Aligning Values and Actions to Create Success and Satisfaction

**************************************************
"SIMPLY SUCCESS" - SHORT POST - July 18, 2007
=======================================
>Helping You Create What Matters MOST in Life and Work
Bruce Elkin: Life/Work Renewal Coach
Personal - Professional - Organizational
http://www.BruceElkin.com
Sent to subscribers only. Names are never shared or sold!
To leave list or change email address, scroll to bottom.
**************************************************

Hi ,
Rainy here on the west coat. A nice break after a couple of the hottest days EVER last week. Close to 37/100 degrees! Hot!

In such heat, all that most people can think about is keeping cool. Survival and comfort become our top values. But in cooler times, we can return to aligning our lives and works with our deepest and highest values.

Living and working in accord with your truest values is one of the keys to success in life and work. It is also the key to the authentic happiness we all seek. And recent research suggests it is also a key to optimizing your health!

In an article in the journal Psychological Science, a team from the University of California states "the affirmation of personal values buffers neuroendocrine and psychological stress response."

Affirming your deepest values and highest aspirations involves two parts:

1.) Reflecting on those values and aspirations.
Think about them. Write in your journal about them. Discuss them with friends, family, and co-workers. Or with coaches, mentors, and counselors. Just this kind of value mindfulness can help moderate stress responses and lead to better health

2.) Acting on them in daily life.
Other research by Positive Psychologist Martin Seligman and others shows that incorporating key value-supporting actions into your daily life can make you feel authentically happy. His Values-In Action Signature Strengths Survey is a good way to assess your key values. See: www.authentichappiness.org

Together, reflection and action help you clarify and strengthen your values. Because acting on your values is satisfying for its own sake, the result is increased satisfaction with your life, work, and your self.

And people who consistently act on their values are also more likely to be successful, and satisfied with the results they create.

In my coaching programs, clients make 3 kinds of value choices.

Primary choices elevate highly valued results above less valued ones. By saying "I want to create this more than that," you make "this" a primary choice. You commit to creating it.

Then, the actions you take to support that choice/result become secondary choices. You make secondary choices, not so much for how they make you feel, but, rather, for how well they support the result you have made primary.

Underlying result-oriented choices are deeper, foundation choices such as the choice to be FREE, the choice to be HEALTHY/FIT, the choice to be COMPASSIONATE, the choice to be HAPPY, the choice to act in harmony with your FAITH or PHILOSOPHY.

Such choices reflect your hightest values, and often include being states that you want to achieve. Peace. Freedom. Love. . . .

You don't act directly on these choices, but making them daily helps ensure that your primary and secondary choices are aligned with your highest values.

I make my foundation choices each morning as part of a ritual during my morning walk. Out loud, if I'm alone, sub-lingually if there are others around, I choose to be healthy, whole, happy, and creative in all ways. I choose to be free, to be true to my whole self, to be the predominant creative force in my own life, and to be successful as a working writer.

In addition, I choose to be friendly and caring with others, and to live a rich yet simple, successful, and sustainable life--in harmony with the systems that sustain all life.

These high-level choices set the direction for my life. They provide a foundation for my primary and secondary choices. They provide meaning and motivation that sustains my actions, and make my efforts worthwhile.

Your values can be seen as strengths you can build and grow. The more you affirm and act on them—the more you choose to live and work in a value-driven way—the stronger your strengths will become. And the more successful you will be. Simple, eh?
-------------------



> ARE YOU DOING WHAT YOU LOVE?
Would you like to create what truly matters to you in life/work?
=========================================
I work with capable people who are stuck, stalled, or struggling with complicated life/work challenges. I help them develop the SKILLS, STRUCTURE, and SUPPORT to make the complex simple, get going again, and turn their visions into reality!

I can help you find what you love-and create a life that shows it!

> Summer is a great time to learn how to create what matters. I have 2 spaces opening this week, and am interviewing for August and September. If you would like my fr.ee 7-page info package, e-mail me with "Coaching Package" as the subject at Bruce@BruceElkin.com
---------------



> USEFUL WEBSITE AND PLANNING TOOLS:
=============================
Thinking about creating or upgrading your website and marketing approach? I use these tools with great results and recommend them without reservation.

* For info or to purchase a copy of THE WEBSITE TOOLKIT,
please go to http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=73714

* THE ACTION PLAN TOOL KIT can make designing and
implementing a marketing plan easier, effective, and fun.
Go to http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=73714
-----------------------



>THIS WEEK'S QUOTES:
====================
"Life's up and downs provide windows of opportunity to determine your values and goals... Think of using all obstacles as stepping stones to build the life you want."
- Marsha Sinetar

"A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence."
-- Stephen Covey

The good life seems to be a life lived out of our values, consistent with our talents and reflecting our aspirations. Success is about integrity, commitment and service.
(S)uccess is seldom found in anything as obvious as a bank account or fancy house.
- Dr. Phil Humbert

"Work is love made visible."
- Kahil Gibran

"If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do, how would I be? What would I do?"
- Buckminster Fuller
-----------------------


Need help with clarifying your values, and life/work design? Let me know. I'm happy to help.
All the best!
Bruce
**************************************************
> BRUCE ELKIN:
Personal, Professional, and Organization Renewal Coach
>Call: 250.388.7210 www.BruceElkin.com Or Skype Me!
**************************************************
> View the current issue of my full newsletter at
http://createwhatmattersmost.blogspot.com/
-------------------

Life/Work Design for Success and Simplicity

**************************************************
"SIMPLY SUCCESS" - SHORT POST - June 19, 2007
=======================================
>Helping You Create What Matters MOST in Life and Work
Bruce Elkin: Life/Work Renewal Coach
Personal - Professional - Organizational
http://www.BruceElkin.com
Sent to subscribers only. Names are never shared or sold!
To leave list or change email address, scroll to bottom.
**************************************************

Hi All,
Thanks to all who wrote to me about last week's piece about "getting rid of ads." Even those who think as I do that creating what we do want is a better approach than getting rid of what we don't agreed that they, too would love to get rid of ads.

