Life Mapping – A Vision of Success

First off, I would like to say Happy New Year for everyone! I seriously hope that this New Year will bring lots of success for you in your personal and professional lives.

I would like to dedicate this whole article to Success in Your Professional Life. What is Success, really? Well, according to the Webster dictionary, one of the definition of success is: a degree or measure of succeeding; b: favorable or desired outcome. Favorable or desired outcome – that’s it! For me personally, this is the most important definition of success. Success is more than economic gains, titles, and degrees. Therefore, planning for success is about mapping out all the aspects of your life. Similar to a map, you need to define the following details: Origin, Destination, Vehicle, Backpack, Landmarks, and Route. So, let’s get started!

Origin: Who you are

A map has a starting point. Your origin is who you are right now. Most people when asked to introduce themselves would say, “Hi, I’m Jane and I am a 17-year old, senior high school student at JFK High School.” It does not tell you about who Jane is; it only tells you her present preoccupation. To gain insights about yourself, you need to look closely at your beliefs, values, and principles aside from your economic, professional, cultural, and civil status. Moreover, you can also reflect on your experiences to give you insights on your good and not-so-good traits, skills, knowledge, strengths, and weaknesses.

In my case, upon introspection, I realized that I am highly self motivated, very analytical and detailed-oriented. I can start a project of something that’s totally new to me and finish it without much hand-holding guidance. I started blogging using this Word Press platform by reading bunch of word press material from various resources online. I didn’t even know what kind of content to put in my blog and how to present it. All I know was I wanted to share what I’ve learned and applied while marketing my Network Marketing business using the Internet. I also know how it feels like to spin the wheel doing the traditional Network Marketing prospecting, chasing after anybody within the 3 feet of me to no end, going to hotel meetings and feel pumped up afterward only to be shot down by the next person I approached! It feels like $*#@ Whenever I had to do the 3 foot rule prospecting, I felt like I have invaded the privacy of a person that I just approached out of the blue at the grocery store check out line, at the mall etc. I knew that I hated every minute of this kind of prospecting! I also like to help other people by giving them resources/information to whatever information they need to know. To top it all, I value freedom very much! Freedom to do whatever I want (within some moral boundaries of course!), whenever I want to do it, with whomever and where ever I want to!

Destination: A vision of who you want to be

“Who do want to be?” this is your vision. Now it is important that you know yourself so that you would have a clearer idea of who you want to be; and the things you want to change whether they are attitudes, habits, or points of view. If you hardly know yourself, then your vision and targets for the future would also be unclear. Your destination should cover all the aspects of your being: the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.

In my case, after I found out that I hated the traditional way of Network Marketing prospecting because I felt like I have invaded the privacy of a person that I just approached, I came to a point where I had to make a decision: keep doing what I have been doing and been taught to do (i.e. the traditional Network Marketing prospecting) or find a new way to prospect. At this point, I was ready to choose the first option and live with its consequences, which would be hating every minute of my prospecting. But if that’s something that needs to be done to make it in my Network Marketing business, I was so ready to tough it our as I am so ready and determined to make it! Luckily, I didn’t have to take that route as I ran into the Renegade Network Marketing by Ann Sieg. I learned a lot from the Renegade Network Marketing about marketing my business the right way, the much less painful way Through the Renegade Network Marketing, I also learned about Affiliate Marketing. In the context of the Renegade Network Marketing, Affiliate Marketing is promoting other people’s products that you think is valuable, in your marketing effort, to your customers. If your customers buy what you’re promoting, you will make money as some percentage from the proceed of the sale. The percentage is determined by the product owners.

Putting it in the context of vision, I would like to be a Network Marketer who’s sought after by prospects because I am committed to providing value for them by sharing the online resources that I have come across in my never-ending quest for the better and more effective Network Marketing prospecting and marketing using the Internet. After reading the Renegade Network Marketing by Ann Sieg, I now understand this marketing concept: Be a value provider first, and the money will follow!

Vehicle: Your Mission

A vehicle is the means by which you can reach your destination. It can be analogized to your mission or vocation in life. To a great extent, your mission would depend on what you know about yourself. Based on my own self-assessment, I decided that I am suited to become an entrepreneur. My chosen vocation was a Network Marketer and Affiliate Marketer. To describe my vision-mission fully: To live a free life while helping other people to achieve free lives as well! And I believe that the Internet Network Marketing and Affiliate Marketing are the right vehicles to reach my ultimate destination: A FREE LIFE.

Travel Bag: Your knowledge, skills, and attitude

Food, drinks, medicines, and other travelling necessities are contained in a bag. Applying this concept to your life map, you also bring with you certain knowledge, skills, and attitudes. These determine your competence and help you in attaining your vision. Given such, there is a need for you to assess what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you have at present and what you need to gain along the way. This two-fold assessment will give you insights on your landmarks or measures of success. I realized that I needed to learn how to use the Internet as the marketing tool for my Network Marketing Business. That is, if I want to stop doing the traditional Network Marketing. I wasn’t really anticipating to find tons of information on the Internet about marketing my business and finding prospects online when I first started doing my research. As I progressed in my research, the tons of online resources that seemed to be a blessing at first, quickly turned out to be a nightmare! I got overwelmed! I really didn’t know which internet tools that I needed to use to get started. Is it keyword research, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or PPC (Pay Per Click)? If it’s keyword research, which tool that’s good to use, Keyword Elite or Wordtracker? If it’s SEO, do I want to use the SEO Elite or other SEO software? Do I even want to try PPC? How about this Social Networking sites like Facebook and Myspace and Social Bookmarking like Digg and Del.icio.us? And since I’m very thorough and detail oriented, I have this tendency to want to learn all the resources that I’ve come across first before I start implementing what I learned! The result was information overload on my end and nothing much to show! I knew that something had to change to be a succesful Internet Network Marketer and Affiliate Marketer. This realization was what prompted this blog: InternetNetworkMarketing101.com. With this blog, I can share and implement what I learn about Internet Network Marketing, and help other Network Marketers learn the same. Talk about killing 2 birds with one stone!

