WHAT'S IN THE WAY OF ACHIEVING
MY DREAM, MY PURPOSE?
This is an "overview" piece, for you to apply to your situation by filling in the details for you and then following the very strongly recommended (I believe essential) actions.
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THE DREAM
"I want to be a "Big Man", being highly influential and respected and effective in orchestrating it such that people will be inspired and effectively following through to achieve highly valuable benefits for people.
THE MAN TO EMULATE
"I want to be like , who can get action from and reach a 1000 people at a time."
The prospective conversation I would recommend is: "I am willing to look more deeply at all the factors that influence this man's behavior and create his power - not just the "surface" factors that people seem to think of as "cause", when they are actually "results" from deeper causes. I acknowledge that deeper causes are always "psychological" and "belief based" factors - and that there are no magic or mystical causes."
"For instance, psychologically, he obviously is a well-centered, not-fearful person who is able to set limits, who is able to say no to lesser value items and to ONLY concentrate on that which is of the highest value. He has set limits around those things that would use up his time and energy and cause him to not have enough time and energy to fully exploit what is of the highest value. He recognizes the depleters and does not get caught up in them. He doesn't allow interruptions, not even answering the phone (but then returning his calls at the time of his choice, perhaps choosing not to even return some calls at all, as there might be no value in doing so). He doesn't try to please all people and recognizes that as fruitless and disempowering. He has no fear of authorities and no fear of being disapproved of, so he is nobody's obsequious puppet.
He doesn't "rescue" others. He doesn't "rescue" causes or organizations that have little support (or value enough to others to support it). He does not do the work himself and he doesn't have to cajole, try hard to motivate and convince (he doesn't do what is hard and things where he has to push through resistance or unworkability). He recognizes that this would take him away from doing that which he is better at creating value in."
WHAT IS IN THE WAY THAT MUST BE CHANGED?
Our archetype here we'll call Daniel. Daniel needs to ask the above question of himself, instead of continuing to leave it, and other details, unanswered in his life.
"Looking at myself, I see these as being true of me and I recognize that I must remove/change them if I am to arrive at being at the level I need to be":
So, as he sets about his inquiry, taking the role of an objective observer to the best of his ability, these are some of the answers he might come up with about how he "is":
Fragile, easily hurt, fearful of what others may think of him (it is "all about him", though he claims it is about the wonderful good he is doing, his primal concern is about approval, as if it were the very air to breath)
Unable to stay on a path
Easily distracted
Not willing to take a loss for a greater gain.
Unable to set goals and steps, unable to plan, gets confused and is not willing to go "through" the confusion to create order.
People pleasing, can't say no, gets "roped in" by others, not in charge of himself, others determine his agenda
Can't set limits or boundaries (and doesn't recognize his fears and emotions and beliefs as being causal in the matter, wants to somehow "overpower" them or proceed onward without having solved them!!!!! A wishful thinking, relying on vague, unspecific fantasies and hope).
Unable to make decisons, unable to "cut" and stop all other alternatives in order to follow the path decided upon
Still trying to prove himself and gets into things irrationally, out of need and/or urgency and nonthinking.
Has "vague" ideas and a lack of specifics and "heroic", unrealistic ideas of what is true for those people who have achieved a form of greatness, even childlike ideas and misperceptions about what it takes to live inside the mind of that person and the reality of how they live life. Typical of people who do not achieve higher levels is his not defining things, not creating the specifics that are needed in order to set targets and plan - without those it is impossible to reach "greatness" or even much effectiveness in life.
Inability to make decisions, inability to make decisions in ambiguous situations and/or to know when there is sufficient data to make a decision, overinvestigates and overthinks and goes into analysis paralysis (related to fear) - to come out of this, he must deal with the psychological reasons and origins of the thinking around thisl
Difficulty getting things into perspective, rising to a higher level to look at things
His need to prove himself in his 70's is strictly psychological and he is trying to unrealistically solve it or bypass it,.to be "good enough", to do a big mission, undefined.
Forever, in certain things, stuck in "still deciding" (or "I'll think about") mode, often waiting for the perfect solution while not setting up something that will work but perhaps takes more effort. A time management system, a relative life value structure, a way of avoiding his diffulty with writing, etc. and etc., are all waiting for decisions.
Gets into super detail beyond its actual usefulness. (He "feels" he can't "lose" some detail and is unwilling to do so as a tradeoff for good, expeditious "good enough" decision making.)
Can't make tradeoffs, where one must lose something to gain something of greater value, so he stays with that which is of lower value in order to avoid loss of what he has in hand (called the old moldy peanuts syndrome).
He must be motivated from the outside, and will blame his lack of progress on "I'm just not motivated for the long term. I just can't see it, so I take what happens right now and will give me short term results". He does not realize that he must be The Generator and not the Generated Upon.
He is stuck in being a man of little true effective vision, with lots of unspecified fantasies and wishes, mistaking them for being of vision, mistaking quantity for what is of true value.
