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JULY 2010 TRACKING AND MEASURING
If you are just joining us for the month, scroll down to the first week. It’s never too late to get started!
WEEK FOUR: DREAM CHECK July 18th – July 24th
This week we compare where we are now to where we were during our last tracking session and where we want to be. So pull out your goal sheets. Hey, if you don’t start working on living your dreams now, when will you?
How far along are you towards your goals?
Look at the short term goals that you are working on. Are you making progress or have you stopped? Have you achieved any or ALL of your short term goals? If you have, congratulations. Please let me know about it by emailing me at Barbara@dontmakemeslapyou.com. I would love to share your story with our members.
Look at your long term goals. Have you done anything lately to move you towards your goals? Have you taken the time to plan backwards from your goal and create a series of steps to get you there? Have any of your long term goals changed?
Pull out your Life List. If you don’t have your life list done, go to Day Three of Love Taps: http://www.dontmakemeslapyou.com/lovetaps.htm. Have you had a chance to hit any goals on your life list? Have you thought of any things you would like to add to the list?
Check your Financial Progress/Stability
This is the easiest part of your life to track. It is plain numbers. Either you owe more money than you did three months ago, or not. Either you have less debt or you don’t. Either you are bringing in more money or you are not. Run your numbers. Check your assets against your debts. See if your net worth has increased.
Your goal may not be to become debt-free; it may be to increase your income or to create passive income streams. Everyone has different ideas of how much money they need to be comfortable and everyone has different financial goals. For some people it is having more income than outgo. For others it is having more passive income than outgo. For others it is having a little extra to put towards a vacation. You define your goals. For many people, their goal is to be able to go to sleep at night without worrying about how they are going to pay their bills. Peace of mind is priceless.
Resetting Your Goals/Realigning Your Life
As you work through your goals, you may have found that some of your goals have changed or that things you thought were important three months ago were just a passing whim. It is okay to change your goals or to realign them. Just as long as you don’t abandon them out of frustration, fear of failure, or disappointment that you haven’t yet achieved your goal. Some things take longer than others. Some goals are achieved but not as you pictured them in your mind. My book, Don’t Make Me Slap You is done. I am not happy with the cover or the actual layout, but the content is there and I am very pleased to have it published.
So take a look at the work you have done this month – checking your goals, long and short term. Checking your life list and your financial statement. Ask yourself if your goals are still working for you. Have you found that you started towards a goal and then stopped? Did you want to? What caused you to stop? Take the time to read through your goals again. Identify those goals you want to work on for the next 90 days. If you have a large goal that is ongoing, keep at it. Remember to schedule time into your week to work on those goals. You deserve to have what you want in this life. Don’t let day-to-day drudgeries distract you from living the life you were meant to live.
Make it a great week! Barbara
WEEK THREE: RELATIONSHIP CHECKUP July 11th – July 17th
Your Relationship With Yourself: We are our own biggest critics. We have that little voice inside our heads always reminding us of what we should be doing or what we should have said. So it is time to remind your inner critic that you are a person who is doing the best she can. Take a look at where you were three months ago and where you are now. Ø Do you feel more focused? Ø Have you set goals? Ø Have you done some work towards your goals? Ø Are you setting aside time for yourself and your dreams? Ø How often do you treat yourself, whether it is a quiet cup of cappuccino or a manicure? Ø Are you getting happier about where you are in life and where you are going or do you feel like you are moving farther away from your goals?
We are always so careful to encourage everyone around us, to give them our support and love. Over the next three months I want you to make a conscious effort to encourage yourself – congratulate yourself when you have done something good; reward yourself for your hard work. Take a moment every now and then just to say, "Damn, I’m good!"
Your Relationship With Your Family and Friends: What have you done in the past three months to bring yourself closer to your family and friends? Have you written letters or emails? Made an effort to call more often or get together? Do you have at least one close friend you can talk to about the real things going on in your life? Have you enlarged your circle of friends?
A large part of our life experience is brought about by the people we interact with. If you find you are not adding friends and acquaintances, you may be in a very comfortable and comforting rut. Meeting new people often stimulates us on to new activities and personal growth. So in the next three months, make an effort to get to know someone new, preferably someone with a different background and different life experience than yours. You may be surprised at the worlds that open up to you.
Your Relationship with Your Significant Other: Are you with a person you love and respect and who loves and respects you? Have you gone out of your way to let them know they are appreciated and loved?
