| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
experiencelifemag.com
Print › | Back ›
Resolutions Workshop 2008: Support Tactics
You've crafted your New Year's resolutions with care. Now comes the tricky part: translating intention into action - ideally, the ongoing kind. For this, you need more than a wing and a prayer. You need pragmatic support systems and the good sense to put them to work.
By Alyssa Ford |
January-February 2008 |
Getting Past 'Go'
Support System No. 1: Helpful Tools
Support System No. 2: Powerful Programs
Support System No. 3: Community
Get It Done
Blast Off!
There’s something about New Year’s resolutions that brings out the reckless in
all of us. We don’t let the fact that we’ve been living a certain way for years
slow us down. We don’t let the reality that we have dozens of deeply ingrained
habits and commitments get in our way. “Things are gonna change!” we say. And
with that, we launch ourselves from the peak of our lofty ambitions into the
thin air of our available time and resources — which are typically thin indeed.
When we’re determined to achieve certain goals, but not particularly
well equipped to overcome the inevitable obstacles they entail, we have a
tendency to get frustrated and give up long before we should. We fall fast from
our ivory towers. And the bold changes we were so gung ho about? They simply
don’t happen.
In past Experience Life Resolutions Workshops, we’ve
explored some of the best ways to intelligently define meaningful goals and to
take action toward reaching them. (To catch up on these stories, browse through
some of our recent January/February issues.)
This year, because we understand that most
serious resolutions require significant effort and sustained determination,
we’re emphasizing the importance of getting the support you need to accomplish
your long-term objectives. Even if that means changing in a deep way; even if it
means shifting habits that took you a lifetime to form.
This year’s workshop
is all about what happens when the recklessness of the New Year wears off and
we’re left with the sobering view of the journey ahead of us.
Getting Past 'Go'
One of the most pernicious obstacles to resolution
success typically emerges almost as soon as we’ve said our “I will” vows: It’s
the “I can’t” whimper. Negative self-talk sets up a destructive inner dialogue
that puts a gaping hole in even the most tightly woven resolution plans.
“First our voices tell us to go to the gym four days a week,” says Zen
teacher Cheri Huber, author of Making a Change for Good: A Guide to
Compassionate Self-Discipline (Shambhala, 2007). “Then they convince us to sleep
in, and then they beat us up for not keeping our commitments.”
M. J. Ryan, a
life coach and author of This Year I Will: How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a
Resolution or Make a Dream Come True (Broadway, 2006), surmises that if adults
had to learn to walk, as toddlers do, many of us would not succeed — the
negativity we impose on ourselves would be too great to overcome. “Many people
would tell themselves, ‘Oh, I’m so stupid. I can’t do this. I must have some
kind of walking disorder,’” she says. And then they’d give up.
We aren’t born
with this negativity. “When we’re young, the possibilities are wide open,” says
Maryanne O’Brien, cofounder of Live Dynamite, a personal-growth company in
Independence, Minn. “Kids say, ‘I’m going to be president’ without blinking an
eye.”
But over time, that optimistic inner persona — the ego — gets
trampled. As authority figures label us, judge us and assign us places in life,
we internalize those messages. Then the ego goes into “survival mode,” says
Huber. “What was once a joyful ‘I can do anything’ becomes ‘OK, I’m a person
who can do X, but can’t do Y.’ This belief in our inadequacy becomes an aspect
of our identity, and our ego clings to it desperately.”
Negative beliefs and
limiting self-perceptions powerfully undermine our ability to make big life
adjustments. So the very first step in building a support structure involves
what Huber calls “enrolling the ego.”
Here’s a good way to start: Sit
quietly, focus your thoughts and have a heart-to-heart with those voices in your
head. Hear them out. Then let your wise self speak. ˙ Reassure yourself that it
is possible, and that you can do it — even if you don’t know precisely how just
yet. And, that’s what the following support systems are all about.
