August 30, 2020 Deborah Horton

Begin With The End In Mind

Photo by Mehmaz Taghavishazi on Unsplash

Begin with the end in mind is habit number 2 in Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. We must have the end in mind in order to successfully navigate your goals.

It is unlikely that we would start building a house without a plan or at the very least a rough draft of design ideas. Why should our lives be any different?

If we do not consciously have a plan for our lives, we give the power to shape our lives to other people and other circumstances. Instead of being the hammer, we become the nail being forced into whatever someone else’s will or the force of other circumstances desires.

So how do we begin with the end in mind? We construct a personal mission statement. A blueprint for the building of our lives so that we are the hammer.

To start a personal mission statement, we must carefully, deeply examine what values, beliefs, and morals are. What is it that we want our lives to truly represent?

To fully understand that question, we must look very carefully at all the roles we play in life. There are many and over time they also change. A personal mission statement will also change based on the roles we are filling at the time. Some of those roles might be spouse, parent, child, sibling, entrepreneur, employee, writer, teacher, counselor, friend, etc. Whatever roles you fill in all aspects of your life.

Now take those roles and find the five most important ones in our lives at the moment, and this can change as time goes on. Write out what values we want those five roles to embody. The highest-level purpose for each one. The things we would want the people affected by those roles to say about us when we are dead. Be idealistic but always focused on aligning each role with our values, beliefs, and morals.

Refine each one, make them simple and concise. Do that for each of the top five roles currently. Put them together in one document and this results in our personal mission statement.

Review it frequently, daily actually. When making big decisions for our lives and when planning out our week. Do the things we are doing and planning align with our mission statement for our defined roles currently? Or are they being shaped by other people and circumstances? Do they align with our defined values and the end that we have in mind?

Keep a copy available to you at all times. Take a photo of it and have it on your phone so that it can be referred to whenever you need. Print it out and have it where you can see it every single day as a reminder to check your alignment.

Remember it is okay and necessary to amend your personal mission statement as time goes on. Roles change, new roles may appear (grandparent, retiree, etc.), different milestones are accomplished. Attune yourself to where you are in every moment and what roles are your highest priority and amend your mission statement accordingly.

In creating your personal mission statement and utilizing it daily, you become the leader and builder of your life. It is you who create your destiny and you who is working toward the future that you want.

Begin with the end in mind, every day.

Until next time, be well,

Deborah

August 24, 2020August 21, 2020 Deborah Horton

Be Proactive

The first habit of highly successful people

Proactive — adjective — (of a person, policy, or action) creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey was published in 2004 and has sold over 15 million copies. It is still one of the most highly ranked books for sale on Amazon.

This book has offered millions of people ways to change the way they think, respond, and create success in their lives. The first habit is to be proactive.

Most people are reactive. They skip right over the very few seconds between thought and response where the choice resides. Many believe that they have no choice to make and they are compelled to respond in the way they do.

The responses are attributed to everything from the weather to politics and every possible thing in between. People who are reactive feel that they are not responsible for their reactions.

It is raining and rain always makes me depressed.

Reactive people attribute their responses to things they cannot control. If they could control them, then they would not affect them, right?

Reactive people lack the ability to be response-able. Read that again. The lack of the belief that they are ABLE to respond differently. They are ABLE to choose their response.

All it takes is a very few brief seconds or moments to stop at the thought to make a choice before proceeding to the response. And after you make the choice to respond, being responsible for the outcome of that choice. You decided to respond in that way not to allow something or someone to make that choice for you.

Many people think that their responsive behavior is a choice and that they are making the choice. This is because for years of their lives they have responded to certain things in the exact same way over and over every time. This trains their brains to believe this response is their choice. When it clearly is just a reaction.

Reactive people live in the circle of concern — worry over things they cannot control. Their reactions are to those things they fear they cannot control. By reacting to these things their circle of concern grows bigger and bigger.

People who are proactive go from thought/event to critical thinking (choice) to actively making a choice. Proactive people live in a circle of influence — what things do I actually have control over.

He makes me so mad is reactive. I control my own feelings is proactive.

Building positivity into the circle of influence expands the circle. The more we acknowledge responsibility for our thoughts the more we can choose to control the outcome.

Proactive people decide what happens to them moving forward instead of allowing what has happened to them to keep them stuck. Proactive people realize it is the thought itself that needs to be acted upon not the outside force that is blamed for the thought.

Between stimulus and response there’s a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. ~ Stephen Covey

August 16, 2020August 16, 2020 Deborah Horton

According To Plan

planner

I am a big planner. I like calendars and planners and organization. I like knowing what I have to do on any given day and knowing what is coming in the future. Without this organization, I could not manage all the clients I see and other things I am involved in very well at all.

