Tag: Planning

Posted on September 25, 2015

BY: Alan / 0 COMMENTS / CATEGORIES: Uncategorized

Why does life get so complicated and convoluted that we end up feeling stressed and off-course over and over again? Life getting out of balance is no new thing for most of us in the civilized world. But when we give in to it, it leads us down a road of a life that feels more like it is running us than us living the lives we were intended to live.

I continually found myself getting frustrated with having wonderful and lofty goals for what I would accomplish when I ‘got my act together’ which never seemed to happen. When the goals continue to get recycled month after month and year after year, you begin to need to fight off some feelings that resemble depression.

So, several years ago, (can it really be 18 years?) I began a journey that I have repeated and added to nearly every year since: A 40 day journey leading up to my birthday, to take my life into perspective and carefully map out what I wanted the year ahead to look like.

As that process evolved and I began to analyze the pieces that didn’t seem to work as well as perfect the pieces that did, one of the offshoots was the “Personal Monthly Retreat.” I found that merely putting some goals into a document once a year tended to sweep those goals into a dusty corner of my life, not to be discovered until the following year’s ‘spring cleaning.’ Therefore, going off by myself for a couple of hours every month developed into a ritual which today, I rarely miss.

I know very well the benefits that this ritual have held for my life, in actually bringing some of my goals for self-improvement, growth and development, and improving my relationships into reality. The question to put out there is, “What would a monthly retreat do for you?”

• Do you feel the need to re-focus on the things that are most important to you?
• Do you lose track of pursuing your life-long goals and aspirations?
• Do you have passions that you want to pursue, that get crowded out because ‘There simply isn’t enough time’?
• Do milestones like New Year’s and birthdays leave you feeling empty, like life is passing you by, or energized and eager to tackle the year ahead?

If any of that is you, consider these 5 simple tips to get started on your own Personal Monthly Retreat habit:

• Set a scheduled time each month that is blocked off in your calendar to focus on you!
• Get away from it all! Go off to a place where no one can find you, turn your phone off, and away from the distractions of your everyday life. (i.e. NOT at home or the office!)
• Stay focussed! Little ideas and projects that you have to do will occur to you. Write these things down, and schedule them into your monthly plan, but don’t get distracted from the goal of planning out the next month.
• Develop Action Steps – Each goal in each area of your life needs to be filtered down to the next actionable step. The bigger goals, in particular, will seem too overwhelming and cause stress. Find the next thing that you know you can actually do, and commit to doing it.
• Schedule your ideas! Merely making a list will not work for most people. You need to take your Action Steps and schedule them into your calendar for a specific time on a specific day. Then make sure to honor yourself by honoring your calendar. It is as important, or more important, than your other meetings and appointments with others!

If your life feels complicated and convoluted, you have been partly responsible for letting it get there. What is worse, is that no one else is going to reach down and simplify it for you. Like it or not, no one cares about what you are passionate about as much as you do. That means if any of your passion is actually going to happen in your life, you need to find a mechanism to make it work. So feel free to ‘steal’ my monthly retreat and make it yours. And if that isn’t your thing, then answer for yourself this question: “What am I going to do to  get myself feeling like I am in charge of my life again?” Be diligent in pursuing that answer!