How to get clear on your commitments – and stay out of overwhelm!

Hey everyone, it’s Pat here. So I was just down in the exercise room and getting my second workout of the day done, and there was a gal who came in. She said, “I saw you in here this morning, working out. How do you make time for that and how do you have time for that?” That was the question. “How do you have time for that?”

So through my workout I was thinking about her question, and I was thinking about the fact that I get that question a lot. How do I have time for fill-in-the-blank? And so I decided when I finished my workout, and that’s why I’m just a bit sweaty here and I’m still in my workout clothes, but I wanted to get this out to you while it’s still fresh in my mind and fresh in my brain, and it’s Monday. What a great day to be addressing this topic.

The question was how do I have time? My decision is to title this “commitment” because I want to bring this all together for you and share a simple process that works for me, and talk about the fact that many people these days, I see it all the time, I see it in a personal perspective, I see it professionally, I see it organizationally, where people make commitments and then they abort. They back out. They back out on their word, and I believe it’s becoming an epidemic, and professionally, just not acceptable.

So how do we get clear on our commitments and how do we stay out of overwhelm? I’ve narrowed this down to a few key points.

I believe and I see that people do not honor their commitments and do not follow through once they’ve made an announcement, “I’m going to do this, I want to have that, I want to achieve this.” It’s because they don’t have a clear vision for that commitment. They’re not clear on their why. They don’t have a clear vision. And there’s a few sub parts to that.

When you don’t have a clear vision, typically, then you don’t have a clear plan, and without a plan, there’s typically no accountability. Therefore, it’s easy to back out of your commitments. So for me, being down in the exercise room here, when I’m home and in town, to work out twice a day is easy for me because I have a clear vision on what I want to look like and feel like under the category of healthy aging, because that really is my focus.

The big vision for me is healthy aging, and the smaller level, when I look at my life as a whole, I focus on health, wealth, and happiness. I’m very clear when I get up each and every day what the vision is, what the commitment is, because then I’ve set specific goals and I’ve matched those goals through to the action steps, and as importantly, when I make a commitment, and this one in particular is to me. To me, for me. Not to anybody else. When I make a commitment I stick to my word, and that works for me. It doesn’t work for many of you.

So I wanted to talk about it today for a few reasons, but one in particular. I want to invite you to a free session I’m going to do on live stream on Thursday of this week. It’s going to be Thursday at 11am Eastern. I’m going to do it on live stream. I’ll post the link here. It’s going to be like a mini workshop on how I pull this all together. The first document that I work from, and I’m going to post the Word document in here to get all of this going, is what I call a life balance wheel. It’s very simply this. A very simple life balance wheel.

I’ll post this. I’ll add it as a document, because for those of you who want to join me for this free training on Thursday, you’re going to want to do this as part of your pre-work before coming to the session on Thursday.

Here’s the zoom link for Thursday’straining: https://zoom.us/j/6277889378

I’m going to walk you through and show you how I create the vision for my life, for the year. I know a lot of you have been to vision board workshops. I know that. You’ve read about it, you’ve done them, but typically, that’s where it stops. So when people say to me, “Why are you so successful at it?” Because there’s a few more steps that people don’t follow through with. So yes, it’s a matter of doing the life balance wheel to get a snapshot of your current reality, but then to follow through and create a vision board. So for me, I got a piece of Bristol board. It’s very inexpensive. It’s a buck from the dollar store.

I got yellow for joy for this next round that I’m going to do. So get a piece of Bristol board, and that’s going to be your blank canvas. You’re going to move from the life balance wheel, which is your pre-work, then get a piece of Bristol board.

Oh, by the way, with the life balance wheel, get yourself some nice colored pencils. I like doing things in color, and yellow is joy for me. You’re going to want green, because we’re going to talk about money. That doesn’t look green on the screen, but it’s green for money, and blue is for fun. So get yourself some colored pencils for when you do the life balance wheel.

Then you’re going to want a piece of Bristol board, and on there, from the life balance wheel, we’re going to focus just on three areas in your life. That’s all you need to focus on. Listen, life can be overwhelming. Let’s keep this simple. That’s my strategy.