Pandemics are not friendly to planners. In fact, pandemics cause planners to feel very out of control and frustrated.

Planners during a pandemic often think they can carry on as they always have. School is starting soon and those with school age children who are planners are busily mapping out how the daily lives of all the members of their families will be managed.

Plugging activities and appointments into their master plan for the next few weeks in order to be sure they are organized and that all the family needs are met. There is just one problem – the pandemic can change everything you have written down in less than a second.

All it takes is for a school board or sports body to say that what we did yesterday is not at all what we are going to do today. Or even worse, what we did this morning, is not what we will do this afternoon.

All the planning is now erased. Wiped away with a few words by someone else. We are left feeling out of control and unprepared. How will we navigate this without a plan?

Living in 2020, there is truly only one plan that can work. One where you have an overview of what is available to plan for right this moment and a backup plan in case that changes. We have to be able to flex at a moment’s notice knowing that our only control is in this absolute second of time and what we know right now.

This concept is so hard for planners. It is hard for everyone these days as no one enjoys lack of control whether they be planners or not. But for planners it is so much more difficult.

I have begun writing in my calendars and planners with pencil and not pen or markers. This way, when things change, and they absolutely one million percent will, I can apply a fat pink eraser and readjust. This may happen several times a day, but it can be done.

When erasing the previous plan, I meditate on the thoughts of this was not mine to control, I can let this go, what do I need in order to meet the new or replaced piece of the plan, the new piece may also change, someone else is making these decisions, what do I know right now.

Incorporating into a meditation routine daily the ideas of being in control of only yourself and only in this moment can help alleviate the overall feeling of being out of control. Everything outside of this moment and yourself is out of your control. And breathe with it, abide with it.

I feel your struggle fellow planners. I know how uncomfortable you feel. But with a changed mindset and a good eraser, we can get through this constant flow of change.

Anything you cannot control is teaching you how to let go.

Until next time,
Deborah

July 26, 2020July 23, 2020 Deborah Horton

Growth Is Painful

young boy in jacket holding white flower pot — Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

Growth is painful. Change, transition, metamorphosis, becoming can all be painful. Moving from who you were to who you want to be can be uncomfortable for you and for others. But growth is the only way to survive and thrive.

Anything that remains stagnant or stuck in place will die eventually. If we remain as we have always been doing the same things reacting in the same ways, we will never grow. And we will certainly never thrive.

If you planted a seed and it stayed in the soil as a seed, eventually it would decay and die in the soil. If you stay in the same place of trauma responses, anxiety, depression, anger – you will not grow, you will not thrive.

But growth is uncomfortable. It causes us to change our responses and this causes others to respond to us differently. Some will respond with encouragement and kindness while others will respond with anger and blame because we are no longer doing what they want us to do.

Growth is painful because it may cause you to lose relationships that are toxic and you may even be alone, for a while. Growth is painful because it takes time and energy to transform ourselves into something new.

Growth is painful because it may cause you changes in where and how you live, where you work, what your goals are, and the things you have to let go of in order to grow. Growth can be scary and yet, it is also beautiful.

To truly thrive, growth is a continual process. Always changing, always learning, always becoming the person you want to be, the person that makes you happy.

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety. ~ Abraham Maslow

Until next time,
Deborah

July 19, 2020July 18, 2020 Deborah Horton

Resilience

resilience

A great many people in the world have suffered from childhood trauma. A study in 1995 by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente studied the rates of childhood trauma and the correlation of that trauma and the increase in adulthood of physical, mental, and emotional issues.

The ACEs questionnaire was developed out of this study. (Click the link to find out your ACEs score) There are 10 questions with five related to personal trauma and five related to household trauma. Of the 17,000 people in the study, 87 percent had more than one ACEs (Adverse Childhood Events). Later studies in the US showed that as many as 12% of the people in 36 states had suffered more than four ACEs.

Conversely, the resilience questionnaire was developed in 2006 an revised in 2013 in the belief that people who had a higher ACEs score and then a higher resiliency score might possibly be protected from negative outcomes later in life. Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover from difficulties; toughness.

There has been some controversy over both tests especially in the beliefs that ALL people with high ACEs scores will have adverse negative affects in adulthood or that ALL people with correlating high resiliency scores will not have adverse affects later in life.

Every person is different, every brain is different, every person’s experiences are different and outcomes will not be the same for everyone. However, there is evidence that those with high ACEs scores and low resiliency scores can experience adverse negative effects (physical illness, mental illness, and emotional trauma) in adulthood.

So what is your resiliency score? Here is the questionnaire:

RESILIENCE Questionnaire

Please choose the most accurate answer under each statement:

1. I believe that my mother loved me when I was little.