Spending my professional life as a teacher, I often hear the comment, "You are so lucky to get the summers off. You must love it!" And to be honest, I do count down the days to summer vacation and I spend the first couple of days in pure bliss that I have no obligations. But then reality sets in and I realize that I am the only one who has summers off. My husband still works everyday, my non-teaching friends still work everyday, and my teaching friends are typically travelling or spending time with their families. That makes for a very lonely summer for this people loving gal!
I am a very driven person by nature and find it difficult to go through the motions just for the sake of going through them. That being said, until recently, what has driven me has been a little disorganized and scattered. There are few things that have influenced a change in my purpose over the past year and those things have TRANSFORMED my outlook on life and the way I spend my time.
The first thing that spurred the change in my outlook was my introduction to Steven Covey and the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Our school adopted The Leader in Me program and I was deeply involved in implementing it. That meant a lot of trainings on how to help students be leaders, but started with walking the walk and being highly effective myself. While I'm not going to go through all of the principles involved with this idea, I will tell you that it changed the way I was looking at my "big picture" and the roles that I play in my life.
The second thing that supplemented this shift was becoming a Beachbody coach. Although this company focuses primarily on health and fitness, it has a deep rooted belief in truly helping people and you can't do that unless you are improving yourself. That's where my personal development started. I began with the book The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and had the fire in the belly, passionate aha moment as I was reading page after page. It made so much sense to me that tiny choices you make on a daily basis compound to make an enormous difference in your life! After finishing that book I moved to Life! By Design by Tom Ferry which helped me identify what parts of my life needed adjustment and how to make those adjustments so I could design the life I wanted.
If you are still reading this post, I commend you because I know I am rambling but its important to know that the balance I have achieved in my life was done through countless resources, time devoted to personal growth, and the desire to make my life purposeful.
Here is the nutshell version of what I do to help me balance all of my roles and live my life with purpose:
I am a very driven person by nature and find it difficult to go through the motions just for the sake of going through them. That being said, until recently, what has driven me has been a little disorganized and scattered. There are few things that have influenced a change in my purpose over the past year and those things have TRANSFORMED my outlook on life and the way I spend my time.
The first thing that spurred the change in my outlook was my introduction to Steven Covey and the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Our school adopted The Leader in Me program and I was deeply involved in implementing it. That meant a lot of trainings on how to help students be leaders, but started with walking the walk and being highly effective myself. While I'm not going to go through all of the principles involved with this idea, I will tell you that it changed the way I was looking at my "big picture" and the roles that I play in my life.
The second thing that supplemented this shift was becoming a Beachbody coach. Although this company focuses primarily on health and fitness, it has a deep rooted belief in truly helping people and you can't do that unless you are improving yourself. That's where my personal development started. I began with the book The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson and had the fire in the belly, passionate aha moment as I was reading page after page. It made so much sense to me that tiny choices you make on a daily basis compound to make an enormous difference in your life! After finishing that book I moved to Life! By Design by Tom Ferry which helped me identify what parts of my life needed adjustment and how to make those adjustments so I could design the life I wanted.
If you are still reading this post, I commend you because I know I am rambling but its important to know that the balance I have achieved in my life was done through countless resources, time devoted to personal growth, and the desire to make my life purposeful.
Here is the nutshell version of what I do to help me balance all of my roles and live my life with purpose:
- I work from my personal mission statement to set my annual goals and create a vision board.
- I use my annual goals to identify the stepping stones that
are needed to achieve them and put deadlines on those
stones. - Each stone then gets put on a list with a coordinating
month. - I use my monthly list to develop a weekly list (usually done on Sunday nights) and plug those activities into my weekly calendar.
- Each night I look at my weekly list and check off what I completed. If there is something left over I decide if it is important enough to stay up and complete or I move it to the next day - top of the list!
- Each morning I wake up and review my vision board (annual goals), look at my weekly list, review my daily calendar, and write in my reflection journal.
- My reflection journal is broken into three sections: Release, Gratitude, and Intention
- Release -- I write down anything I woke up holding a grudge against and vow to let it go.
- Gratitude -- I write down three things I am thankful for, mindful of not repeating.
- Intention -- I write down each of my roles for the day (wife, teacher, coach, etc.) and write exactily what I intend to do that day in that role. Those intentions match up with what is on my calendar for the day.