Landmarks and Route: S.M.A.R.T. objectives

Landmarks confirm if you are on the right track while the route determines the travel time. Thus, in planning out your life, you also need to have landmarks and a route. These landmarks are your measures of success. These measures must be SMART - (S)pecific, (M)easurable, (A)ttainable, (R)ealistic, and (T)ime bound. Thus you cannot set two major landmarks such as earning a master’s degree and a doctorate degree within a period of three years, since the minimum number of years to complete a master’s degree is two years. Going back to my case as the example, I’ve identified some landmarks/milestones in my life map. These landmarks/milestones can also be called sub-goals. One of my sub-goals would be being a full time WHAM (Working At Home Mom) 3 years from now. Let’s see what’s so SMART about this goal.

• Specific:

A specific goal has a much bigger chance of being accomplished than a general goal.

To be a full time WHAM (Working at Home Mom) in 3 years gives me a sense of direction on when I should reach my ‘pitstop’. If I don’t have this sense of direction, I would be wandering off everyday doing other things that may not have any contributions to my goal achievement. To me this is specific enough. Some people might state their goal with something like “I want to be a Wall Street Hedge Fund Manager managing portfolio that’s worth $50 billion in 3 years”. Sound familiar?

• Measurable:

Set tangible criteria for measuring progress toward the achievement of each goal you set. When you measure your progress, you stay on track, reach your target dates, and experience the thrill of achievement that spurs you on to continued effort required to reach your goal. Ask yourself questions such as: How many? How much? How will I know when it is accomplished? to determine if your goal is measurable.

• Attainable:

When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to think of ways to make your goals come true. You develop the abilities, skills, attitudes and financial capacity to reach them. Goals that may have seemed so far out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable, not because your goals shrink, but because you grow and expand to match them. When you list your goals you build your self-image. You see yourself as worthy of these goals, and develop the traits and personality that allow you to possess them.In my case, I never thought that I can ever have a blog that will actually generate Google organic traffic in less than 6 months time, with part time efforts. However, it has happened because I have identified the goal of becoming a full time WHAM in 3 years as being one of my important goals to succeed in this business, and I’ve brought myself up to develop the abilities, skills, attitudes necessary to reach my goal.

• Realistic:

Your goal must represent a goal toward which you are both able and willing to work. A goal can be both high and realistic; you are the only one who can decide just how high your goal should be. Your goal is probably realistic if you truly believe that it can be accomplished. Additional ways to know if your goal is realistic is to ask yourself what conditions would have to be present to accomplish your goal or find out if you have accomplished anything similar before.

In my case, with the assumption that there will be no significant changes in our lives (the ‘conditions’ aspect of being realistic), 3 years seem to be realistic for me. Being realistic in setting your goal is important because you want to work on a goal that you can adhere to without feeling too much pressure (mind you that I didn’t say ‘any pressure’, as some sort of pressure is actually healthy and needed for your goal setting purpose) that can lead you to a stressful life instead of a fruitful life. You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps

• Time bound:

A goal should have a time line. With no time line tied to it there will be no sense of urgency. If you don’t have that sense of urgency, then you will think that it’s not that important to achieve that goal within some specified time line. This sense of urgency are usually determined by internal vs external factors and positive vs negative factors. Internal factors and positive factors such as sense of pride, wanting some life changes and wanting to be independent are often times less effective than the external and negative factors such as fear of losing your job, worrying about the downturn in the economy, worrying about not being able to put food on the table for your family, fear of being made fun of etc. I’m not a psychologist, nor do I pretend to be one. However, I’ve noticed that the external and negative factors almost always functions as one’s strong reinforcement to achieve one’s goal.

Also, setting a deadline for your goal almost always results in your setting your unconscious mind into motion to begin working on and towards the goal.

In my case, I’m planning to achieve my goal 3 years from now. If it happens sooner than that, that’s even better!

Anticipate Turns, Detours, and Potholes

The purpose of your life map is to minimize hasty and spur-of-the-moment decisions that can make you lose your way. But oftentimes our plans are modified along the way due to some inconveniences, delays, and other situations beyond our control. Like in any path, there are turns, detours, and potholes thus; we must anticipate them and adjust accordingly.

Be firm with your goal, but be flexible with the execution

Remember to enjoy life with your loved ones and your close friends! Money comes and goes, but your loved ones and your close friends are here to stay with and for you, and therefore, should not be taken for granted. When things don’t go your way, you can mourn, but not for too long because life is just too short to be spent in sorrow incessantly.

Lastly, go out there and start mapping your life!

I’ve also found these other materials that are worth reading as your New Year openings:

1) How To Get Everything You Want In 24 Hours

2) 2009 Planning Guide – My Christmas Gift To You!

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Tagged as: Attainable, Goal Setting, Keyword Elite, Life Mapping, Measurable, Realistic, Renegade Network Marketing, SEO Elite, SMART, Specific, Time Bound, Vision of Success