“Most of
us are in complete resistance to getting support,” notes Debbie Ford, a
life-coach trainer at JFK University in San Francisco and author of The Best
Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004). “We
think, ‘Oh, I can do it on my own.’” The reality, says Ford, is that being
willing to seek out appropriate support systems is essential to overcoming
obstacles of all kinds.
Support System No. 1: Helpful Tools
Grace Judson, an executive coach in Oceanside, Calif., was working hard but
felt that she and her clients needed to learn to use time more effectively. She
was putting in long hours building her coaching business, designed to help
people function well in the corporate “game” without losing themselves. But it
seemed that both she and her clients often had problems with the big projects,
which tended to be slow to start and slow to finish. She wanted to be more
efficient in her own work and have an easy-to-use tool to help her clients with
their own time-management struggles.
Then, a year and a half ago, Judson
picked up First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy
by the
venerable self-help trio Stephen Covey, Roger Merrill and Rebecca
Merrill (Simon and Schuster, 1994). She read about Covey’s Time Management
Matrix, which divides tasks into four quadrants: Urgent and Important
(“Firefighting”), Important but Not Urgent (“Quality Time”), Urgent but Not
Important (“Distractions”), and Neither Urgent Nor Important (“Time Wasting”).
“Being able to visualize my time this way was a revelation,” says Judson.
“It clarified a lot of things for me personally, and it’s a great way to help my
clients see where their time is going.”
Judson realized, for example, that
she had been falling into a common pattern: jumping to address urgent-seeming
squeaky wheels, while allowing the projects that really mattered more to slip
further down her list. “Email was particularly tough,” she says. “I’d hear that
little email ping, and I would go rushing off as if it were promising millions
of dollars.”
Using the Covey matrix as a time-management tool, Judson became
more conscious and disciplined about prioritizing the things that were really
important to her, both at work and at home. Self-sustaining activities like
meditation took on a clearer importance once she identified that they were
“Important but Not Urgent” pursuits that empowered her to be her best.
Judson now schedules time in her calendar to meditate, and she blocks out
time for long-term projects, which has been an “enormous productivity booster”
in her business.
She checks email periodically instead of constantly, and
she’s careful to turn off her phone when she’s working on an important project.
As a result, she can now accomplish things in much less time, and she feels
she’s made headway toward her goal of working more effectively.
Take the
book she’s writing on office politics: “In about two and a half weeks, I was
able to write a 55-page book intro, design the graphics for the cover, and get
the text edited and proofread,” she says.
Making more-conscious
time-management decisions that sync with her values and goals has now become
second nature to her, and that’s benefited her personal life, too.
“I think
to myself, ‘What quadrant is this in?’” she says. “I ask myself, ‘Am I spending
time in the community, spending time with people I love, building my business —
or am I frittering my time away?’”
Resolution-support tools take many forms:
time-management systems like the one Judson embraced; spiral-bound
resolution organizers that help you plot out the tactical steps required to
achieve larger objectives; computer-generated alarms to remind you when
benchmark deadlines require action.
A “tool” could even be something
as simple as the daily ritual of meditating on your goals for 15 minutes each
morning, or an inspirational card deck that keeps you focused on the values that
inspired your resolution in the first place.
The point is, if you are coming
up against a limitation or challenge that’s holding you back, there is probably
a tool to help you overcome it. Ask yourself: What do I need to do — and how do
I need to grow — in order to make my resolution happen?
If you’re
lacking an important skill or strength, there’s almost certainly a tool to help
you bridge the gap. Your job is to identify the tools you need and embrace them, pronto. The best part: The combined benefits you gain
from leveraging these new tools are bound to produce satisfaction far beyond the
achievement of the original resolution they made possible.
Support System No. 2: Powerful Programs
For most of Robin Rankin’s adult life, goal setting seemed like a
futile effort. “I would just think of things I needed to do, and then if I
didn’t get them done, I would beat myself up about it,” says the 39-year-old
marketing specialist in Salt Lake City, Utah.
