Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 238 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Your Life Plan Blueprint – Planning Goals #1

Thank you for joining us for our 7 days a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 238 of our Trek, and we are continuing on our current Trek Your Life Plan Blueprint. Yesterday we completed our trail of how to effectively set strategies for your objective and activity goals using the 10 guidelines. Today we are moving onto the 4^th phase of our WESPER framework which is planning.

As a review, the Wisdom-Trek life planning system is built on the six-step WESPER framework. Those steps are Wisdom, Establish, Strategy, Planning, Execution and Review. Since our life planning series does cover many days, if you miss any of our Wisdom-Trek episodes, please go to Wisdom-Trek.com to listen to them and read the daily journal.

I am incorporating all of these daily concepts along with worksheets into an easy to use workbook, and I will let you know when it is complete so that you can download it. If you have any questions or would like additional information as we go through our daily trek, leave a comment on Wisdom-Trek.com or email me at guthrie@venturecg.com.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at The Big House in Marietta, Ohio. We did end up with about 10” of snow on Friday and Saturday, and it is beautiful. The temperatures were not too cold, so it was a perfect winter snow.

On Saturday, we were able to remove the ceiling tiles and wallpaper from the upstairs hallway and front stairs, so that area is ready for our renovation contractors to begin on Monday. Hopefully, they will be able to finish up their part in the next couple of weeks.

Let’s head on the trail for day nineteen of our Wisdom-Trek Life Plan process which we refer to as…

Your Life Plan Blueprint^©

Now that you understand why strategy is such an important part of goal setting which creates your life plan, you are now ready to move into the planning stage of Your Life Plan Blueprint. Planning is primarily the organization of your long-term objective goals broken down into your short-term activity goals.

As A. A. Milne wrote, “Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.”

Proverbs 21:5

Good planning and hard work lead to prosperity, but hasty shortcuts lead to poverty.

Planning is the fourth step of our WESPER framework.  In the strategy step, you identify the overall principles to effectively complete your objectives and goals. In planning, you use the strategy principles to develop a fully structured plan, complete with all the specific details. In this step and the next, which is execution, you will find that your organization skills play a very important role. Even if you do not consider yourself an organized person, organizational skills can be developed and effectively implemented by following the Wisdom-Trek WESPER framework.

The objective of developing a goal plan within your overall life plan is to:

• Organize your tasks
• Allocate your resources accordingly

This will allow you to achieve your specified activity goals within your desired time frame. It will give you a clear understanding on how you invest your time and energy. If your plan is well developed, it will keep you organized in the pursuit of your objective and activity goals. If your plan is not well organized or if it is messy and haphazard, you will find your tasks get thrown into disarray and you lose focus when you are pursuing your goal.

As you proceed with planning, below are the key guidelines to use.

1. Develop Your Plan, Five Steps to Success

Step-1: Establish 1 major 7-year objective for each of the 7 areas of your life.  Don’t be afraid to make it a B³ objective – one that is Big, Bold, and Brave. As part of the process, ask yourself why you desire this objective over and over until you have a clear reason for the objectives you set. Make sure that each objective is congruent and consistent with your life purpose and that all areas of life are balanced. Write them down. As a reminder, the 7 life areas in your wheel of life are:

1. Spiritual
2. Family
3. Physical/Health
4. Mind/Intellect
5. Personal/Social
6. Financial
7. Work/Career

Step-2: For each of your 7-year objectives, ask yourself, “What will I need to accomplish by the end of Year 1 to be on track to meet my 7-year objective? What is your specific checkpoint to compare against?” This 1-year goal will have tasks or activities associated with it, but specific details are best left for the next three steps. Write down your 1-year goal in each area of life. Repeat this step at the beginning of each year.

Step-3: For each of your 1-year goals, ask yourself, “What will I need to accomplish by the end of Month 1 to stay on track to meet my 1-year goal?” You will start listing a few more detailed tasks or activities, but granular tasks are left for the final two steps. Write down your 1-Month goal in each area of life. Repeat this step at the beginning of each month.

Step-4: For each of your 1-month goals, ask yourself, “What will I need to accomplish by the end of Week-1 to stay on track to meet my 1-month goal?” This goal should be specific, measurable, and clearly understood. It is crucial that you reach this objective. Write down your 1-week goal in each area of life. Repeat this step at the beginning of each week.

Step-5: For each of your 1-week goals, ask yourself, “What do I need to accomplish each day of this week to stay on track to meet my 1-week goal?” These are no longer goals but detailed specific and measurable tasks that need to be accomplished each day of this week to meet your 1-week goal. You should verify every day that this step is completed before the end of each day.

As you can see this 5 step process begins with the end in mind and breaks down life planning into smaller and smaller digestible nuggets. While we keep the larger objectives in mind, our primary focus becomes what we need to focus on today and this week. If we accomplish our daily and weekly tasks, then the monthly, yearly, and 7-year objectives will take care of themselves.

Since we determined our Why as part of our 7-Year Objective, as you create your daily tasks in each of the 7 areas of life some guiding questions should be:

• Who: Who is required to perform each task? (That will typically be you.)
• What: What is the full list of tasks you need to undertake? What are the action steps needed to trigger each task? What resources do they involve?
• When: When does each task need to be performed? How regularly does each task need to be performed? (Usually daily.)
• Where: Where is each task supposed to be done?
• How: How is each task going to be executed?

Be clear on your key strategies and the prioritization of your tasks for success, which we discussed in the previous two days. These are the core and important guidelines that will make the most impact on the goal. Strategy needs to be set before planning, which we will explore further during the next couple of days.

On our trek today, we began our examination of developing your goal plans which is the 4^th step in our WESPER framework. Tomorrow we will explore how to fit planning the actual tasks into your schedule. We are hiking our life plan trail with determination as we lay the foundation and build Your Life Plan Blueprint. This framework integrates into our concept of Wisdom-Trek as we look at life as a trek, taking one step at a time. So encourage your friends and family to join us and then come along tomorrow for another day of our Wisdom-Trek, Creating a Legacy.

 That will finish our podcast for today. As you enjoy your daily dose of wisdom, I encourage you to help us promote Wisdom-Trek in the following four ways:

1. Leave us feedback about the podcast on Wisdom-Trek.com so we can continually improve.
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Thank you for allowing me to be your guide, mentor, and most of all your friend as I serve you through the Wisdom-Trek podcast and journal each day.

As we take this trek together, let us always:

1. Live Abundantly (Fully)
2. Love Unconditionally
3. Listen Intentionally
4. Learn Continuously
5. Lend to others Generously
6. Lead with Integrity
7. Leave a Living Legacy Each Day

This is Guthrie Chamberlain reminding you to Keep Moving Forward, Enjoy Your Journey, and Create a Great Day Every Day! See you tomorrow!