For the Bristol board, for the vision board, you want to get yourself some cards or some magazines with words on it, because a vision board doesn’t have to be just pictures. I have cookbooks that I’m going to be pulling pictures from. I’ve got travel magazines, and that is actually on my vision board. You know me. I like to travel. So I’ve got that, I’ve got People Magazine because I love entertainment. I’ve got, well, look at that, more travel. I swiped that from Air Canada. I’ve got the Oprah Magazine. Yes, seize the day.

So I just decided, out of frustration, for you more than me, because I do so many private messages around this all the time, I thought, what the heck, let’s just get together and do this. So Thursday, 11am Eastern on Zoom, and if you’re interested in joining me for this free training, just put “Me” in the comments here. Just raise your hand and put “Me” in there.

Here’s the zoom link for Thursday’s training: https://zoom.us/j/6277889378

I’m not recording this. It’s going to be live. It’s going to be free. It’s going to be me. It’ll be 45 minutes or less. I’m going to walk your right through my process and show you the end result.

So what difference will this make? Listen, there’s a lot of people who say to me, “Well, I don’t have the time for this. I have as much time as you have. We’ve got 24 hours in a day. If you’re anything like me these days, you can see that time is just flying by. That’s why I like sitting by my clock over here. Over here. Time is flying by. We all have the same amount of time. I choose to embrace health, wealth, and happiness right now. I believe most people do. You just don’t know the process.

The vision for me, like I said, is on my vision board. The plan for me is that I create three goals under each of the three categories, and I hire a coach. I have a fitness coach. I work with a fitness trainer. That’s why I’m down in the gym again this afternoon. What Jeff has created for me, to bust through a plateau, is a twice a day workout. Now, you can sit back and say, “Well, I don’t have time for that.” You make time for it when you decide that your health is a priority, and I have made that decision. So it starts with the decision, then make the commitment. I have a coach. Listen, I pay him. Why wouldn’t I do the work? And he knows what he’s doing.

So I’ve got the coach, I’ve got the goals, and the other reason that many of you don’t follow through on your commitment is because there’s no accountability. When you’re not accountable to someone, what the heck. I’m going to encourage you and challenge you on Thursday to establish some credibility and some accountability in your life. I’m accountable to me first and to Jeff secondly, because he brings his expertise to my workout and to my nutrition. So yes, I’m accountable to him to get some results.

Now, I also have a private health and wellness group that’s running in Facebook. That’s another reason I was kind of getting on this rant today because so many people have said, and it’s voluntary, “Yeah, it’s private, but I want in, I want in, I’ll do the work, I’m committed, I want to improve my health, I want to eliminate sugar, I want to lose weight, I want to sleep better.” So I bring them in, yeah, and they’re good for a while, but then when it comes down to doing the work and being accountable, and showing up and being engaged in the forum, they go dark.

I mean, is that you? Think about it. How many times in your life have you made a commitment to something and you’ve aborted, you’ve gone dark? What’s that doing to your level of self-confidence? What’s that doing to your professional image or reputation? What’s that doing to the power of your own word to yourself?

So again, it’s my mini rant for the day, and yeah, I made a commitment to me but I want to make a commitment to you too. So many people again, have asked me about my process. It’s the life balance wheel, the vision board, setting the goals, moving it through to an action plan, moving it into your calendar, get some accountability, and away we go.

That’s what I’m going to be covering in more detail on Thursday, 11am Eastern. If you know anybody who you believe would benefit from this personally, professionally, organizationally, then hit the share button on this and have them join me too.

I’m going to put the document here for the life balance wheel, so you can just download it and do the work before you show up, and then yeah, show up. I’ll put the Zoom link in as well and we’ll do a reminder on Thursday morning.

So join me, won’t you? Raise your level of commitment to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to your colleagues, and boost that power of your word to yourself. Bottom line, take charge of your life. I’m happy to help you with that. I hope you join me. See you on Thursday. Bye everyone.

Here’s the zoom link for Thursday’s training: https://zoom.us/j/6277889378