So when she started working
with life coach M. J. Ryan six years ago, her first step was to home in on
the things she really wanted to change: her smoking habit, her tendency to avoid
conflict, her chronic disorganization.
From there, Ryan helped Rankin
establish priorities and action plans, and together they discussed Rankin’s
progress on the phone every two weeks or so. Ryan would assign Rankin homework,
such as reading certain inspirational passages, and encourage her as she worked
to develop healthier habits.
The process helped Rankin focus her energy in a
way she’d been unable to before. “Frankly, it was embarrassing if I didn’t make
progress, so I was made accountable in that way,” she recalls. “Over time, that
taught me to be accountable to myself.”
Many life-coaching and
habit-shifting programs, such as Ryan’s, offer concrete and controlled
strategies coupled with frequent person-to-person interaction.
Other
programs, such as Traineo (www.traineo.com)
and UltraWellness (www.ultrawellness.com), focus on
providing structure and support for specific goals, such as fitness or
weight loss. But the principles of interaction are the same: Ongoing phone or
email contact provides focus, continuity and accountability.
“It helps so
many people just to have that email in their inbox, that message on their cell
phone,” explains Debbie Ford.
Rankin has also found that working with a
coach has made her less dependent on outside reinforcement. “It’s really an
ingrained skill now, knowing how to replace my old habits with healthier
pursuits,” she says. ˙
Support System No. 3: Community
Big ideas are great — but making them happen often requires the help of others.
“In the last couple of years, I was looking for more effective ways to
reach students,” says Kathy Flaminio, a 41-year-old yoga and fitness instructor
and social worker from St. Paul, Minn. Then she had an epiphany: Yoga could help
her better reach the Minneapolis public school students she worked with. She was
too busy, however, to think about how she could integrate more yoga into her
social work with her students, a goal she set for herself.
That’s when
she discovered Live Dynamite, and later, the Live Dynamite Playbook Club, which
brings small groups of goal setters together for support. Flaminio connected
with four people working through the program, and the group began meeting once a
month to talk about their individual quests. “They were my personal
cheerleaders, but they also challenged me,” she explains. “They’d say, ‘Why
haven’t you done that yet? What’s your barrier here?’”
With focused effort —
and encouragement and advice from her Playbook Club — Flaminio raised enough
money through her private yoga business, 1,000 Petals, to enroll in an intensive
17-day yoga retreat. Then she applied for and received a yearlong sabbatical to
integrate a new program, Yoga Calm, into public-school classrooms. Plus, she
added a stronger mind-body component to the indoor cycling and yoga classes she
teaches.
Ford says some of the most effective support systems have some
element of community — whether it’s an organized contingent, like a Playbook
Club or mastermind group (for more on those, see “Meeting of the Masterminds” in
the April 2005 archives); a more loosely assembled
online network; or a wellness or weight-loss class that meets regularly. (For
more examples of tools, programs and community groups to support your goals, see
“Get It Done,” below.)
“When we’re by ourselves, it’s so easy to go back
into D.E.N.I.A.L. (Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying),” says Ford. “When we are with
other people, there are many more opportunities for moments of truth.”
It’s
those moments of truth that often help us more clearly perceive what’s really
standing between us and the bold changes we’re so drawn to each New Year’s Eve.
And when we make our “Things are gonna change!” proclamations, it’s that kind of
clarity that helps us better understand where the process of personal change
really begins.
Alyssa Ford is a freelance writer in Minneapolis.
Get It Done
Determined to make a change for the better? Here are some practical
resources that connect you with the support you need to stick to your
resolutions plans: Live Dynamite Upside Kit
This snazzy, energizing collection of tools (www.livedynamite.com) puts you on track to
accomplish whatever’s important to you. The 12-week program is based on proven
life-coaching principles and is all about cultivating positive energy, setting
meaningful goals, moving into action and maintaining momentum. - The Live Dynamite Upside Kit ($185) includes a 90-page “Playbook”
workbook packed with insights and exercises that help you clarify your
priorities, connect with inspiration and establish an intelligent action plan.
