Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 224 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Your Life Plan Blueprint – Goals #1

Thank you for joining us for our 7 days a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 224 of our Trek, and we are continuing on our current Trek “Your Life Plan Blueprint.” On this trek, we are slowly mapping out the framework that will assist you in setting goals and creating a life plan for yourself. As I stated yesterday, your life plan does not need to be overly complex to be effective. Just like our trek of life, we will take the life planning trail one step at a time.  As always, if you have any questions or would like additional information as we go through our daily trek either leave a comment on Wisdom-Trek.com or email me at guthrie@venturecg.com.

As we grow through the Wisdom-Trek Life Plan Blueprint process, I encourage you to begin thinking about your own life plan.  I will be utilizing our daily journals for this trek to create a PDF workbook that you can use to create your life plan. Once the workbook is completed, I will let you know how you can obtain a copy of it.

Since this trek on life planning will take several days, if you miss any of our Wisdom-Trek episodes, please go to Wisdom-Trek.com to listen to them and read the daily journal.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. By the time this episode airs, we will have completed our delayed Christmas celebration with our children and grandchildren. I will provide an update with some pictures within a couple of days. These types of celebrations need to be included as part of your life plan so you do not miss the most special moments of life.

Let’s head out on the trail for day five of our Wisdom-Trek Life Plan Trek, which we refer to as…

Your Life Plan Blueprint

Before we actually dig into the framework or blueprint to create your life plan, we will spend a couple of days of our trek exploring how to achieve your goals with success. The Wisdom-Trek Life Plan Blueprint is segmented into 7 areas that comprise your life.  Those areas are:

1. Spiritual
2. Family
3. Physical/Health
4. Mind/Intellect
5. Personal/Social
6. Financial
7. Work/Career

One long-term objective of a life plan is to make sure that all 7 areas of life are in proper balance. If you find that your life is out of balance in any of these areas, it may take some time, even months or years, to bring all areas into balance. But with a well-developed life plan, you can work toward that objective. Check out the picture representation of the Wisdom-Trek Wheel of Life below.

Before we explore the details of the wheel of life and overall blueprint in depth, let’s first study some basic principles of goal achievement. Goals that you set are the stepping stones of your overall life plan. So let’s look at…

An Introduction to Goal Achievement

One of the most important elements in creating a life plan is to make sure that you bring your life into balance and to maintain balance when setting new goals.

In one or more of the seven areas listed above, what are some of your biggest goals in life? To lose weight? To earn more money? To be in your dream career? To set up your own business? To grow in your faith walk? To live in abundance? To be at the peak of your health? To meet your life partner? To have a loving family?

For any of these goals, have you ever had the determination to achieve it, devote resources to it, work on it for an extended period of time, only to have it fall flat on your face eventually?

Let’s use an example that most of us can relate to. Say you have a goal to lose weight and you resolve to take off 30lbs. You start off strong, cutting down the amount of food you eat. You also start an exercise regimen. Every day, you measure your weight to closely track your progress. Within the first few days, you start seeing a reduction in your weight. Rejoicing, you continue what you have been doing, but it seems that your actions have lost their effectiveness because your weight loss has plateaued. If anything, it seems to be increasing slightly versus your lowest weigh-in.

You become discouraged. You start to give up and binge, resigning that it is never possible for you to achieve the goal because it is in your genes or you just do not have the self-discipline. You begin to bury the whole notion of weight loss at the back of your head. Predictably, you start to gain back all the weight you lost and more. This makes you even more depressed, and you start eating even more.

At some point down the road, you receive a wake-up call to lose weight. You embark on the goal pursuit again, more determined than ever. However, past events repeat themselves, and soon you are back where you started, if not in a worse place.

Does this pattern of behavior apply to any of the goals you have set out to achieve before? Are you being looped in a continuous cycle of setting the goal and trying to achieve it, but never quite getting there? At this point, you may feel despondent. You resign that you are not meant to achieve this goal and decide to focus your energy on something else.

The Biggest Mistake Many People Make in Goal Achievement

Many people are guilty of trying to tackle their goals using a series of trial and error approaches. They randomly throw their energy out with all their might on the few steps they know, thinking that this will get them to their goal. They deal with their goals in a haphazard way, then hope that everything will turn for the best in the end.

While it may work in the short-run and on smaller goals, this strategy does not work with big, long-term goals. For example, you may get away with losing 5lbs of weight by generally just eating less and exercising more, but to lose more weight and maintain that weight loss requires proper strategy.

Many people have this misconstrued notion of goal achievement because they only come into contact with the results of others’ goals. They are not involved in all the thought-processes, intricacies, and actual planning that went behind the achievement of those goals. This is why the Wisdom-Trek Life Plan Blueprint is different. It is not just a goal setting program but a life change process. It is more than changing actions or even habits. It is about changing the way you think.

The new World Trade Center, one of the world’s tallest buildings, was not built from just randomly slapping tiles of concrete and slab together. It was through envisioning, strategizing against environmental elements, planning with precision, and executing the plan that enabled it to be built, even though many people said it couldn’t or shouldn’t be built. Today the entire area and the memorial is a statement of resolve and beauty.  It was built through a strategic and well-designed blueprint.

In the same manner, to have a long-term successful life plan with its associated goals, you need to have a system in place to sustain it. This is why we are taking an extended period of time on our life planning trek because the initial investment in time and planning will be far outweighed by the benefits generated in the long-run.

God will honor our planning if our plans include bringing glory to His name. In Proverbs 16:3, he tells us to, “Commit your actions to the Lord, and your plans will succeed.” The Wisdom-Trek life planning process is not a quick fix process, but instead, it is a life-changing process. This process dovetails into our concept of Wisdom-Trek as we look at life as a trek, one step at a time. Tomorrow we will explore more of the strategy of life planning before we start to explore the 6 step blueprint for life plan framework. So encourage your friends and family to join us, and then come along tomorrow for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.

That will finish our podcast for today. As you enjoy your daily dose of wisdom, I encourage you to help us promote Wisdom-Trek in the following four ways:

1. Leave us feedback about the podcast on Wisdom-Trek.com.
2. On your smartphone, subscribe on iTunes, GooglePlay, Spreaker, Soundcloud or Stitcher, so the podcast will be downloaded to you automatically each day.
3. If you have an iPhone or iPad, leave us a rating and review on iTunes.
4. Share Wisdom-Trek with your family and friends through email, Facebook, Twitter, or in person so they can come along with us each day.

Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this Trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you tomorrow!