a program), intangible (passing along ideas, values, traditions)
Relationship-building Activities- family, friends, networking
Ego 2.0 Activities- selfless acts (bettering society, helping people)
We will use these motivational activities as the inputs of our system. Therefore, your system should be set up as follows:
Inputs: development activities, legacy-creating activities, relationship-building activities, ego 2.0 activities
Outputs: a reflection of your values, your desired life
Beta Version of Your Personal Vision
Petr Ludwig provides a series of questions to guide you in creating your personal vision. I have altered those questions and added prompts to allow you to create a more concrete and actionable plan for your vision.
What thought, mantra, or quote resonates most with you that helps drive you through the day? Remind yourself of this when you are in a funk.
What activities are you doing in your ideal life?
How can you contribute to society? What ego 2.0 activities can you devote time to?
Evaluate what you currently spend your time doing. Write down everything you do during the day and how long you spend doing it. See how much of your time is spent on non-essential things and activities that are not aligned with your values or are not a part of your “ideal” day. Then, find how you could rearrange your daily schedule to include motivational activities.
How can you keep yourself accountable for living out your personal vision? What can you do to be re-evaluating and improving your personal vision?
Motivation Boost List
This is a bonus ongoing exercise that I find helpful and often refer back to it when I am in a funk. Whenever you experience something that makes you feel extra motivated and ready to take on the world, add it to your list. My personal list consists of songs, speeches, YouTube videos, and movies. Rowena Tsai also suggests making a list of things that make you feel positive and happy, including things, actions, or people.
Fear-Setting; A Third Alternative to Goal-Setting
I recently discovered a TED Talk by author and podcaster Tim Ferriss called “Why you should define your fears instead of your goals.” (Yes, I am that dork that watches TED Talks in her spare time, but hey, that’s part of my personal vision!) Ferriss gives a brief overview of the ancient philosophy of stoicism and separating what you can control from what you cannot control, and then learning how to focus on what you can. He illustrates an exercise created by Seneca the Younger, a stoic philosopher, called “premeditatio malorum,” meaning the premeditation of evils. The exercise consists of figuring out the worst thing that could happen if you took an action that would prevent you from taking that action. Ferriss took this exercise and created a written out version which he calls “fear-setting.” Part one of fear-setting looks like this:
Fill in the blank: “What if I ____?”
Ask yourself what it is you want. What is your desire, vision, or “goal" that you wish to achieve or accomplish?
Define: Create a list of all of the worst things you can think of that could possibly happen if you took that step.
Write down 10 to 20 things that could possibly go wrong.
Prevent: What are things you could do to prevent each worst-case scenario from happening?
Repair: If the worst-case scenario does end up happening, what can you do to recover from it or who could you ask for help?
Part two of Ferriss’s exercise is to then write down any possible benefits you could gain from an attempt or partial success of your action.
The final step in fear-setting is finding the “Cost of Inaction.” What would the consequences be emotionally, financially, physically, etc. of not taking action. Think about what your life would look like if you avoided this action or decision in 6 months, a year, and 3 years. You will likely find that the outcome of not taking action is scarier than any worst-case scenario of taking action.
I wish I had known about this method years ago when I first had the idea to build a social platform for sharing ideas about personal development and branding. Most people are so afraid of change, including me. However, every time I made a change in my life such as switching majors or starting this blog, I always end up with the desire to go back in time and take past me by the shoulders and yell at her face to “JUST FREAKING DO IT!” I am so thankful I have taken the actions I have in my life thus far, and my only regret for many of them is that I didn’t do it sooner. This tool is a great way to avoid that.
Remember that your systems and your personal vision will change throughout your life. You should reflect on your priorities and values often and adjust accordingly. The objective is to start living a life you are excited about, so when that is no longer the case, you know it is time to re-evaluate. Additionally, the purpose of practicing these methods rather than setting goals is that you can be happier now instead of feeling unsatisfied until you reach a goal. These tools are used to help you find direction and meaning. As I have learned, that doesn’t mean you will be all good all the time. Sometimes, you just have bad days. Sometimes, it’s a month, maybe even a year. I am hoping that this can be a resource to help you post-funk and to remind you that as long as you know your values and vision, you should never have to start at square one.
Let me know if you have any other ideas and/or suggestions, and as always…
Stay Stoked,
B