Personal Development Digest #1

Know What You Want

In Peter Voogd's audiobook The Entrepreneur's Blueprint to Massive Success, one of the first things he asks you to do is define what you want and most importantly WHY. Sounds easy, right? It is. Sort of. If you can really look hard at the person you would be if you could be. This first step I took the things that I've been dreaming of on the "when my health improves" and "someday, when I retire" lists and made a road map of what I want and why.

Well, quick(ish) note first off, what I want from blogging about my personal development is accountability with my personal development. Why a personal development accountability blog? It doesn't particularly need to reach anyone, but I have found I perform at my best when I am held accountable, even by phantoms.

I have been a shy, inward-looking, passive dreamer, who feels things deeply and deals with things badly. While parts of this have to do with PTSD, Depression and Anxiety, for 2 years now I've been developing and honing coping skills to build a life that is worth living. I'm under no illusions that some day I'll be magically cured. This has been more than a decade long struggle. But I have shown myself again and again that I am resilient, and I've reached a place where I believe I am worth a life worth living.

What I want and WHY:

(The BIG one) I want to be financially free: the stress of balancing just enough work to pay for my health costs against just enough down time that my health doesn't cost me work time is precarious and actually causes me additional stress. I want to be financial free to not just find a better work-health balance, but actually cut out the need to balance it at all, be able to stick to my routines without sweating the small stuff. Moreover, I want to be able to afford to do more to improve my health and stress management, like affording routine acupuncture and massages to relieve built up tension; regular physiotherapy when my pain becomes really bad; going back to martial arts - if you have not tried it yet, find one that speaks to you and do it; and being able to take days off without worrying how the bills and the basic health costs will get paid.

Further down the track this big want also sets me up for my other wants, the things that certainly aren't possible under the present conditions. However the most important want and WHY to me is feeling in control of my health, and being able to give more to my own self-care.

Having defined the objective, in my next post I will expand on how this then breaks down into my first set of goals in my road map to building a life I want to live.

Action steps:

• What do you want that will improve your life and what is the root 'why' that is the strongest you can think of?
• Brainstorm what you can do to move yourself closer to your objective.