Starring YOU
Directed by YOU
with Screenplay by YOU
We use many different metaphors for the living our lives: Weaving a tapestry (it has a larger pattern that emerges over time), Riding a roller coaster (it has its ups and downs), Playing poker (sometimes you’re the dealer and sometimes you’re dealt to), Climbing a mountain (getting to the summit means accepting the struggle to get there), Making a journey (it’s about the process itself, not the destination)…even seeing life itself as a box of chocolates (learn to expect and appreciate the unexpected—thank you, Forrest Gump).
Each of these has its advantages because it highlights an important insight that can be, at once, amusing and comforting.
Another popular metaphor for living a life comes from Shakespeare in the play “As You Like It”:
“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players…”
This is a fruitful metaphor, but let’s expand it: The world may be your stage, but you’re not just the actor.
You’re also potentially your own scriptwriter, writing the script of your life so that you can live it intentionally rather than as improv, making it up as you go.
As scriptwriter, you…
- Define who you want to become: Your “Ideal Self” is who you want to become. The more clearly you know who that is, the more effectively you can script and strengthen the process and pathway that leads there. It helps to create a profile of about 25 critical behaviors that define how you address daily decisions and actions. This will help you monitory our current behaviors so you can make changes in the moment.
- Identify and define key life performances: There are important things you do within your life. If you want to do them more effectively and produce a high level of quality, then you need to think of them as performances. Of these life performances, you can decide which ones are worthy of greatness. Then focus on these as the performance in which you work to improve your capabilities. A great way to do this is by producing a description for each life performance and then use this description to assess each performance with eyes on the prize of improving the next performance.
- Create top 10 measures of annual success: At the beginning of each year, envision yourself at the end of “a great year” to figure out what makes for a great year (“you’ve got to see it to be it”). This will produce the targeted outcomes for the year and for each, you can then define what constitutes success. Make sure that you don’t settle. Keep asking the question, “Is that all I want from this year?” This becomes the basis for identifying your growth goals for the year.
- Create an annual growth plan: Each year, identify the capabilities that, if developed, will help you better achieve your top 10 measures of annual success. Additionally, where do you want to invest in capabilities that will help you become more like your ideal self? You can prioritize your weekly efforts during the year by assessing your progress towards becoming your ideal self and in achieving your top 10 measures of annual success.
- Generating opportunities is essential for self-determination: Choices that you can make in the future depend greatly on the opportunities that life offers you. Relying on others to provide your opportunities limits you to growing only in the areas where others want you to grow. To choose where you go and where you grow, you have to learn to create your own opportunities in the areas that matter to you.
You’re also potentially your own director, recognizing the larger context for the current scene. These insights provide motivation and allow for a smooth performance in adhering to the script.
As director, you…
- Become wise by learning from life: The best way to become wise is to learn from your own life experiences. A weekly examination of how you live your life is a great starting place for generating new insights. The goal is to spend 10 minutes every week at a regular time to mine the previous week’s experiences to bring out lessons and insights that can be used in planning the future. Sharing these insights with others allows you to learn additional life lessons.
- Create your own personal history: The person you are is based on (but not limited to!) your history and experiences. Writing your personal history increases your awareness of who you are and why you are who you are (this is your personal narrative). The more clearly you understand yourself, the more deliberate and intentional you can be in becoming the person you want to become. (tldr; You have to know the starting point to plot a trajectory to a goal.)
- Define what makes a quality life: Everyone experiences life differently, but there are common characteristics that most of us value. Think about how important each life domain is and define which characteristics of each help improve your quality of life. Domains worth considering include family, life roles, relationships, being impactful, wellness, joy, community/organizational membership, growth, spirituality, and life conditions.
- Explore weekly highs and lows: Most of the valuable information comes either from what went very well or very badly during the last week. Look for outliers (the really good or really bad) in productivity, your quality of life, growth, achievements, relationships, and well-being. Use these outlier experiences to produce insights that you can leverage to regulate the highs or improve the lows.
- Assessing assessments and reflections: Two powerful processes that expedite growth are assessments (especially self-assessments) and reflection. The best way to improve these processes are for you to assess them with the help of others. As you improve your ability to assess and reflect, their impact on your growth increases.
Finally, you’re the actor, doing the work necessary to play the roles called for by the scriptwriter and director. You hone your ability to successfully play a wide variety of roles by learning as much as you can about them and yourself. You seek to improve your craft but also strive to leave criticism to the critics.
As actor, you…
- Assess rather than judge yourself: To improve and grow, it is critical that you shift from judging and criticizing yourself to a laser focus on improving yourself. You can do this by collecting “strengths” of recent performances and reusing them, finding “opportunities for improving” and coming up with plans on how to make those improvements, and creating “insights” that help you better understand how to approach future performances. All of these together will help you take productive actions to improve future results.
- Have a mental image of your desired behavior: To make positive change and grow into any aspect of your ideal self, you first have to be clear on what that ideal aspect looks like. Reflect on how your ideal self would behave/act. Ask, “What would my ideal self do?” Once you have that clarity, you can then increase your awareness of your current behavior. Comparing and contrasting what you’re doing now with what IDEAL YOU would do gives you the information you need to make the small changes that move you closer to your ideal self.
- Know your own risk factors and impediments: The Professional Guide to Self-Growth identifies 35 risk factors that are common to most professionals. The book also offers 50 Professional Characteristics you can develop that will mitigate these risk factors. Understanding which risk factors are hindering your intentional growth efforts and knowing ways to grow beyond or in spite of them gives you the tools you need to create workable and productive growth plans.
- Define criteria for every performance or function: Your quality of life comes from producing quality in the aspects of your life that matter to you, especially your life roles. This is not something that just naturally happens; producing quality depends on identifying the criteria that determine quality and then using them to measure and adjust performance. Answering the question, “How can I be a good life partner?” (for example) means knowing the criteria of “good life partner”. What are the criteria for that role? Once you know those, you know where to apply your efforts.
- Self-monitor to self-mentor in the moment: This is especially critical when it comes to high-value moments when you’re playing a role in an important life moment. And sometimes, despite all the planning and preparation, improvisation is required; there isn’t the safety net of another rehearsal or stopping action to ask, “What’s my line?” When this happens, be aware of yourself in the moment and your larger intentions. Know that you can change behavior at any point by engaging in reflection-in-action. You’re not alone as the actor on the stage; you’re also there as director and scriptwriter… and that’s all you need to play this current role and play it well!
