Success Secrets and Stories
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Success Secrets and Stories
Crafting a Visionary Life Plan: Insights from Mike Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy
Unlock the secrets to a fulfilling and purpose-driven life with best-selling author Mike Hyatt. Ready to transform your future? Tune in as are hosts of Success Secrets; John and Greg shares the groundbreaking Life Focus approach, designed to make life planning enjoyable and effective by gamifying the process.
Together, author Mike Hyatt with co-author Daniel Harkavy, and their book "Living Forward", they delves into the core elements of creating a powerful life plan, from understanding your core values to defining your mission. They tackle common obstacles like writer's block and emotional hurdles, ensuring you're fully equipped to map out a life that resonates with your deepest aspirations.
This episode also spotlights the importance of defining your "why" and setting SMART goals to make your dreams actionable. We'll guide you through creating a vision for your future that excites and motivates you, with practical tips and insightful prompts related to love, mind, and work. Don't miss out on these invaluable insights that could change the course of your life!
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
Well, hello and welcome to our podcast, success Secrets and Stories. I'm your host, john Winoloski, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Powell. Greg, hey, everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So this podcast we're going to be covering an article from a gentleman called Mike Hyatt, and he is a best-selling author and creator of the Full Focus Concept. Author and creator of the Full Focus Concept. In one of our previous podcasts we discussed one of Mike Hyatt's other articles, and this discussion today is going to be on. I think a key element or a key product of his company called Life Focus, and Life Focus is available on the website. Oddly enough, it is kind of straightforward, so his company's website is fullfocusco. So if you want to look it up, it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:The article that I wanted to talk about today is an article that Mike Hyatt put together called Creating a Life Plan. A little bit about Mike is he's a former chairman and CEO of Thomas Publishers, thomas Nelson Publishing, which was the largest faith-based publisher in the world and now part of Harper Collins. He is a New York Times bestselling author and has lived a life by a plan. I think that's interesting. His blog, I should say MikeHyattcom is highly ranked on Google's top one one and a half percent of all blogs. So, needless to say, he's a good publisher and he's very good in terms of advertisement and marketing. But he had an interesting description of life plan, greg, maybe you should start us off on creating a life plan.
Speaker 2:Thanks, john. So when creating a life plan, mr Hyatt, there's a first reality. He has met very few people who have a plan for their lives. Most of the people he's interacted with are merely spectators watching their lives unfold a day at a time. It leads nowhere good. Usually it leads to disillusionment and discouragement. That's why Daniel Harkavy and Mr Hyatt co-authored the book Living Forward several years ago. It became one of their best-selling books, providing people with the wanted help with life planning.
Speaker 2:So you thought some people, some part of us, knows we need to life plan. We know it. It's one of those things like we know we need to save money, but we know we need to have a life plan. He also said we know we don't drift to destinations we would have chosen. We just don't do that. We want to dream big dreams for our lives. More than that, we want to turn them into reality when we sense a life plan. It's the way there. What's the trick? The trick is how do you do it? So the book Living Forward attempted to answer that question. Living Forward attempted to answer the question.
Speaker 2:There's a lot in the book and he still loves and believes it, but he wants to be honest and tells us, there are two realities that he thought were overlooked as we were writing. The first reality is this Most people aren't writers. John and I joked about that. Duh, this isn't something that we were writing. The first reality is this Most people aren't writers. John and I joked about that. This isn't something that we were born with. Mr Hyatt's a writer, I even found. Sometimes himself he was intimidated. It's not that he didn't believe the life plan was important. He definitely believed that, he said, because it was so important. He wanted to get it right, but he struggled to know how to generate the best possible ideas or how to find the right words to capture those ideas.
Speaker 1:And when you know, I thought about how this his first reality, how many times that I was talking to people near retirement and they were making comments like I can't believe I'm at the end of my career. How did this happen? They were like surprised. Time passed them by that fast and the things that hold you back, like him as an author, wanting to get it right, knowing a lot about this subject and had that I don't know it's writer's block, and knowing a lot about this subject and had that I don't know it's writer's block, or. But that that sense that I want to get it right before I actually put it on to print, it's just another delaying tactic. Whether whether it's intentional or not, taking that first step is usually the hardest one. So Mike goes on to the second reality.
Speaker 1:A lot of people find creating a life plan emotionally difficult. In living forward, we have people reach into the future and imagine their death. But some people find it hard to do and I don't blame them. Still, I remain committed to the idea of life planning. I thought it was important and I wanted to help people understand that creating a life plan it isn't entirely satisfying with a solution. Until now, the team put together a process that's called Life Focus, not just a little sidetrack. This is a little bit of an advertisement about a product that they put together, and I don't normally try to sell a product, but this is an interesting product and he explains a little bit of why.
Speaker 1:So you know editorial commentary. I'm not trying to sell a product. I don't make anything on a product. It's just an interesting concept. He goes on and continues to say that this product gamifies life planning to make it simple and even fun, and words that you'll use. There's an 11-card deck that is fit and tailored as necessary. We also refined the process and that was the interesting idea that I had of looking at this subject and how it would be applied. He goes on.