- The Daily Log journal, Daily Practice Sheets and Think Big Coasters
surround you with ongoing support, keep you focused and help you overcome
obstacles as they arise.
- A collection of Expand and Create Cards lets
you create personal, portable reminders of your evolving goals and
commitments.
- Additional support is available through Playbook clubs
(local, live community groups), downloadable Boosts (podcasts, success stories,
worksheets and other resources) and email “nudges.”
Ta-Da Lists
A simple but powerful online tool (www.tadalists.com) for organizing
information as you work toward your goals (or simply check off a collection of
to-dos). Create as many lists as you like, and link them to lists of supportive
or related information. It all remains easily accessible online. Traineo
This free fitness and weight-loss tracking Web site
(www.traineo.com) lets you chart your progress online and then (accountability
alert!) share regular updates with the posse of your choosing. Log info about your eating and fitness habits, and the Traineo system
presents it back to you as an intuitive graph that lets you chart your progress
toward your fitness goals. Choose your “Traineo motivators,” a
group of four friends or family members who will receive automatic weekly
updates of your progress and goals and who will send you emails motivating you
to keep up the good work (or get back on track). - You can also connect
with the larger Traineo community for advice and support. The Traineo library
offers tips, tools and articles to help you get smarter as you go.
Blast Off!
A special offer for Experience Life readers: Log on to www.livedynamite.com using the password
“resolutions” and enjoy: - 20 percent off all Live Dynamite
products and services through March 31, 2008 (use the shopping-cart
discount code “resolutions” when checking out).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Resolutions Workshop 2008: Support Tactics
You've crafted your New Year's resolutions with care. Now comes the tricky part: translating intention into action - ideally, the ongoing kind. For this, you need more than a wing and a prayer. You need pragmatic support systems and the good sense to put them to work.
By Alyssa Ford | Features,
January-February 2008 |
Getting Past 'Go'
Support System No. 1: Helpful Tools
Support System No. 2: Powerful Programs
Support System No. 3: Community
Get It Done
Blast Off!
There’s something about New Year’s resolutions that brings out the reckless in
all of us. We don’t let the fact that we’ve been living a certain way for years
slow us down. We don’t let the reality that we have dozens of deeply ingrained
habits and commitments get in our way. “Things are gonna change!” we say. And
with that, we launch ourselves from the peak of our lofty ambitions into the
thin air of our available time and resources — which are typically thin indeed.
When we’re determined to achieve certain goals, but not particularly
well equipped to overcome the inevitable obstacles they entail, we have a
tendency to get frustrated and give up long before we should. We fall fast from
our ivory towers. And the bold changes we were so gung ho about? They simply
don’t happen.
In past Experience Life Resolutions Workshops, we’ve
explored some of the best ways to intelligently define meaningful goals and to
take action toward reaching them. (To catch up on these stories, browse through
some of our recent January/February issues.)
This year, because we understand that most
serious resolutions require significant effort and sustained determination,
we’re emphasizing the importance of getting the support you need to accomplish
your long-term objectives. Even if that means changing in a deep way; even if it
means shifting habits that took you a lifetime to form.
This year’s workshop
is all about what happens when the recklessness of the New Year wears off and
we’re left with the sobering view of the journey ahead of us.
Getting Past 'Go' (Back to Top)
One of the most pernicious obstacles to resolution
success typically emerges almost as soon as we’ve said our “I will” vows: It’s
the “I can’t” whimper. Negative self-talk sets up a destructive inner dialogue
that puts a gaping hole in even the most tightly woven resolution plans.
“First our voices tell us to go to the gym four days a week,” says Zen
teacher Cheri Huber, author of Making a Change for Good: A Guide to
Compassionate Self-Discipline (Shambhala, 2007). “Then they convince us to sleep
in, and then they beat us up for not keeping our commitments.”
