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Clarifying Your Vision: Free Time and Health

Work to live or live to work?  I’ll take the former.  And what good is free time without good health?  The following are steps 3 and 4 of the 7 steps to clarifying your vision.

Free Time:

  • What are you doing with your family and friends in the free time you’ve created for yourself?  We spend a lot of our time traveling to new and interesting locations.  Our family takes two annual trips: one to a tropical location and the second to country or location we have never been before.  When we are not traveling we spend time together reading or doing outdoor activities such as hiking or various sports.
  • What hobbies are you pursuing? I participate in Ironmans, marathons and perhaps even ultra-marathons.  I have a team of friends that complete an adventure race every year or two.
  • What kinds of vacations do you take? Exciting and adventurous vacations.
  • What do you do for fun? Finding challenging things to accomplish.

Health:

  • What is your ideal vision for your body and physical health? Great shape.  Superior condition. My physical body is able to complete long, challenging endurance races and my mental mindset does not interfere with these accomplishments.
  • How long do you live? I’m alive and active into my 90’s.
  • Are you open, relaxed, and in an ecstatic state of bliss all day long? You bet.
  • Flexible and strong? Yes – I need to work on this.
  • Do you exercise, eat good food, drink lots of water? Yes.  I’m a conscious eater and exercise frequently. 

Clarifying your vision is a tedious task.  It’s difficult to fully capture everything succinctly.  It’s probably best to consider this a constant work in progress.  As your ideals and visions change, you should update the different sections of your vision to reflect those changes.

Are you clarifying your vision?  Share it by posting a link in the comments.

Posted 05 February 2010 † Greg Scharlemann § success principles ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Clarifying Your Vision: Finances

Everyone wants financial abundance.  It’s only natural to want to have enough wealth to support your family and afford a decent lifestyle.  I like to think that my vision for our financial situation isn’t drastically different from others.  It includes both active and passive income.  A “job free” lifestyle, supported by our investments, indefinitely.  The amount made in annual income is arbitrary as long as it covers the appropriate expenses.  Suppose for example my current lifestyle costs $5,000 a month (between the mortgage, insurance premiums, car payments, groceries, cable and utility bills, etc.).  What if your passive income streams each month covered all of those expenses and any active income (from a regular job) was just a bonus?  That is my ideal vision for our finances. More specifically:

The Financials:

  • What is your annual income?  Passive income that supports all monthly expenses and active income that is not needed, but allows for additional discretionary spending.
  • What does your cash flow look like?  Continuous passive income and as much active income as I’m interested in
  • How much money do you have in savings?  Enough to pay off all liabilities if needed and cover expenses for a rainy day.
  • What is your total net worth?  The amount of money needed for “job free” lifestyle (and a stress free retirement)

The Home:

  • What does your home look like?  An old craftsman style home that has been fully restored and modernized.  Large porch on the exterior and painted in earth tones.  The interior will have very detailed moulding, hand scraped hardwood floors, an upgraded kitchen and contemporary furnishings.  Here’s a good example:


  • Where is it located? In an old neighborhood with homes of similar architecture and restaurants and amenities within a short walking distance.
  • Does it have a view?  A view of water (ocean, lake, etc.) or urban skyline.
  • What kind of yard or landscaping does it have? Highly manicured lawn and professional landscaping architecture throughout the property (both front and back).
  • Does it have a pool? Yes, one that accommodates friends and family, but also works for swimming laps.

Other Items:

  • List what kind of car you drive and any other possessions your finances have provided for you.  I’m not a car guy, so anything that is fuel-efficient works for me.  Other possessions: an upgraded road bicycle and kick ass laptop.

After going through this process for the second time, the first time being my vision for work and career, it definitely helps to define what your ideal world looks like.  It’s difficult to conceptualize some of these things, but taking the time to think it through will help as life progresses.


Posted 03 February 2010 † Greg Scharlemann § success principles ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Clarifying Your Vision: Work and Career

Work and Career is one of the 7 categories to help clarify your vision. The following is my response to these thought-provoking questions:

  • Visualize your ideal job or career
  • Where are you working?
  • What are you doing?
  • With whom are you working?
  • What kind of clients or customers do you have?
  • What is your compensation like?
  • Is it your own business?