A couple of people said, "It is easy. Get rid of your TV." And proceeded to describe how much better their lives, and their families lives, have been since they went TV-free. They make a darn good case.

But before you all go chucking your TVs, or doing anything drastic -- or even begin planning some changes -- I recommend you step back and consider the design of your life.

Without a design to guide them, most plans are not very useful. Think for example of a road trip with a very well planned route, but no clear destination or starting point. How could you even plan the route without those?

Sounds silly, but, often, that is the kind of plan people (and businesses) end up with when they focus too much on HOW", and not enough on WHAT, WHY, and WHAT DO I HAVE to start with.

Successful planning emerges from successful design, in life work.

Design starts with conceiving what you want to create. Conception is often a vague and fuzzy state in which we image things like "happy, harmonious relationships," or "an ecological responsible life." Such concepts are good places to start, but there's more.

Design takes a concept and specifies it. It involves crafting a clear, compelling VISION of the completed results/creations you truly want to have in your life. Then you are clear about success criteria for a happy relationship or an ecological life or whatever.

Design also includes your purpose and intention for wanting to create the result. This is where the energy of motivation comes from. The more you love your result, the more energy you'll generate and the easier it will be to create it.

So loving your results and clarifying what they would look like go hand and hand.

When you are clear about the life/work you would love to have, and you know why you want it so deeply, you are better able to imagine what it would look like if you created it.

Unfortunately, many people do not take the time needed to do this kind of design thinking. Instead, they merely react or respond to circumstances. Their plans are driven by their circumstances.

When circumstances drive the action, we do not. When circumstances drive the action the power is NOT in our own hands, it is outside us -- in the circumstances!

As a result, much planning is frenetic, problem-focused planning. It's designed to avoid -- or get rid of, or get relief from -- things you do not like, and do not want. And even it succeeds, you still do not have in your life what you would love to have in it.

And success in most problem-solving efforts is temporary at best. At worst, the solution becomes worse than the problem it was supposed to solve. Did you know the first automobiles were introduced to 18C Europeans as, "The solution to pollution"?

So, if you are contemplating life or work changes, think about design before change, before actions and process.

Step back from your current circumstances and think about what you really want in your life and work. And why?

Then sketch out a vision of what your results would look like. Make is as clear and compelling as you can. Detail is good. Specifics are great.

When your vision is clear, assess where you are now relative to that result as honestly, objectively, and as accurately as you can. Describe current reality, do not judge it.

Then, holding vision and reality in mind together, ask yourself, "If I want to create this result, AND I am starting here, with this and that, what are my best steps to get started?

If you do that, you'll have begun to grasp the basics of life/work design. Your plans will emerge as action steps that support vision and honour current reality.

With practice, you will learn how to learn from your own mistakes and failures and successes. And, eventually, you will bring into being the result you want in your life and work.

It is all a lot easier and more fun with a good life/work design to guide your actions and learning. Enjoy!
------------------------
>For more on life/work design, see my book SIMPLICITY AND SUCCESS: CREATING THE LIFE YOU LONG FOR, visit my website at www.BruceElkin.com, and/or read the next item.




> ARE YOU DOING WHAT YOU LOVE?
Would you like to create what truly matters to you in life/work?
=========================================
I work with capable people who are stuck, stalled, or struggling with complicated life/work challenges. I help them develop the SKILLS, STRUCTURE, and SUPPORT to make the complex simple, get going again, and turn their visions into reality!

I can help you find what you love-and create a life that shows it!

> Summer is a great time to learn how to create what matters. I have 2 spaces available for July, and am interviewing for August and September. If you would like my fr.ee 7-page info package, e-mail me with "Coaching Package" as subject at Bruce@BruceElkin.com
---------------



> USEFUL WEBSITE AND PLANNING TOOLS:
=============================
Thinking about creating or upgrading your website and marketing approach? I use these tools with great results and recommend them without reservation.

* For info or to purchase a copy of THE WEBSITE TOOLKIT,
please go to http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=73714

* THE ACTION PLAN TOOL KIT can make designing and
implementing a marketing plan easier, effective, and fun.
Go to http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=73714
-----------------------



>THIS WEEK'S QUOTES:
====================
"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will
bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."
- Anaiis Nin

"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
- Jeremy Kitson

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies."
- Mother Teresa

"Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, a can-do attitude, a capacity to focus on a vision and work toward it."
- Barry Rogstad

"You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now. "
- Wallace D. Wattles

"It's not enough to be busy. The question is, what are we busy about?"
- Henry David Thoreau
-----------------------


Need help with life/work design? Let me know. I'm happy to help.
All the best!
Bruce
**************************************************
> BRUCE ELKIN:
Personal, Professional, and Organization Renewal Coach
>Call: 250.388.7210 www.BruceElkin.com Or Skype Me!
**************************************************
> View the current issue of my full newsletter at
http://createwhatmattersmost.blogspot.com/
-------------------