Has your significant other made any effort to let you know that you are loved and appreciated? If so, did you respond positively or deflect the compliment? I have learned to say this, "I love when you say things like that to me." Learn to appreciate when you are appreciated.
If you are single: I have been happily single most of my life. But there are times I can really appreciate having someone by my side. I am old enough to know that I need someone who has the same long term goals as I do and I am also self-aware enough to know that the man who gets me is getting both good and bad. Bless his brave heart. Most importantly, I know that in order to attract someone with certain qualities, I must first have those qualities myself. It is amazing how quickly someone shows up when you are mentally and emotionally ready. And remember, there are so many people in relationships who wish they were single. It is better to be alone and happy than with someone and miserable. So take your time. Have a great week! Barbara
WEEK TWO: FINANCIAL CHECK July 4th – July 10th
YOUR FINANCES
Ø Monthly Bills Ø Debt Worksheet Ø Asset Worksheet
First of the month bills should be paid. Remember back in April when I had you set up your spreadsheets for your monthly bills, your assets and your debts? (If you are just joining us, email me at info@dontmakemeslapyou.com and I will send you a template of the spreadsheets I use). We are going to add up your debts and assets to see how are you doing. So let’s start.
Add up your monthly out-go. Is it higher or lower than it was in April? If it is higher, where did the increases occur? Was there an emergency of some sort or did certain bills go up that you didn’t expect to go up? Some things you can’t control but you can at least know what is hitting your pocketbook.
Take a look at your Total Debt spreadsheet or list. Are your debts decreasing or increasing? Did you pay off any debts? Yes? Congratulations! Are there any debts that are close to being paid off that you could get rid of with a little extra effort or sacrifice?
Now take a look at your assets. Have you started or added to a savings or money market account? Do you have an emergency reserve built up that you can tap into if you need to? Are your assets growing or declining?
I saw yet another women’s magazine with all those helpful hints on cutting costs and saving money. For some reason, you never see those articles in men’s magazines. That should tell you something. Saving money is one half of the equation. The other, more important half is making MORE money. So let’s see how work is going.
WORK: Ø Are you in a job that is suited to your potential and ambitions Ø Is your pay in line with your job description and industry standards? Ø Are you happier at work than you were three months ago?
If, at the beginning of the year or in April when we did our last checkup, you decided that you were not happy with your company, your career, your position, or your salary, what have you done to create change? Have you put your resume together? Have you investigated other companies or industries? Have you looked into other positions with your current company? Do you need extra training to move up? And have you checked into that? Am I nagging you? YES!
If you decided you love your job or are hesitant to change jobs in this economy (a good call right now, by the way), have you looked at ways to make more money if you need to? You may want to look into getting a second job strictly to pay down debt or to float you over a financial sandbar. Or maybe you want a second job so you can learn new skills to segue into a new career.
If you find your debts are going up and your assets aren’t growing; if you are having a hard time keeping up with bills and it is creating stress in your life, now is the time to make changes.
We do checkups every quarter to make sure we are on track. If we find we are not going in the direction we want, we can catch the wrong turn quickly and get back on track. Sometimes we find that we have set our goals a little too high or a little too low (sometimes a lot too high or low!). In order to realize our goals and dreams, we have to work from a stable financial base. Knowing where you stand financially, and your work situation is a huge part of that equation, will define your starting point which will enable you to reach your goals more quickly and efficiently.
Sharpen your pencils and have a great week!
Barbara
WEEK ONE: CHECK YOUR SYSTEMS AND PROGRESS Jun 27th – July 3rd
Check your goals for work, lifestyle and relationships. Are they still in place? Still working? Were there any systems that you put in place that you have fallen away from? Did you want to? Do you have a system that is really working for you? Can you transfer that system to another application?
Let’s start with your work goals. Whether you work for yourself or someone else, what have you done to increase your income for the time spent? Have you worked backwards from your goal and set up a series of small steps that will lead you to success? Have you hit any of your benchmarks that you have set up to achieve that goal.
Have you established any systems to automate some of your workload? If not, have you looked at your workload for areas that may lend themselves to automation or systemization?
If you are not happy with your job or if you would like to start your own business, have you taken any steps to change that situation?
Lifestyle Goals: Back in January, I had you write down the details of your perfect day. You should have it handy for the very simple reason that you should be reading over your perfect day every day. One of the most important components of achieving your goal is to keep your eye on your goal.
