As humans we have a deep rooted desire to make our world better. While this may sound crazy when you see someone tossing trash on the freeway, it is true. The problem the person tossing out the trash has is their view of the world. A person with a small view of the world only sees what is right in front of them. When they toss the trash on the road, their little world inside the car got better, our bigger world got worse.
There is a middle ground where a lot of people fall. You might be one of them. You feel stuck in the asme place in life, maybe stuck where your parents are (or were) or where your friends are. You might have tried to fix this with self help seminars teaching business success, life success, or personal success. You might have bought books that offered to help you get to the next level. And yet, most of the time after you read a self help book or attend a seminar, you start out feeling charged and empowered, only to feel like nothing changed a month or a year later.
One of my goals has been to change that with my work. In many ways I had made significant changes and we encountered a different problem.
It Started About Business Success
When I created the Whiteboard a Great Life Tools several years ago, It started out focused on helping business owners get their businesses into a profit zone they wanted. It There were simply two columns, "Wants" and "Don't Wants". Within weeks I would see a change in my clients business. I called the tools a success.
Many success coaches will tell you to focus only on what you want. This is a big mistake. I think it is critical to know what you don't want as well. By simply knowing what you want AND what you don't want, you become a better decision maker. For instance if you want steak but end up at a place that serves chicken and fish, which do you choose? Do you turn into that person who says "You guys go first..." If you know you want steak and don't want fish, then your choice is set, and you can quickly and authoritatively ask for the chicken. You have just improved your decision making skills.
Even picking the restaurant might be easier if you know you want steak and not fish and your companion doesn't want steak. Chicken quickly appears as the middle ground.
Right now it might sound funny that I use a restaurant analogy for a business tool, but the reality is the Whiteboard Tools are all about making better and faster decisions. Knowing up front what you want and don't want helps to speed up the process. This is one key ability of people who get more done in less time. Simple decision making skills. Decide and move on. Life is short.
But What If You Don't Own A Business?
After a while people asked for my help that didn't own a business. In that case at that time I wanted to find them one or help them find a better job so I wrote "So, Now What?". After two years of research I began to understand that the "Wants" and "Don't Wants" would come easier if people understood where they were going. My next quest became helping people understand and visualize their destination. This is different that a vision board. A vision board is about stuff. Visualization is a tool to help you define what impact your life had on the world as if you have already left it.
When you can visualize this, you can start moving towards that end. Not before.
Financial Success Was Next
The next Whiteboard Tool became the Financial Whiteboard. Many people who owned a business that was profitable didn't have a plan for the money so they just spent it. This is also exactly what I did when I created my first company. I had visualized the end game for the company, but not the money. I hadn't thought about my "Wants" and "Don't Wants" when it came to money.
What I saw amazed me. I had no idea how differently some people think about money. Some were so paranoid they ended up wanting cash in a mattress, others wanted to put it all on the 00 and let it ride.
This is where conflict and congruency between the "Wants" and "Don't Wants" really started to pop out. People wanted their money working for them and then considered dividend stocks not aggressive enough, and didn't want to own rental or investment property, nor did they want to invest in startups.
You could see quite quickly that many people were setting themselves up to fail simply by making all of the "Don't Wants" restrict all of the "Wants" to the point they had no teeth and couldn't make any money.
The bottom line was they felt guilty finding a way to make money without "work". This was a new and fun challenge for me. They could see a better life and better financial success and were subconsciously blocking their ability to succeed.
It All Ends With Personal Success
At the end of the day your personal success is the most important mission. Whatever you call successful is what you should be trying to achieve with these (or any other) tools. What I call success isn't relative to your life and therefore shouldn't matter to you.
Maybe it all begins with personal success? If you start out knowing what you want and don't want, then making the decision of what job to take or business to own should be easier. If you start with the personal success whiteboard tool first, you might be on the right track to hitting your stride much quicker.
This is where I hit on something. My wife and I started with the Personal Success Whiteboard Tool 4 years ago when things weren't going the way we wanted and weren't hitting goals in other areas of our lives.
With all of these tools and many others, using the tools can help you make some big leaps forward in life. The problem is these tools all have a limited lifespan and need to be revisited. Once a year is probably good enough. Twice if you really are moving forward at a fast rate or not moving at all.
I was starting to see a couple of my longer term clients hit similar walls. Wiping the board clean and starting over helped, but there was still a problem. A column was missing, that I had never accounted for because I don't have kids.
Life Has "Challenges"
We added a new column called "Challenges". It became the weight that makes changes from "Wants" to "Don't Wants". It also became the column that helped open people up to include a bigger circle in their genuine "Wants" and "Don't Wants". Hard decisions and difficult feelings come out at this section.
For instance, when my wife and I moved from Texas to California, we created a challenge we didn't realize. Simply put I handcuffed myself to my house with some pretty big golden cuffs. Now I also hold the key. I can sell the house at anytime, and that is the key. The mortgage is a challenge if I choose to take time away from my business to pursue other activities.
Another challenge is our dogs. Just like having kids, they change your life. I can't close my business sell my house and move to a studio in Hollywood to become the next great comic because I have two big and fast dogs that need work and space to run. If you have kids, getting them to move can really be a challenge. Asking them to move to a smaller house, will likely end you up in the dog house.
Very quickly we saw the value of the "Challenges" column. When you stand back and look at all of the "Wants" and "Don't Wants" and then let the "Challenges" cancel out anything and every thing they touch, you have to ask some very tough questions about why you want or don't want something, and what can you do to fix or overcome the challenge? You could tell the kids we are moving and that's life. I could give away my dogs if there was some want greater than the connection I have with my dogs.
The initial outcome is that the dogs stayed on the board and a lot of "Wants" and "Don't Wants" were lined out. They weren't erased though. The male dog is older and the lined out "Wants" and "Don't Wants" led to the conclusion and agreement that when his time comes he will not be replaced with a new playmate for his much younger sister. She will become a really spoiled dog.
One of the items that didn't get lined out was my big truck and my new car. The big truck is now hauling dogs for someone else, and as you might already know I got a new Chevy Volt. There was a tradeoff with the dogs, and for a while the two of them are a little short on space when we take long trips in the SUV. The tradeoff of getting a new car keeping the challenge of the dogs was longer driving, more stops on trips, and a little less time with the dogs around town.
So if you have a whiteboard started, go ahead and add that "Challenges" column and let me know what you think.
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Thank you for your insights.