Written by Florence Doisneau
While we are gearing for a new year or entering a new phase of our life, in addition to clearing our mental and physical closets, we also have to outline an ideal. This ideal will help us to orient our efforts to be relevant and meaningful. “What is my ideal?” you may ask. How do I outline my ideal? What is in it for me and why should I spend anytime to think about it? How does clarifying an ideal help me to realize new resolutions?
Identifying one’s ideal is difficult if we lack the introspection to achieve clarity as to what we mean by ideal. Here, ideal is understood as the collection of the highest standards one can set for oneself. When we take the time to imagine the best version of ourselves what do we see? You may have heard of developing your vision. It is not a mere vision, it is the envisioning of the best possible outcome we want for ourselves and of whom we want to be. In a Queen song, Innuendo, Freddy Mercury sang: “You can be anything you want to be. Just turn yourself into anything you think that you could ever be.”
Outlining your ideal is in large part about unearthing your values. It is my opinion that what really strikes as admirable comes more from who we are in essence than who we have become faced with our circumstances. Why do we admire this hero or person more than another? It seems to me that it echoes to something deep inside of us. It is interesting to ask ourselves what traits and accomplishments we admire. Why do we choose this role model over another?
A couple years ago, I offered as an icebreaker to the attendees of a conference an amusing exercise. The room was divided in small groups of three to six people. I asked the participants to share a couple of example of people they admired whether they were fictional or real. Once each participant identified who qualified as their hero I asked them what traits they admire in theses heroes. The participants presented and explained to their teammates what they appreciated in their hero? I asked them what values were incarnated in their hero. After they distinguished the values that stood out for them they came to realize how much that particular value meant to them and even how sometimes they were praised for acting out this same value.
I think we are drawn to our heroes because they emulate something that is already a part of our essence that we yearn to express. Identifying our core values leads us to what I believe to be an element of our essence (in my training we work around five main core values per person). I doubt we fully get to choose who we are, or that we are solely the product of our environment. However, I would not venture to estimate in what proportion nature/nurture is involved in the making of an individual.
Needless to say that getting to know oneself is a life long process, nevertheless, identifying certain basis such as your needs, values, current tolerations, boundaries and standards will enable you to make conscious decisions and deliberately live from a more purposeful place. Revisiting intentionally and regularly tolerations, boundaries and standards is necessary. There is an undeniable fluidity of life to which we have to respond with a certain degree of improvisation and adaptation. We evolve and morph to answer circumstances and events as they occur. It is easier to do so when we have clarified who we are fundamentally in order to stay true to our essence and be authentic.
Knowing yourself well enough is part of being grounded and better prepared for the terrible as well as the great that we are all called to face at some point or another. Identifying tolerations, needs, values, boundaries and standards comes from the coaching training program I took and it is called Personal Foundation. There are many tools of personal assessment and self-discovery available. I found the tools from my training to be helpful and it provided me with long lasting and significant insights on myself. Whether you use these particular tools or come across other tools of self-discovery, what matters is to set aside some time and effort to take on the task of clarifying for yourself what constitutes being true to yourself in order to design your future.
Rather than taking on tasks and resolutions that you think should be on your list, give yourself a chance to discover what will contribute to make you the best version of yourself and that is truly resonates with you. Exercising three times a week may be among your resolutions but is it because you should and it makes sense or because you want to be productive and energized? Maybe at this time you want to read more because you feel you are behind in your field and that to excel in what you do is what you value above all. By coupling your values with your centers of interests while you clarify your ideal you are setting your compass. It makes you more time efficient and more deliberate.
With clearer intentions you are establishing an authentic focus on what activities and relation will serve well your personal development and you make it easier for yourself to overcome your ability to talk yourself out of the steps you know to be necessary. You nourish your sense of purpose and you increase your motivation. Your investment in your centers of interests will help you to find inspiration and the connection to your core values will help you maintain the relevance of your efforts in your own eyes. What is in it for you? There is nothing more driving and elevating than a true sense of purpose. You are on a mission. For this purpose to be meaningful to you, which infuses life to your purpose. The meaningfulness comes from how it resonates with you. This self-discovery process may take you down a long rabbit hole but the alternative of living like a robot, programmed, running on automatic, and operating from empty and meaningless is repelling to any sensible individual.
As a result of dedicating time to understanding yourself better, you are developing your ability to make conscious decisions oriented towards the edification of yourself. As you are building yourself up, choosing thoughtfully the building blocks only makes sense. Once again, you only have so many resources and your efforts have to be invested wisely. If my top value is excellence and my objective is to take my business to the next level, because it is less than in an excellent position and I know I can offer more, what do I need to put in place to reach this objective? Well, excellent health appears crucial. Being sickly and running on fumes is obviously counter-productive. What concrete actions will help me to achieve excellent health? This amount of exercise and those modifications to my diet seem necessary for a start. This amount of sleep is required to function at an optimal. To regulate my stress I need to spend this amount of time doing these particular things. It is also critical that I excel in my field; therefore I determine what base of knowledge I have to acquire. What books and/or courses I think relevant? What would be a realistic program for me to educate myself can I set up?
As the questions and answers unfold we are weeding out superfluous considerations and zero in the indispensable, designing a plan of action composed of specific actions. This plan of action will possibly be called to morph over time in order to respond to circumstances or as new knowledge and opportunities are made available. In which case, to have an ideal outlined gives us a structure to make relevant and desirable choices. The ideal also may evolve over time in its details but if we did effectuate some serious soul searching, the ideal we have outlined based on what we connect to our core will provide us with a strong base to stand on.