Speaker 1:The very next section of what he's talking about and how this gamified approach to life planning is, as he defines it, start with your heart and I think, if you think about it, the whole part about life planning is where do you start? And he's trying to give you at least those beginning steps. Your first step is creating a life plan to consider who you are at your core. Specifically, you need to know your values and your mission. Your values are the core ideas that you hold that shape your decision making. We all have values, but we rarely make them explicit. Naming them helps us understand ourselves and it helps us make decisions with more intention or intentional living in the element with who we were inspired to be. Well, how are the houses going to drive us to that end result. We suggest that your life plan includes seven to five values, and they have this deck that is easy to zero in on what matters to you the most. Then you can define it on what it means to you. So he gives an example of one of his one to seven values. One of his values is growth, and he goes on to describe if I am fulfilling my God-given potential, I must consistently grow and learn. With God's help and some effort on my part, I can change and figure out almost anything. I had a quote from one of the teachers that I had when I was confused, and he stopped me and he said John, this wasn't done by divine magic, this is a math problem. You can do this. Man created this solution. Man created this equation. You have the capacity of doing it yourself. So instead of helping me, he encouraged me, and that's the same thing that we're talking about in terms of values. Where do those values come from? He gave me one of those values that if somebody else could think it and come up with a solution. So can I? Let me get back to his text.
Speaker 1:As Mike continues, I was struck by how identifying my values helped me with the next step defining my mission. Your mission is what you are here for on earth to accomplish. It's made up of three parts. Your role are the parts that you play in the world. One of my roles is to be a coach. It's not just a formal position, it's how I show up in the world. I wanted people to become all that they can be. That desire flows from everything. Your impact includes the ideas that desire you to go further. Part of my impact is to help people believe in the bigger, brighter future. That is the why that we created the life-focused concept he continues with, I think, very interesting concept. Once you know who you are, you need to define what you want. It is essential as part of creating a life plan. After all, we're talking about your life Now. Greg, I think you had an example of what do you want to do with your life that you had from your girlfriend at the time.
Speaker 2:Thanks, john, I did. This is way back in college days. Back in those days, especially in the Midwest, you'd get whatever job you could to make money. That job might be working in a restaurant, it might be working at a steel and pipe supply place, roof trusses very physical jobs, honorable jobs, good paying jobs, because you could always get overtime in that. But it wasn't what I wanted to be long-term.
Speaker 2:Nothing wrong with the jobs. In fact you could work really well in management in those kind of situations. But I remember she said you'll have to start to dress like and act like the role you want to be in. And she said there's this place. It's a painting and decorating center. They'll teach you how to run a register, you'll greet customers, you'll fulfill orders, you'll do some deliveries and really get that experience that you don't necessarily have today, that you're going to want in the future. And she was absolutely positively right. And, interestingly enough, I actually interviewed with that company for a full time position. But I got the job I wanted at another company. But it was just that little prompt from her that made me think differently. You know, there was nothing wrong with those jobs. They're great jobs. Pay was fantastic, but that's not how I saw myself moving forward. I wanted to be a manager someday, a leader someday, and if you don't start at some point, it's never going to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and when you were telling me that story, I just remembered my dad and he made this wonderful comment. My dad had physical limitations and he was in the trucking field and I'm in the trucking field. We were both mechanics and he made a great quote that at the age of 60, what you can do as a 20-something is a lot different than what it feels like in your capacity and health is going to be different when you're 60 years old. Do you want to be a mechanic at 60? Well, there are mechanics that are 60 years old. But he was trying to make a point. If this is the life choice that you're making, then so be it. But don't be surprised if the body starts to fail you as you hit 60, because you can pick up all the weights and the heads and the engines that you want at your 20-something age and you're fine. It's not going to be the same when the body starts talking back to you as it was doing it to my dad, and you might want to look at your life choices.
Speaker 1:So we both had those moments in time where people who were close to us were trying to say is this what you want to be when you grow up? Is this. It Is that your focus. That test was the litmus paper that we both looked at each other and said, okay, there's something else I want to do. So, as we're going through this article, we just want to try to bring up the points that hit home for us. Hopefully, this article is hitting home for you. Greg, you want to pick?
Speaker 2:it up from there. It's essential to think about all nine life domains in order to achieve the double win. Those domains include body, mind, spirit, love, family, community, money, work and hobbies. What should you put in each of the domains? Well, that's where the cards come in. They provide prompts that you can write word for word in your life's plan or tailor to fit your life. Let me give you an example. There's a few we call love prompts. We have worked through significant pain and built a relationship we both love.
Speaker 2:Hopelessness matters. The past doesn't define the future, making space for deep and open communication for both of us. Frankly, I want all my close relationships to look like that. Or my partner wants to be more myself. Who would I be without my wife Gail? That's what he's saying.
