Managing your Evolving Achievements Binder

Have you captured all your goals, dreams and ideas for your future on paper? Are they organized in a meaningful way to you? If you haven’t heard of this idea, you’ll want to read my blog post on the Evolving Achievements Binder. Hopefully your many goals have been captured on paper, and you’ve been inspired to take further action.

After you’ve put together your Evolving Achievements Binder, you’ll still need to manage it. There are a few good reasons why you should regularly review, dust off, clean, and re-organize your evolving achievements binder (aside from the fact that it’s fun to do!).

When I was reviewing my binder just the other day, I came across my health and fitness section, and noticed that it had literally exploded in size. I had inserted so many different resources, and pictures of all the new weight lifting exercises that I had been doing at the gym. I actually ended up taking out the majority of that section, and I started a whole new resource binder for my health and fitness. Now, my binder is much more organized again. I can easily go through and read what my future goals are with respect to my health and wellness, without getting distracted. I also realized, that I’ve probably accumulated more than enough information to write a small e-book on this topic! Perhaps I’ll have to start another blog just on that topic alone.

When I was reviewing all my goals, it was interesting because I noticed myself saying out aloud, “Oh I’ve already done that”, and “I just started doing that!”. Unless I reviewed my goals, I wouldn’t have realized all that I had accomplished. Also, I had never made those goals my key priority, and had never consciously set aside time to work on those goals. I think that demonstrates the power of simply writing goals down. Somehow, the act of writing down our goals must communicate with our subconscious mind, and as a result we automatically begin taking action, and attracting those people and resources into our lives to make things happen.

I also realized the importance of translating all our goals into habits. Daily, twice a week, weekly or even biweekly habits. If you can’t make something a habit, then rarely would those goals ever turn into reality. The areas where I felt I was having the most progress, e.g., career and fitness goals, were the areas where I had done significant planning around how to turn some of my action steps into habits. For instance, I set the goal of spending two times per week writing in my book, and in doing so, I almost doubled the length of it.

Each time you read about your dreams, you’ll notice that you will read with a new sense of clarity, because your ideas have had more time to crystallize. Or, you might have had more time to think about developing actual plans to take further actions steps.

I’ve also discovered a few little ‘goals’ and ideas that aren’t even important to me at all. At first, when I jotted them down, they seemed like good ideas, but in retrospect I’ve learned that they are meaningless. So you’ll also benefit as you discover your authentic self, and more of your values. Likewise, I also read over a few goal categories that made me feel really scattered and overwhelmed. Clearly, those goals need further development. So, I’ve planned a time to go back and prioritize or rank all of those goals. Over time our big ideas evolve into something more serious. What we value will come into the forefront of our mind, and that which isn’t so important to us, will fade out a bit.

Finally, regularly reviewing your Evolving Achievements Binder will constantly remind you of what is most important, and it will help you stay on track. Just think about the people that don’t write their goals down at all. If you seriously review your goals each month, you are going to speed up the entire learning process around who you are, what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to do it. More importantly, you’re going to be unstoppable because you’ll constantly find yourself in action!

Cheers,
Allison

Personal Improvement Review

What is it?

What is a personal improvement review? A personal improvement review involves you reflecting back on your past and outlining in detail every single achievement, improvement, or positive effort that you’ve put forth in your life. I personally recommend doing this every three months, or possibly every six months. The more often you do this, the greater your chances for accelerating your life success and satisfaction.

I’ve focused on the word “improvement” instead of “achievement” because achievements consist of many improvements and efforts that build upon each other over time. If I asked you to only outline your achievements, you might feel a bit disheartened because you didn’t accomplish everything that you’d hope for.

The truth however, is that you’ve probably taken many deliberate efforts and steps to turn your dreams into reality. Although you might not see the final tangible outcome (if there is one), you must train yourself to all of the small or large amounts of time, energy, resources and efforts that you’ve invested into your goals. Those investments deserve to be noticed, celebrated or at least acknowledged in a positive manner.

Don’t simply wait for the grand finale when your entire goal is realized. This could take many days, weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime. It’s best to congratulate yourself on the mini-steps you’ve taken, and all the learning lessons that occurred along the way. After all, with each learning lesson, you’ve moved yourself closer toward your goals.

Who is it for?

Who is the personal improvement review for? Anybody who is completely serious about enhancing their personal growth, continuously improving their life satisfaction, along with achieving their life goals should be reflecting back on their personal improvements and achievements.

Benefits

What are the benefits to doing to a personal improvement review?

