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Life's Priorities Exercise
by Michael Hargrove

If you don't stand for something, then you'll fall for anything! - Jim Rohn

Unfortunately, most of the people we know fall into that group of souls who simply go from day to day, situation to situation, gladness to gladness, crisis to crisis, reacting to whatever is thrown in front of them. They never really think about what they want, what they believe, and what they stand for. They sort of live their lives in a fog, neither overjoyed nor miserable, devoid of any real passion, asleep at the wheel.

Furthermore, we have found that two of the most common causes for talented, energetic, driven, goal oriented people to consistently fail to reach a particular goal are either that particular goal was someone else's goal for them or it was in conflict with their life's priorities to begin with.

When we set goals without first establishing our life's priorities, we unwittingly set ourselves up for a frustrating series of subconscious self-sabotage, or worse yet, we achieve the goal and are miserable because of it!

The following is one of the first exercises in our workshop entitled:

Make A Decision: Goal Setting Simplified.

It takes about 30 minutes to complete for most and requires a quiet place with no interruptions. Afterwards, we need to take a few minutes to really assimilate these new found priorities of ours.

The benefits of completing this exercise are many. One of the most obvious is that all of our decisions (major and minor) become infinitely easier to make. When we come to a fork in the road of life, we simply have to choose the path that is in harmony with our life's priorities.

Another benefit is the depth of character this exercise fosters (an explanation of this follows). One more is that we'll now have a "things to do" list for our lives. Pretty neat, huh?

One advantage, perhaps not so obvious, is that we now have a much better chance to really listen to another's point of view without fear or prejudice. They may talk to us for 20 minutes, and they may even be able to change our mind, but they can't change us. And that's an extremely empowering place to operate from!

Our passion for life is in direct proportion to the depth of character we posess.

Character is the security we have based on our integrity to our own value system

Times of crisis do NOT build character... they simply expose it.

© Copyright 1997 by Michael D. Hargrove and Bottom Line Underwriters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Michael D. Hargrove is President of Bottom Line Underwriters Inc. and can be reached at the contact points below.