Journeying Inward

During this time, we observe our strengths and weaknesses. We also go outside ourselves to assess our environments for opportunities and threats. In business this strategic planning is called SWOT analysis, an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. In this section we discuss our inward journey to seek understanding. Here, we discuss your mission, values, defining moments, uniqueness, lifelines, strengths, weaknesses, symptoms, problems, and performance gaps.

Define Your Mission
In business, we talk about “mission” or reason for being. Why are you here? What do you want to be remembered for after your physical death? My mission includes adding beauty and good design in this world, and also relates to educating, sharing information and sharing love such as I am doing here.

Crystallize your Sense of Self so that you can proceed more effectively and efficiently into the future.

Study and Live Your Values
We each have a set of values that we hold dear, and that underlies many of our decisions. Studying and clarifying your value system is helpful in coping with the “now” and in planning for the future. Identifying your values helps clarify the hoped-for outcomes of your decisions. Thus, decision-making has a guiding system that underlies it.

Try identifying four to six values that are underpinnings to your presence in this world. For example, my list includes: Humor, lifelong learning, integrity, beauty, freedom, and relationships.

Identify Your Defining Moments
Defining Moments are those times of significant change where our true essence must rise to the surface, often for scrutiny by the rest of the world. What have been your Defining Moments? What makes you the person you are today? What choices have you made in your life from which you knew there was no turning back? Defining Moments often crystallize and communicate our core values. Write them down.

Identify What Makes You Special
What makes you different, unique or special in this world? There are multiple reasons to evaluate Self in this light. It may help your self-esteem, it will clarify your Self to yourself, it will help you move to the future with clearer understanding, and it will help you select the best options for your future.

Find Your Lifelines: Assess Your Stabilities
If your boat is rocking, it is good to find your lifelines and your stabilities. Many very successful actors, actresses, athletes, or others in the limelight maintain homes where they grew up or where they feel a connection. It is how they stay grounded. What are your lifelines?

Find your connections, assess them for their future value (some may need to be left behind, if they are destructive), and repair and re-tie those lifelines. These lifelines may be relationships with God, with other people, with places, or with our treasured possessions. I encourage you to find the meaning in those relationships, to treasure them and to nurture them. If the boat seems like it is rocking a bit too much, imagine you are tethered to a lifeline that extends from your waist all the way to the center of the earth. This is a helpful exercise.

Find Your Lifelines

The great coyote watches the moon rise for the 2,878,697,061,812,782nd time. S. Gullikson

Identify Your Strengths
Identify your strengths. Write them down and refer back to them. Find ways to leverage (use) them now and in the future.

Identify Your Weaknesses
Identify your weaknesses; write them down and begin dealing with them. Refer back to them, and add and delete as needed. Find ways to limit their impact, and to correct them if needed. Consider both the Now and the Future.

Distinguish Between Symptoms and Problems
This takes some practice. Whenever you see as a problem, ask if this is really the problem or if it is a symptom of some other problem. If I am not exercising, for example, I see it as the problem until I am forced to analyze why I am not exercising. This may reveal that I am too busy, or that I am depressed, or that I am not feeling good about myself, or that I am procrastinating on taking the initiative to join a gym. If that is the case, I am usually procrastinating on other things as well.

Assess Your Performance Gaps
Draw a circle. Divide it into the important components of your life, just as you would cut a pie. Examples might be: Financial, spiritual, relationships, physicality, surroundings, etc. Imagine the outer edge of the circle is a “10” (best) on every piece of that pie. Analyze where you are on each of the pieces of your life, using a scale from 1 to 10. Draw a line in each pie slice that depicts where you are now. This is your “performance gap” - the difference between where you are and where you want to be. Identify actions that will help correct each deficiency.

Continue Visualizing
Visualizing the future is extremely important as we move through the process of creating and acting on goals. Draw the way you would like your life to look in, say, five years, or create a collage of magazine photos that represent concepts or possessions that you would like in your life in five years’ time.