• Enhanced self-esteem. When you see how far you’ve come and how much you have invested in yourself, you can’t help but feel good about who you are. You’re essentially telling yourself that you’re worth it!
• Realization of how intelligent you are. When you reflect back and understand just how much you’ve learned, you feel a sense of relief that you haven’t been remaining stagnant, and that you are actually moving forward, and closer to your goals.
• Increased locus of control – you begin to see the correlation between your personal actions and the outcomes in your life, even if those outcomes are simply learning lessons
• Gives you a reason to ‘celebrate’ or to do something positive for yourself
• Increased motivation to stay persistent in working toward your goals. Therefore, you are less likely to feel discouraged, and give up because you don’t see the final outcome that you are looking for
• Learn from your successes what is actually working, so that you can continue doing more of it. Learn from your mistakes so that you can identify what areas of your life require sharpening.

If you never reflect back on your life performance, how will you know what areas of your life are improving, and, if you are improving, how will you get a better sense of how you’ve improved? You might even find patterns of strengths or weaknesses developing. For example, I knew a woman who made such great strides in her career when she opened up her own business, but as a result her health suffered drastically. Within a year, she had gained over 25 pounds as a result of stress eating. She also had high blood pressure, and was diagnosed with diabetes. Even though her bank account had grown in dollars, her weight had grown, and her health suffered. Imagine if she had sat down, and done a review of her performance in each area of her life? Perhaps she could have nabbed this weakness as soon as she gained five or ten pounds, compared to the 25 pounds.

Likewise, I once had a client who was achieving many of his travel and leisure goals, but it happened all at the expense of his savings, and he wasn’t ok with this. He was able to nip this one quickly, when he sat down and took the time to actually reflect on the negative consequences to his net worth.

Often times, we know what is working and what isn’t. We know what is going well, and what isn’t. However, unless we sit down to strategically think about all the different areas of our lives, and how our actions or lack of actions are affecting us, nothing truly sinks into our brains, and we don’t do anything about it. If you haven’t already, you’ll want to get into the habit of consistently evaluating how far you’ve come with your goals in each area of your life. Overtime, you can’t help but get better. Wherever attention goes, energy flows, and then the results will start showing up.

How?

I recommend pulling out your evolving achievements binder, and starting a new section just for your personal improvement reviews. Start one page to list all your improvements and achievements, and start another page where you’ll list what didn’t go so well. It is beneficial to examine all areas of your life, including health/wellness, finances, career, leisure, personal growth, relationships and spirituality.

Some people prefer to evaluate their success by the area of their life, or some simply brainstorm all their achievements on the same page. If you choose this latter approach, you may even wish to go back and the organize your achievements by life area. You could even formalize the process further, by typing it up on your computer and printing if off.  Organize yourself however you’d like. As long as you do the exercise.

Where?

Complete your personal improvement review preferrably in an inspiring, uplifting, or comfortable environment, one that also gives you enough privacy so that you can fully concentrate on reflecting back. One of my friends James, checked himself into a nice hotel in his home city, so that he could celebrate the entire process of not only documenting his improvements and accomplishments, but also so that he could celebrate the fact that he was even doing the actual exercise!  To this day, James is one of the most successful people that I know, – both financially and in terms of pursuing what he is most passionate about. I’ve seen him make dramatic improvements and changes in his life, all for the better.

Good luck getting started!

Cheers!

Do You Struggle with Personal Goal Setting Motivation?

When it comes to personal goal setting and achievement motivation, do you have a burning desire to understand how to achieve your goals? Are you eager to ensure that you follow through with those goals?

If you are like me, and are the type of person who is passionate about personal achievement and motivation then you’ll want to try my free online goal setting program. Try the most comprehensive and free, online goal-setting and motivation program on the internet! Learn the principles that all successful people need to apply, today!

As early as grade 10, I had encountered a personal goal setting audio program, – Anthony Robbins’ 30 Days to Personal Power.

I can still remember this moment – I felt an explosion of hope and positive energy grow within me. This instance led me to read hundreds of books and listen to many audio programs on personal goal setting and human achievement.

So, as a result, I became sold on the idea that I had the potential to be, do, and have whatever I wanted in life. I felt so grateful – as if I’d encountered a magic genie, a money tree, or the secret answers to personal success (I still feel this way about personal growth seminars, audio programs and books by the way!!).

The only problem however, was that sometimes weeks, months, and even years would go by in my life, without me having committed to the personal goals that I had originally set for myself I was pretty sure that I knew how to set goals.

I had so many questions running through my mind – Was I not organized? Was I not disciplined enough? How did I forget about some of my goals? Why didn’t I stick to my action plan? Grrrr! I’m sure you can relate to some of these experiences as well!

I realized early in life that setting goals and writing down objectives is not enough. In fact, once you learn how to set smart goals, the easiest part is over! The second, and more difficult task, is learning how to follow through with those goals.