M. J. Ryan, a
life coach and author of This Year I Will: How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a
Resolution or Make a Dream Come True (Broadway, 2006), surmises that if adults
had to learn to walk, as toddlers do, many of us would not succeed — the
negativity we impose on ourselves would be too great to overcome. “Many people
would tell themselves, ‘Oh, I’m so stupid. I can’t do this. I must have some
kind of walking disorder,’” she says. And then they’d give up.
We aren’t born
with this negativity. “When we’re young, the possibilities are wide open,” says
Maryanne O’Brien, cofounder of Live Dynamite, a personal-growth company in
Independence, Minn. “Kids say, ‘I’m going to be president’ without blinking an
eye.”
But over time, that optimistic inner persona — the ego — gets
trampled. As authority figures label us, judge us and assign us places in life,
we internalize those messages. Then the ego goes into “survival mode,” says
Huber. “What was once a joyful ‘I can do anything’ becomes ‘OK, I’m a person
who can do X, but can’t do Y.’ This belief in our inadequacy becomes an aspect
of our identity, and our ego clings to it desperately.”
Negative beliefs and
limiting self-perceptions powerfully undermine our ability to make big life
adjustments. So the very first step in building a support structure involves
what Huber calls “enrolling the ego.”
Here’s a good way to start: Sit
quietly, focus your thoughts and have a heart-to-heart with those voices in your
head. Hear them out. Then let your wise self speak. ˙ Reassure yourself that it
is possible, and that you can do it — even if you don’t know precisely how just
yet. And, that’s what the following support systems are all about.
“Most of
us are in complete resistance to getting support,” notes Debbie Ford, a
life-coach trainer at JFK University in San Francisco and author of The Best
Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It (HarperSanFrancisco, 2004). “We
think, ‘Oh, I can do it on my own.’” The reality, says Ford, is that being
willing to seek out appropriate support systems is essential to overcoming
obstacles of all kinds.
Support System No. 1: Helpful Tools (Back to Top)
Grace Judson, an executive coach in Oceanside, Calif., was working hard but
felt that she and her clients needed to learn to use time more effectively. She
was putting in long hours building her coaching business, designed to help
people function well in the corporate “game” without losing themselves. But it
seemed that both she and her clients often had problems with the big projects,
which tended to be slow to start and slow to finish. She wanted to be more
efficient in her own work and have an easy-to-use tool to help her clients with
their own time-management struggles.
Then, a year and a half ago, Judson
picked up First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy
by the
venerable self-help trio Stephen Covey, Roger Merrill and Rebecca
Merrill (Simon and Schuster, 1994). She read about Covey’s Time Management
Matrix, which divides tasks into four quadrants: Urgent and Important
(“Firefighting”), Important but Not Urgent (“Quality Time”), Urgent but Not
Important (“Distractions”), and Neither Urgent Nor Important (“Time Wasting”).
“Being able to visualize my time this way was a revelation,” says Judson.
“It clarified a lot of things for me personally, and it’s a great way to help my
clients see where their time is going.”
Judson realized, for example, that
she had been falling into a common pattern: jumping to address urgent-seeming
squeaky wheels, while allowing the projects that really mattered more to slip
further down her list. “Email was particularly tough,” she says. “I’d hear that
little email ping, and I would go rushing off as if it were promising millions
of dollars.”
Using the Covey matrix as a time-management tool, Judson became
more conscious and disciplined about prioritizing the things that were really
important to her, both at work and at home. Self-sustaining activities like
meditation took on a clearer importance once she identified that they were
“Important but Not Urgent” pursuits that empowered her to be her best.
Judson now schedules time in her calendar to meditate, and she blocks out
time for long-term projects, which has been an “enormous productivity booster”
in her business.
She checks email periodically instead of constantly, and
she’s careful to turn off her phone when she’s working on an important project.
As a result, she can now accomplish things in much less time, and she feels
she’s made headway toward her goal of working more effectively.
