Having 20/20 Vision for the New Year

Hello!  I am sorry that it has taken me a few weeks to get back to blogging.  It has been a crazy yet fun couple of weeks.  I hope that Christmas came and went and was able to fill your world with so many great moments to sit back and reflect on the good things of the world, in your home, and in your life!  I absolutely love having the opportunity to look back on my year and see what craziness has ensued and try to brace myself for the new year...which is a perfect opportunity to post about taking control of your life with 20/20 vision!

I challenged you last post to complete the assignment of asking yourself the 11 questions to help you discover your purpose.  Of those questions you should be able to now state what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and ultimately what you see yourself doing.  Now, the whole purpose of this is to help you find your purpose.  I want to share with you some of the things I learned about myself during this process:

1) It is extremely difficult to look at yourself and admit to your strengths.  Weaknesses are so much easier for a person to admit to and discover, but there is a lot of power that comes from finding, admitting, and writing down your strengths!  I love looking at mine and reminding myself that I am indeed good at something!

2) I am a lot more prone to negative thinking than I ever thought I was.  But I haven't always been this way! I used to be Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky, but that is not that case anymore.  I really had to dig deep and find out what was causing that for me.

3) I discovered that I want to be a farmer!  What craziness is that?  The more I thought about it the more it made sense to me.  When I was a kid, my family would go spend the entire summer up at my grandparents farm.  That is where I learned my most valuable lessons about work and relationships.  Now I am not talking full blown dairy farmer, but just to own a good plot of land where I can do with it what I will.  It is something that I had forgotten that I love but something I have always wanted to do.

So what?  What does completing those questions do for me? It has given me something to shoot for.  It has given me a purpose.  It has given me a goal that I can't get out of my head and I am willing to do about anything to achieve that dream now.

Obviously I can't just snap my fingers and make that happen for me.  But it has given me a clear vision...I can see with 20/20 vision what I want to BECOME.  I could see what paths I needed to start taking in order to get there.  But it needed to be broken down bit by bit.

Now I will admit, I am the WORST at setting and achieving goals, at least I used to be.  My goals always seemed so daunting and unachievable.  I discovered that it was because when I set annual goals, they do seem to be soooo daunting because they take a year to achieve!  My good friend John Marshall helped me create a vision board. Some people use whiteboards, or other items.  My wife and I chose to use post its like in the picture below.  We put it on our bedroom wall and take 5 minutes to look at it every single day.  What this does is help us break down all of our goals into achievable steps.  With each goal that is accomplished I take it down, write it in a "goal journal" and put up my next goal. This has truly helped be look and tangibly see what it is that I am achieving! So often when we set goals, we forget about the progress that has been made already and get discouraged to keep going.  That is why the Vision Board and Goal Journal have been so great for me.  I have been able to look back and see how much I have accomplished.

For example, I have a goal to spend 30 minutes a day strengthening myself spiritually.  To set the goal for the year is so overwhelming, that's 365 days!  So I broke it down, I started with doing it everyday for 1 week.  After I accomplished that I said every day for 2 weeks straight, etc.  Have I missed a day or two? Yes, but I restart after I miss those days. Does that mean I won't accomplish my year goal? Yes, but I am doing more now than I would have without my vision board.

So that is challenge #3!  Create your own vision board.  Put it where you will see it a lot.  Then get to work!  You will be amazed at how good it feels to accomplish the little goals first, and how great it feels to accomplish the bigger goals when you get there.

I have also created a new mantra for myself, "Elevate yourself so that you can lift others."  I hope that you feel the same passion about this as I do.  You cannot lift others from lower ground, so let's get out there and so some good!

The First Step is the Hardest, but Worth the Most.

Welcome Back!  What a great week it has been for us as we are preparing for my favorite Holiday of the year...CHRISTMAS!  I hope that is has been as great for you as it has been for me.   It really has been a wonderful time of reflection and determination to continue forward.

I ended my last post with my wake up call.  About how I was awakened to a sense of knowing there was more to my life then what I was currently doing and knew I had to do something about it.  But what?  What could I possibly do to get myself in a productive mode where I could help the world?  Well, that same night of the conversation between my wife and I, there was a lack of sleep.  My mind was racing, I kept pleading with the Lord in my heart to help me know what I need to do.

All I could think of was how grateful I am to have had a wife who was not willing to let her husband waste his life away.  Finally, as I laid in bed  I had this thought come to me, not just a thought...but THE thought, "There is nothing more humbling for a man than to stand in front of a mirror and have to deal with the reality that is in front of him. To truly say to ones self that they are not who they intended to be, and that they have failed at what was expected of them is the most heart wrenching blow one can take. Yet, in that pride shattering moment, the seed of hope is planted in the soil of our most fragile and malleable soul. It is then that a man can look back into his reflection and has the opportunity to say, 'I know you aren't who you could be...but from this time forward, you will become what you should be.' It is in these moments, when the pit seems too deep to climb from, that the first few infantile steps towards the defining of ones character commences, his courage is forged, and his true destiny unfolds."  