Speaker 2:What about mind? Your thinking and feeling are crucial to consider in any life plan, but often overlooked. So here are a few of those prompts. My mind is a place of order and peace. Yes, or I'm a clear thinker who can process information reliably that skill is more important than ever in an era of fake news or I keep a clear head and untroubled heart by constraining my social media and news consumption. I've been reading the news less than ever before. My wife, gail, will tell you she's done wonders for my thinking and our relationship.
Speaker 2:So narrate your future continued. Let's take one more domain. How about work? I'm working less than 40 hours a week without compromising my results. Less than 40 hours a week without compromising my results. I wish I had that kind of vision early in my career For your business owners, for you guys. I have hired multiple team members empowering me to focus on my highest contribution. I recommend starting with an executive assistant. One card we left out. I take a sabbatical each year. It's incredible, gets a chance to recharge those batteries, give inspiration. And he said he would write that in one of the blank work cards and they might even add it to the next time they update the kit. So I think you get the idea. Narrating a powerful vision for each area of your life is crucial to life planning and with the product Life Focus they've made it a little easier. But a vision alone isn't enough.
Speaker 1:It'd be kind of nice if we could have created our own sabbaticals. Not all of us are CEOs, right?
Speaker 2:Teachers are the only other ones I know that take sabbaticals. There you go.
Speaker 1:So he continues in his article Nail your why. Just like goal setting, it's crucial to connect with your vision logically and emotionally. Then create a life plan. Your life plan only works if you are connected to the why. It matters. What's at stake, what do you have to lose and what will the vision make possible? And what will the vision make possible? The only thing I love about this system is the way that it ties it all together. When you are thinking about why your image of the future matters, you can turn back to your mission or to your values. How does this imagining the future empower you to live into what you are going to become? That's the crucial question for any life plan.
Speaker 2:Greg charting your why. So next up is how you'll accomplish your life plan.
Speaker 2:We hope you answer the question by focusing on milestones, for example, one year three years or five years, and habits that go along with that Both help you begin to make progress towards your imagined future. Excavate who you are. Imagine a future you can't wait to live. Connect with why the future matters and then turn it into actionable objectives and you can start walking out tomorrow. When you follow these steps, you can leverage life planning to take your goal achievement further than ever before. This author can imagine no better way to build a brighter future than with the product life focus. The future is yours. The question is what will you make?
Speaker 1:is yours. The question is, what will you make of it? And that was there is the sales pitch. I get it, but it's an interesting product. His Nail your why is, I think, the essence of what this book really helps drive people and why I think it is a very good product. Because the why is really that magical key of what makes your life plan important to you as the individual. And he's trying to force people to understand first that there's like a light mission statement that gets you started in the process and then breaks down the different components of it. They're not the same for everyone, they're different for different people. Obviously, sometimes he had suggested there's a group way of doing it. They have that as a product, sometimes because it's a game approach.
Speaker 1:I think you can have family help you with it, which I would not recommend because it's just not their values. It should be your values. But they can help you If you're stymied and you want to have some idea on what their views are. Um, as as long as I'm just a little little hesitant to be cautious when you're dealing with family, because they see you with the eyes of someone who loves you and that sometimes isn't so much just a life plan. You're trying to do career as well as life, so you might want to be careful. Anyway, I don't want to digress too much.
Speaker 1:When I was going through this and through Dr Durst's program on management by responsibility, he had the same thing. Mike Hyatt used the word SMART goals, but Dr Durst defined SMART goals and it's pretty, I think, standard that they talk about specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic and truthful, and that's the definition of MBR SMART goals. And Dr Durst did a pretty good job of talking about how it should be applied and I'm kind of repeating the things and making sure it's your plan. But it was more like where do you want to be in one year, three years, five years? And hit it, put it down on paper. Don't just do it in a sense of having a plan and never writing it down. Write it down. This life focus product is a little bit more specific and it can help you organize your thoughts to make that smart goal a reality.
Speaker 1:It, it. It helps with the mechanics of that planning and, yes, I'm a mechanic. I love things that are measurable. I love things that have a pattern. I get it that. That's part of my DNA, so I had to be cautious Greg and I talked about this. I think the point that Greg said is, yes, these are elements of leadership and it does reinforce leadership, so I'm hoping that this particular podcast has helped you put something into your toolbox, which is, by the way, the name of my book Building your Leadership Toolbox book building your leadership toolbox and, yeah, I think this is one of those tools that you should have in there, especially if it's a challenge and you can't come up with that five-year plan. This could be that tool that would help you create that five-year plan mentality. So, if you like what you've heard, yeah, my book again, if you didn't catch it, building your Leadership Toolbox is available on Amazon and Barnes Noble websites. You are listening to us, so thank you.
Speaker 1:And our podcast is available on other popular formats like Apple, google and Spotify. Dr Durst's books and his MBR program is available at successgrowthacademycom, and my email address is wando75.jw at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:And, greg, your email address is I can reach at gpowell374 at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the music is brought to you by my grandson. So we want to hear from you. Drop us a line. We love to get your input and it has modified some of our podcasts and I think it adds to value, so we appreciate hearing from you. Well, greg, thanks.
Speaker 2:Thanks, John, as always.
Speaker 1:Next time.