Take the
book she’s writing on office politics: “In about two and a half weeks, I was
able to write a 55-page book intro, design the graphics for the cover, and get
the text edited and proofread,” she says.
Making more-conscious
time-management decisions that sync with her values and goals has now become
second nature to her, and that’s benefited her personal life, too.
“I think
to myself, ‘What quadrant is this in?’” she says. “I ask myself, ‘Am I spending
time in the community, spending time with people I love, building my business —
or am I frittering my time away?’”
Resolution-support tools take many forms:
time-management systems like the one Judson embraced; spiral-bound
resolution organizers that help you plot out the tactical steps required to
achieve larger objectives; computer-generated alarms to remind you when
benchmark deadlines require action.
A “tool” could even be something
as simple as the daily ritual of meditating on your goals for 15 minutes each
morning, or an inspirational card deck that keeps you focused on the values that
inspired your resolution in the first place.
The point is, if you are coming
up against a limitation or challenge that’s holding you back, there is probably
a tool to help you overcome it. Ask yourself: What do I need to do — and how do
I need to grow — in order to make my resolution happen?
If you’re
lacking an important skill or strength, there’s almost certainly a tool to help
you bridge the gap. Your job is to identify the tools you need and embrace them, pronto. The best part: The combined benefits you gain
from leveraging these new tools are bound to produce satisfaction far beyond the
achievement of the original resolution they made possible.
Support System No. 2: Powerful Programs (Back to Top)
For most of Robin Rankin’s adult life, goal setting seemed like a
futile effort. “I would just think of things I needed to do, and then if I
didn’t get them done, I would beat myself up about it,” says the 39-year-old
marketing specialist in Salt Lake City, Utah.
So when she started working
with life coach M. J. Ryan six years ago, her first step was to home in on
the things she really wanted to change: her smoking habit, her tendency to avoid
conflict, her chronic disorganization.
From there, Ryan helped Rankin
establish priorities and action plans, and together they discussed Rankin’s
progress on the phone every two weeks or so. Ryan would assign Rankin homework,
such as reading certain inspirational passages, and encourage her as she worked
to develop healthier habits.
The process helped Rankin focus her energy in a
way she’d been unable to before. “Frankly, it was embarrassing if I didn’t make
progress, so I was made accountable in that way,” she recalls. “Over time, that
taught me to be accountable to myself.”
Many life-coaching and
habit-shifting programs, such as Ryan’s, offer concrete and controlled
strategies coupled with frequent person-to-person interaction.
Other
programs, such as Traineo (www.traineo.com)
and UltraWellness (www.ultrawellness.com), focus on
providing structure and support for specific goals, such as fitness or
weight loss. But the principles of interaction are the same: Ongoing phone or
email contact provides focus, continuity and accountability.
“It helps so
many people just to have that email in their inbox, that message on their cell
phone,” explains Debbie Ford.
Rankin has also found that working with a
coach has made her less dependent on outside reinforcement. “It’s really an
ingrained skill now, knowing how to replace my old habits with healthier
pursuits,” she says. ˙
Support System No. 3: Community (Back to Top)
Big ideas are great — but making them happen often requires the help of others.
“In the last couple of years, I was looking for more effective ways to
reach students,” says Kathy Flaminio, a 41-year-old yoga and fitness instructor
and social worker from St. Paul, Minn. Then she had an epiphany: Yoga could help
her better reach the Minneapolis public school students she worked with. She was
too busy, however, to think about how she could integrate more yoga into her
social work with her students, a goal she set for herself.
That’s when
she discovered Live Dynamite, and later, the Live Dynamite Playbook Club, which
brings small groups of goal setters together for support. Flaminio connected
with four people working through the program, and the group began meeting once a
month to talk about their individual quests. “They were my personal
cheerleaders, but they also challenged me,” she explains. “They’d say, ‘Why
haven’t you done that yet? What’s your barrier here?’”
