Birthdays are a funny thing. On the one hand, they are great reasons to celebrate yourself and others. On the other hand, they are drastic reminders of how fast time flies and how much has or hasn’t happened since the last one.
On Tuesday, I had the great privilege of turning the grand old age of 23. Not much happens at 23 legally speaking. Still pay taxes, still get crap car rental rates and still can’t be the President. Such is life.
Since the year itself is pretty insignificant, I decided that I needed to amp it up a little bit. I needed to know how being 23 was going to be awesome, and to do that, I decided to take a really in depth look at my life.
So the first thing I did was pull the box out of the closet, dust the box off and start to answer some important questions about this game called Life (oh the memories…).
Where’s My Toolbelt?
If I had a quarter for every time I’ve heard Batman ask that question… I wouldn’t have much. But I’m sure he thinks it quite often, the Bat Cave is huge.
Before I started, I decided to sift through the massive amount of resources that are out there to take a revealing look at life. I came to a short list of five different tools that would help me look at my past, my present and my future in order to determine where I’m going next.
Three of these resources are free and online. Two are within books that I highly recommend and that can transform your life if you apply their knowledge. Check them out at your library or just take a peek when you’re at the bookstore next.
1. Chris Guillebeau’s Annual Review
Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Nonconformity blog has been completing and sharing the results of his annual review for the last two or three years. He was kind enough to share his process in 2008, and it is nothing short of a light in a dark room.
Perhaps the most concrete method on this list, if you complete an annual review in CG fashion, you’ll have a very clear idea of what your next year should look like.
2. Imagine Your Ideal Reality with Everett Bogue
While Chris Guillebeau’s Annual Review requires a bit more of a reality check and concrete planning, Everett Bogue asks you to imagine your ideal reality. He (and I) believe that a year is a huge amount of time. If you are committed to making a massive change in your life, you can do so in one year by imagining and committing to your ideal reality, while cutting out the crap.
Check it out here. The post is excellent, and the process will leave you salivating for your own life.
3. Life Inventory Checklist with Jayson Gaddis
Jayson asks the tough questions. In my experience with Jayson as a coach and as a leader, he is a man that will cut straight through the bullshit. This is called the, “Life Inventory Checklist for Men,” but can be easily translated for women as well. If you choose this path, be prepared to go through some soul searching.
I can’t promise that it will be easy, but you will transform your self awareness if you complete this Life Inventory checklist.
4. Personal Development for Smart People
It’s hard to be 100% in favor of everything that Steve Pavlina does (he challenges a lot of preconceptions), but it’s hard to argue that his book, Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth, is anything but one of the best works to come out of the Personal Development field in the last five years.
Half way through the book is a four page list of questions that takes you on a journey that examines your relationship with seven core principles: truth, love, power, oneness, courage, authority and intelligence. This ties for the longest exercise along with Jayson’s Life Inventory, but it can provide just as many key insights that you’ve been missing in your daily life.
5. Do More Great Work
My good friend, Sam Spurlin from The Simpler Life, started a series of posts based on the book, Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters. This book is a series of maps that help you look at how you can do more GREAT work in your life instead of bad or merely good (though it’s good to have a good/great work balance).
I was initially unsure, but after going through the first few maps, I was able to become very clear on what my great work is and where I can do more of it in my life (and less of the bad work). If you need guidance in your professional life, start here. You won’t be disappointed.
Finding Meaning In Your Data
The day after my birthday was filled with doing many of these excercises, answering a ton of questions about myself and about my life and at the end of it, I felt dulled. I had imagined that this glorious day of introspection would lead to many new insights, only to be left with a hollow echo.
It didn’t hit until after I set everything aside, that all I had done was give myself a lot of data to work with. This data is important, but useless by itself. Data for data’s sake is nothing more than numbers and letters on a page. To make this data exciting, I had to find the meaning beneath it all.
The goal of all of these exercises is not to create data in your life, but to consciously create meaning. How do you alchemically transform your data into meaning?
It usually starts with asking MORE questions (about the data this time, instead of about yourself), but that’s won’t necessarily create meaning. To create meaning, you must find the patterns in the data.
If you look at all of the information you have created about your relationships, your family life, your work life or your relationship with yourself, does anything stick out?
Perhaps you realized that you thrive at work when you’re challenged, but you turn off when you’re assigned tasks that don’t let you create something new. Perhaps this is the first time you’ve noticed that you are experiencing conflict in a relationship, you need some time to cool down before you can consciously address the issue.
I’m still sorting through all the data and trying to figure out what it all means, but I’m already hungry for more (tools, not cake). What tools acn you recommend to help people look at their lives?