Gearing for a New Year – Part 2 – Outline your ideal
While we are gearing for a new year or entering a new phase of our life, in addition to clearing our mental and physical closets, we also have to outline an ideal. This ideal will help us to orient our efforts to be relevant and meaningful. “What is my ideal?” you may ask. How do I outline my ideal? What is in it for me and why should I spend anytime to think about it? How does clarifying an ideal help me to realize new resolutions?
Identifying one’s ideal is difficult if we lack the introspection to achieve clarity as to what we mean by ideal. Here, ideal is understood as the collection of the highest standards one can set for oneself. When we take the time to imagine the best version of ourselves what do we see? You may have heard of developing your vision. It is not a mere vision, it is the envisioning of the best possible outcome we want for ourselves and of whom we want to be. In a Queen song, Innuendo, Freddy Mercury sang: “You can be anything you want to be. Just turn yourself into anything you think that you could ever be.”
Outlining your ideal is in large part about unearthing your values. It is my opinion that what really strikes as admirable comes more from who we are in essence than who we have become faced with our circumstances. Why do we admire this hero or person more than another? It seems to me that it echoes to something deep inside of us. It is interesting to ask ourselves what traits and accomplishments we admire. Why do we choose this role model over another?
A couple years ago, I offered as an icebreaker to the attendees of a conference an amusing exercise. The room was divided in small groups of three to six people. I asked the participants to share a couple of example of people they admired whether they were fictional or real. Once each participant identified who qualified as their hero I asked them what traits they admire in theses heroes. The participants presented and explained to their teammates what they appreciated in their hero? I asked them what values were incarnated in their hero. After they distinguished the values that stood out for them they came to realize how much that particular value meant to them and even how sometimes they were praised for acting out this same value.
I think we are drawn to our heroes because they emulate something that is already a part of our essence that we yearn to express. Identifying our core values leads us to what I believe to be an element of our essence (in my training we work around five main core values per person). I doubt we fully get to choose who we are, or that we are solely the product of our environment. However, I would not venture to estimate in what proportion nature/nurture is involved in the making of an individual.
Needless to say that getting to know oneself is a life long process, nevertheless, identifying certain basis such as your needs, values, current tolerations, boundaries and standards will enable you to make conscious decisions and deliberately live from a more purposeful place. Revisiting intentionally and regularly tolerations, boundaries and standards is necessary. There is an undeniable fluidity of life to which we have to respond with a certain degree of improvisation and adaptation. We evolve and morph to answer circumstances and events as they occur. It is easier to do so when we have clarified who we are fundamentally in order to stay true to our essence and be authentic.
Knowing yourself well enough is part of being grounded and better prepared for the terrible as well as the great that we are all called to face at some point or another. Identifying tolerations, needs, values, boundaries and standards comes from the coaching training program I took and it is called Personal Foundation. There are many tools of personal assessment and self-discovery available. I found the tools from my training to be helpful and it provided me with long lasting and significant insights on myself. Whether you use these particular tools or come across other tools of self-discovery, what matters is to set aside some time and effort to take on the task of clarifying for yourself what constitutes being true to yourself in order to design your future.
Rather than taking on tasks and resolutions that you think should be on your list, give yourself a chance to discover what will contribute to make you the best version of yourself and that is truly resonates with you. Exercising three times a week may be among your resolutions but is it because you should and it makes sense or because you want to be productive and energized? Maybe at this time you want to read more because you feel you are behind in your field and that to excel in what you do is what you value above all. By coupling your values with your centers of interests while you clarify your ideal you are setting your compass. It makes you more time efficient and more deliberate.
With clearer intentions you are establishing an authentic focus on what activities and relation will serve well your personal development and you make it easier for yourself to overcome your ability to talk yourself out of the steps you know to be necessary. You nourish your sense of purpose and you increase your motivation. Your investment in your centers of interests will help you to find inspiration and the connection to your core values will help you maintain the relevance of your efforts in your own eyes. What is in it for you? There is nothing more driving and elevating than a true sense of purpose. You are on a mission. For this purpose to be meaningful to you, which infuses life to your purpose. The meaningfulness comes from how it resonates with you. This self-discovery process may take you down a long rabbit hole but the alternative of living like a robot, programmed, running on automatic, and operating from empty and meaningless is repelling to any sensible individual.
As a result of dedicating time to understanding yourself better, you are developing your ability to make conscious decisions oriented towards the edification of yourself. As you are edifying yourself up, choosing thoughtfully the building blocks only makes sense. Once again, you only have so many resources and your efforts have to be invested wisely.
If my top value is excellence and my objective is to take my business to the next level, because it is less than in an excellent position and I know I can offer more, what do I need to put in place to reach this objective? Well, excellent health appears crucial. To be sickly and running on fumes is obviously counter-productive. What concrete actions will help me to achieve excellent health? This amount of exercise and those modifications to my diet seem necessary for a start. This amount of sleep is required to function at an optimal. To regulate my stress I need to spend this amount of time doing these particular things. It is also critical that I excel in my field; therefore I determine what base of knowledge I have to acquire. What books and/or courses I think relevant? What would be a realistic program for me to educate myself can I set up?
As the questions and answers unfold we are weeding out superfluous considerations and zero in the indispensable, designing a plan of action composed of specific actions. This plan of action will possibly be called to morph over time in order to respond to circumstances or as new knowledge and opportunities are made available. In which case, to have an ideal outlined gives us a structure to make relevant and desirable choices. The ideal also may evolve over time in its details but if we did effectuate some serious soul searching, the ideal we have outlined based on what we connect to our core will provide us with a strong base to stand on.