With focused effort —
and encouragement and advice from her Playbook Club — Flaminio raised enough
money through her private yoga business, 1,000 Petals, to enroll in an intensive
17-day yoga retreat. Then she applied for and received a yearlong sabbatical to
integrate a new program, Yoga Calm, into public-school classrooms. Plus, she
added a stronger mind-body component to the indoor cycling and yoga classes she
teaches.
Ford says some of the most effective support systems have some
element of community — whether it’s an organized contingent, like a Playbook
Club or mastermind group (for more on those, see “Meeting of the Masterminds” in
the April 2005 archives); a more loosely assembled
online network; or a wellness or weight-loss class that meets regularly. (For
more examples of tools, programs and community groups to support your goals, see
“Get It Done,” below.)
“When we’re by ourselves, it’s so easy to go back
into D.E.N.I.A.L. (Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying),” says Ford. “When we are with
other people, there are many more opportunities for moments of truth.”
It’s
those moments of truth that often help us more clearly perceive what’s really
standing between us and the bold changes we’re so drawn to each New Year’s Eve.
And when we make our “Things are gonna change!” proclamations, it’s that kind of
clarity that helps us better understand where the process of personal change
really begins.
Alyssa Ford is a freelance writer in Minneapolis.
Get It Done (Back to Top)
Determined to make a change for the better? Here are some practical
resources that connect you with the support you need to stick to your
resolutions plans: Live Dynamite Upside Kit
This snazzy, energizing collection of tools (www.livedynamite.com) puts you on track to
accomplish whatever’s important to you. The 12-week program is based on proven
life-coaching principles and is all about cultivating positive energy, setting
meaningful goals, moving into action and maintaining momentum. - The Live Dynamite Upside Kit ($185) includes a 90-page “Playbook”
workbook packed with insights and exercises that help you clarify your
priorities, connect with inspiration and establish an intelligent action plan.
- The Daily Log journal, Daily Practice Sheets and Think Big Coasters
surround you with ongoing support, keep you focused and help you overcome
obstacles as they arise.
- A collection of Expand and Create Cards lets
you create personal, portable reminders of your evolving goals and
commitments.
- Additional support is available through Playbook clubs
(local, live community groups), downloadable Boosts (podcasts, success stories,
worksheets and other resources) and email “nudges.”
Ta-Da Lists
A simple but powerful online tool (www.tadalists.com) for organizing
information as you work toward your goals (or simply check off a collection of
to-dos). Create as many lists as you like, and link them to lists of supportive
or related information. It all remains easily accessible online. Traineo
This free fitness and weight-loss tracking Web site
(www.traineo.com) lets you chart your progress online and then (accountability
alert!) share regular updates with the posse of your choosing. Log info about your eating and fitness habits, and the Traineo system
presents it back to you as an intuitive graph that lets you chart your progress
toward your fitness goals. Choose your “Traineo motivators,” a
group of four friends or family members who will receive automatic weekly
updates of your progress and goals and who will send you emails motivating you
to keep up the good work (or get back on track). - You can also connect
with the larger Traineo community for advice and support. The Traineo library
offers tips, tools and articles to help you get smarter as you go.
Blast Off! (Back to Top)
A special offer for Experience Life readers: Log on to www.livedynamite.com using the password
“resolutions” and enjoy: - 20 percent off all Live Dynamite
products and services through March 31, 2008 (use the shopping-cart
discount code “resolutions” when checking out).
Print | Share
| Comment
| Read Comments
|
|
Share on Digg
January 1, 2008
Cindy Joseph says:
Great to have a comprehensive program that deals with all dynamics involved in improving ones lifestyle.
December 30, 2007
Susan Cary-Hanson says:
Thanks for such a great and insightful article. I wanted to create intentions and resolutions for 2008 and found the tools from the Live Dynamite website extremely useful and subsequently ordered the kit with the discount from the magazine! I liked the sayings from the material, particularly, "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude," from Maya Angelou.