I wrote it down as it was coming to my mind, my hands trembling, my mind racing, my pride shattering and my heart opening.  This scripture also came to mind where the Lord says, "And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and  endureth to the end the same shall be saved."  This experience was the Lord "compelling" a son that had become too reliant on his own comforts to repent, a son that had become complacent to rise up, a son that was "destroying his own effectiveness" to become something more.

I realized then that the outcome of my life was MY choice.  No amount of external circumstances was going to determine who I was going to become and what I was going to achieve.  My determination exploded into a fury of notes that I wrote down of things that in this moment I needed to accomplish. One of my favorite lines of literature come from the poem Invictus which says, "I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul."  I read those words frequently as a reminder to me, that circumstances do not determine my fate, I DO!

I was fortunate enough in August of this last year to partner with a company called Strongbrook. The President and founder of this company, Kris Krohn, has become a friend and mentor to me and wrote a book entitled the Conscious Creator. I highly recommend this book to you and encourage you to read it.  If you would like a copy to borrow, please let me know and I can easily get one for you. (Or you can go to this website here and order the book.)   In this book he writes the journey of a young man trying to find his purpose. In doing so he was asked to write down the answers to a few questions, all of which I would like to do for you to answer.  

Along with this book comes a journal that helps you reprogram your thought process.  For that is what our brains are, one giant computer that is inundated with information day in and day out. That is what I would like you to do this week, this is your HOMEWORK!  Go to this link and download the journal and ask yourself the 11 Important Questions and write them down. (I must say that the journal makes little to no sense without the book, that is why I recommend reading the book).  So, that was my first step...taking a look at my life and writing down, in my own words my vision of an ideal life. Answering these questions was the first and most crucial step for me: taking a long look in the mirror, breaking down the barriers of pride, and letting change take root in your soul.  It has worked wonders for me and I KNOW it can do the same for you.  Next week I will talk about what this little activity did for me, and why it has become my driving force!

The Beginning

I want to start off this blog post by saying "Hello and Thank You!" Thank you for taking the time to read the thoughts of someone that you either know well, or that you have never met before. I hope that as time goes by and I continue to write in this blog that you will feel a connection with someone who is willing to admit that he is as imperfect as anyone and that the greatest part about this life is finding ones purpose.  That is the purpose of this blog, to have you join me in my journey of "Discovering Me" in the hopes that it will help you to discover, well, you!

The most difficult part of a blog like this is trying to figure out how to begin.  I decided to start with what sparked the journey, and what I chose to do with that information.

After having recently picked up my family and moving from California back to Utah to pursue a career in Real Estate, we were introduced to a company, and more importantly, a way of life that was new and exciting for us, and we made the decision to partner with this company.  Things were at the point financially where I had a lot of free time on my hands and was spending it lazily around the house.  I had everything that I had hoped for in a lifestyle, FREEDOM, and I was going to take advantage of that.

I also need to take a second and explain that I married a person that is about 5 miles ahead of me in every aspect of our lives.  She is incredible. I wouldn't be anywhere near where I am at without her.  She is a crucial part of this story because a few months into this lazy lifestyle, she had  a sit down with me....and she asked probably the most profound question I have ever been asked.  "Mark, what are you going to do with your life?"  No words have struck a man the way that those 10 words struck me.  The only response I could think of was, "What do you mean?" She responded. "What productive thing are you going to do for the world?"

I have never felt so emotionally, mentally, and spiritually exposed before.  I genuinely believed that I had made it! That we were exactly where we wanted to be, that I was LIVING THE LIFE! Then, in a moment, my whole life felt as though it had no purpose.  I felt as though what I had deemed to by my successes were actually potential cataclysmic failures.  My wife wasn't rebuking me, she was just telling me in a subtle way, "Mark, there is more good that you can do then just sit here with your family...SO DO IT!" President Gordon B. Hinckley once stated, "Do not destroy your effectiveness."
That is what my wife was trying to get me to avoid, destroying my own effectiveness.

That was the moment that had me looking into the proverbial "mirror."  What was I going to do with what I have been given to bless others?  Why am I content with being complacent and not moving forward?  What is it that I cannot see for myself yet my wife is able to see? And most important, how are you going to change that?

Since that moment with my wife, there have been a myriad of words, thoughts, and actions that have opened up a pathway to true happiness and growth for me.  That is where this blog is going to take us, through my journey.  The thing is, journey's aren't meant to be traveled alone.  So, my dear friends, may I pose to you the exact same question:

What are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do to become the good in this world?

I challenge you for the next week to take a look at where your life is headed, and ponder and pray about where it SHOULD be headed.  Write down any and all thoughts that may come to you.  In my next post I will talk about the first step that helped me start answering these questions and the thoughts that started that step.  I am excited to share with you these steps that I have been taking, and the steps that I will take, in order to find and fulfill my purpose.  I hope you join me in this journey, and PLEASE, leave comments about things that you have done, moments you have had, and successes you are experiencing!

May we always look to lift!