As you are reading through your perfect day, ask yourself what items, what scenarios of your perfect day have you added into your current life to make it like your idealized life. For me, one of the components of my perfect day is to wake up to a cup of fresh brewed coffee just waiting for me. Now in my truly perfect day, that cup of coffee is brought to me by Raul, my hunky pool boy. But for now, I have a coffee pot with a timer that goes off about five minutes before my alarm clock does. I wake up to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. Raul is still on my list. J
Now most lifestyle goals are bigger than a cup of coffee. You may want to live in a different or bigger house or even in another area of the country or the world. You may want to be healthier. Or want to climb a mountain. Bigger goals are accomplished through a series of steps. Everything you do brings you closer to or farther away from what you want. Having a series of steps mapped out gives you a check list to work your way through and keeps you working towards your goal.
I am a firm believer in checklists. Let me go into a bit of a side story here. One of the things I have noticed about myself, and I am confident it is true of other people too, is that when I don’t have the next step mapped out or the next task set up to do, I will waste time fumbling through files, shuffling paperwork, checking to see if anything good has magically appeared in the fridge since I last checked 45 minutes ago. If you prepare a checklist either before you go to bed at night or over a cup of tea first thing in the morning, you have your roadmap for the day. I do a brain dump of everything I need to get done that day and then I re-write the list based on my priorities. Sometimes it is a time priority (The deadline is TODAY); and sometimes it is a money priority (What can I do that will make me the most amount of money for the time spent?). Sometimes it is a relationship priority. (I haven’t checked on my sister in law and she was having a hard time with her boss. I better just give a quick call.) Whichever way you prioritize, and it can be a combination of priorities, you have a road map of tasks that you have given some thought to that are designed to get you closer to your goals. I ALWAYS include in my list something from my perfect day that will serve as a reminder that I am working towards the way I want my life to be.
One of the hardest things to analyze is our personal relationships. When you are emotionally engaged, it is hard to be objective. But you know when a relationship isn’t working. You may not know what the problem is, but you know there is a problem. And that is a good start.
One of my relationship shortfalls is that I don’t keep up with my friends and family as much as I should. Now I could spend time feeling guilty about this or I can spend the same amount of time making the phone calls. You can’t automate your close relationships. Some people do – they have their secretary keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, buy the cards and gifts and basically take care of the mechanics of the relationship. To me, you can have your assistant take care of the business relationships, but personal relationships are just that: personal. And that means no one else is picking out my mom’s Christmas present. That is my job and my pleasure. However, I have set up systems to make sure that I don’t forget to send the cards and presents; I have a system to make sure I keep in touch with the people I care about. And they are simple.
The first thing I did was write down all the birthdays and anniversaries of my friends and family in my planner. I look at my planner every day. I can see if there is a special occasion coming up and not miss it.
Another thing I did was buy a bunch of birthday, anniversary, get well and sympathy cards (in case the get well card didn’t do the trick). I HATE card shopping. So I get it all done at once. Then when I see an event coming up I pull out an appropriate card. Now if I could only remember to stock up on stamps…
The best thing I did was to make a list of the people who I want to keep in touch with. Now of course I know who I like to talk to. These are my friends and family for pete’s sake. But how many times have you realized that it has been two weeks since you talked to your brother or you haven’t heard from your college roommate in three months. Time gets away from us. And as much as we KNOW that the people in our lives make our lives, life gets in the way of our lives. (Try to de-construct that sentence; I dare you.) I don’t go down the list and make notes of when I last talked to the person. But I will take a glance down once a week or so and if I see someone who I should give a call to, I will make sure I take ten minutes (or half an hour) and catch up with that person.
Checking your progress every three months will let you know if you are getting closer to your goals. More importantly, it will remind you that you do have goals. Part of the reason why New Year’s Resolutions fall by the wayside is that our memories are short. Somewhere about mid-February we get caught up in other things and the resolutions are forgotten. Doing a check-up every three months serves two purposes: 1) It puts your goals back in front of your eyes and back to the top of your brain; and 2) you don’t have enough time to fall too far off track. It is like checking the scale after you have finally reached your goal weight. If you find that three to five pounds have crept back on, you can start working right away to take them back off again. But if you don’t check and six months later you have gained back the twenty pounds you lost, you are going to have a much tougher time taking off the twenty than you would taking off five.
I am all about baby steps. (If you haven’t done so, take a look at the Love Taps section of my website.) The steps can be small, but you have to do SOMETHING to get yourself where you want to go.
Have a great week! Barbara
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