He keeps exploring, forever, in a scattered fashion, not stopping to tie things down so that he can go onto other greater things and/or just move on.
Defensive, makes excuses, rationalizations, of a fixed mindset
He can't "write down things", talks alot but doesn't tie down things, exists in the metaphysical world, not so much in the real world where results and actions count.
Codependent, dependent
Hard time to, unwilling to, deal with disorder or confusion (not realizing that everything starts with disorder, a form of confusion without the emotion) and in incompetence and/or not being very good.
Finds it hard to "devise", revise, hard to do monitoring (as afraid of doing a report, as he is mightily afraid might be judged...
He does not do planning, not even for the day and definitely does no long term thinking and planning.
He just can't seem to fit in Quadrant II higher level functioning, thinking, creating.
WHAT ARE MY SKILLS
(To get further into the world of reality and specifics, he needs to nail down which skills he has, so that he can craft a goal or vocation that will work for him. Along the way he must address all the related issues suggested in the sections that follow. And he must insert these in his long term planning notebook, see LifePlan and its table of contents.)
My skills are making agendas, good writing (held back by my psychology at this point though), making presentations (fairly good, need to add elements that inspire to action). poor at delegating...
Unique ability or assets, contacts, experience in the field:
I have difficulty with
Difficulty setting goals and doing planning and organizing from a higher perspective.
Difficulty looking at things from a higher perspective
Takes him a very long time to do anything, due to confusion, underlying fears
(Add to this starter list...)
What must be done
He doesn't see that he must construct a basis, a foundation under all of these things, one that is psycholgically, factually sound, as he is awash with fears, doubts, anxieties, unsettled quandaries, uncertainty, etc. - all things that are psychologically based. He doesn't see that he can't simply jump miraculously to the higher level without having to solve these.
He must set some goals around this if he is to make it
Pick off the most important ones (probably from the list above), at least, and/or list all these intermediate goals and then prioritize the order in which you will deal with them (write about, further define, decide what needs to be learned, set a plan of the steps it would take to reach that goal).
Finish your "visualization" and your "whys"
You can't wait for someone else to do this for you. You must generate it yourself.
In your visualization, you can use the above to describe how you will be doing or have done what will create you actually "being" the person you need to be to achieve that which is of true value in life.
Can't seem to settle on a specific purpose.
How about this one for now, read every day (in your smaller reminder notebook), until you pencil it in in a better, more fitting statement of purpose and get clarity on what your true "mission" is in life that will have you reach the fulfillment of your purpose:
"My purpose is to contribute the greatest happiness and good I can where it matters the most for me and for those I care most about.
The way I will do this is based on the value, from, of course, my perspective, with the value being in this order, with significant differences between the levels:
My own self
My spouse
My children
Assuring I have the financial basis handled
My friends
My acquaintances (or smaller community I am in)
General community
The world overall."
To become a bigger man in order to do good works of much greater value, I need to
I let go of my codependency and having to please (by addressing it and solving it)
I let go of dependence on others for approval.
I let go of whatever keeps me from doing Quadrant II and I commit to doing Quadrant II thinking and planniing!
I let go of undisciplined, victim thinking and I become the sole creator, the sole Generator of my life.
I let go of reactive and/or impulsive behavior (and the beliefs that support it)
I stop being in the mode of "barely keeping up" (and actually constantly getting behind and piling up of"later"s)
I let go of being afraid of authority figures. (I.e. I do the work necessary to achieve that, of course.)
I let go of my ignorance about effective psychology and working of the mind, so I can live my life well and benefit others more, in a way I cannot do if I don't eliminate my ignorance.
(Partial list, but additions might be easily derived from the opposite "get in the way" characteristics and behaviors.)
HOW LONG WILL THIS TAKE?
To do this adequately, you must devote enough time - of course!
The initial round of filling these out can take from a 1/2 day to a full day.
And then, to get more specific, one will have to spend at least two days to nail it down into specific action plans.
Follow through on the items can be facilitated by entering the area or item to be worked on into this site's search engine and following what has been written and pre-thought-out for you.
The experience will first be one of "I can't do all of this", perhaps, to one of confusion, with lots of information floating around in disorder...and then, as you persist, things will come into order and the sun will soon shine brightly upon a new future. And, yes, creating the new future will take time, but it will be time spent wonderfully and valuably - for what is achieved is priceless, it is life itself - and a sound, true basis for deep, enduring happiness.
Note: Some people "stop" because they don't know what to do next. So it is a good idea to follow something even if it is vague and not in the order that you want to work on something. You might just attempt to fill in the slots in the table of contents for your life plan - and it'll all come together. You might use the Medium Plan at first to get a quicker result. And as you become familiar with an area by working on it, the path will become clearer. Life Planning is a "real stopper" as peopl give up too soon, expecting to do it in the time it takes to plan a vacation, which you might notice is considerable smaller and not even in the same ballpark as the value of having your life planned!