My Vision: Work and Career

My work is location independent.  I have the freedom to work from anywhere in the world.  Despite the freedom to move around, my work is still challenging and provides a lot of opportunity for creative problem solving.  In fact, I am involved in several different ventures that require different skill sets.  One project is investing in real estate.  I will travel the globe reviewing financial proformas for real estate investments, both commercial and residential.  When I’m not reviewing real estate deals, I’m working on several web-based projects and applications I’ve founded or invested in.  I virtually connect with my team and partners to review strategies for these businesses and brainstorm other opportunities that we are considering.  My most passionate venture amongst the group is supporting social entrepreneurs.  I’ve founded a forum to promote entrepreneurship in underdeveloped and underserved countries.  As my career progresses, I spend more of my time focused on developing opportunities for those that most need them.

Do to the nature of my business, I continue to write about the successes and failures we experience online and have attracted a decent following of business professionals and other entrepreneurs willing to provide comments and insight on the items I write about.

I have an ownership interest in everything that I do and my compensation is based on the performance of the real estate investments and the other projects we have launched.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think?  What did I miss?  How is your work and career vision alike or different?  Define your vision, don’t worry about how you are going to get there.

Posted 01 February 2010 † Greg Scharlemann § success principles ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

7 Categories to Help Clarify Your Vision

Success Principle 3 (cont.) – Your Vision

The second part to Success Principle 3 is determining your vision. We determined what we wanted earlier with the “I want” lists; clarifying your vision expands on that with detailed descriptions of what the destination looks like.  There are seven categories to use to help clarify your vision:

  • work and career
  • finances
  • recreation and free time
  • health and fitness
  • relationships
  • personal goals and
  • contributions to the larger community

What’s the best way to document these?  I set aside an hour several days in a row and visualized where I was going and what I wanted my life to end up looking like.  I took notes, capturing the details of my vision.  I’ve written a narrative that describes in detail my vision for the seven categories.  It would be a long a boring post for me to re-write those visions here, so I won’t do that – at least not all at once.  Canfield suggests sharing your vision however.  He writes:

You might be afraid that your friend will think your vision is too outlandsih, impossible to achieve, too idealistic, or materialistic. Almost all people have these thoughts when they think about sharing their vision. But the truth is, most people deep down in their hearts, want the very same things you want. Everyone wants financial abundance, a comfortable home, meaningful work they enjoy, good health, time to do things they love, nurturing relationships with their family and friends, and an opportunity to make a difference in the world. But too few of us readily admit it.

Over the weekend I will add my vision for the seven categories on this website.  They may come across as materialistic, idealistic, or something else.  It may not align with your life’s vision whatsoever.  As irrelevant as it may seem to you, it’s a vision, something to inspire you to write your vision for your life.

Once your vision is complete – review it everyday.  Keep it active in your conscious and subconscious mind.  Help it manifest.  How will you know when you have arrived if you don’t know where you are going?

Photo Credit: mind_scratch
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Posted 29 January 2010 † Greg Scharlemann § success principles ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

30 Things… to be, to do, to have

The third principle of success is to decide what you want. You can’t get from where you are to where you want to be without knowing where you want to be. The instructions: make an I want list. 30 things you want to do, 30 things you want to have and 30 things you want to be before you die. One of the reasons people don’t get what they want is because they haven’t defined what they want. Define what you want in clear detail.

I want to do…

  1. complete an Ironman
  2. raise $12,000 to fund three libraries for Room To Read
  3. help build the school or library we funded
  4. hidden
  5. learn how to speak Korean fluently
  6. start and own a business
  7. live internationally for a few years
  8. write a book, get it published and sell 100,000 copies
  9. build a successful web project that attracts 1MM visitors
  10. give a motivational speech to a large crowd
  11. motivate and inspire others to make change in the world
  12. develop others into successful people
  13. cycle across the continental United States
  14. compete on a game show like the Amazing Race
  15. vacation on a remote tropical island
  16. play soccer and baseball with my children
  17. a million dollar real estate deal
  18. pay off all of our debt
  19. a road trip to visit all 48 continental United States
  20. watch at least one Major League Baseball game in all the stadiums in the US
  21. donate a million dollars to entrepreneurs in developing countries
  22. build a Habitat for Humanity home
  23. go skydiving
  24. teach a college course
  25. perform 25 pull-ups and 200 sit-ups
  26. create something useful, market and sell it
  27. snorkel at the Great Barrier Reef
  28. meaningful work that I enjoy
  29.  
  30.  

I want to have…

  1. a happy, healthy, passionate and loving family
  2. open-minded, well-educated and successful children
  3. a great relationship with God
  4. a financially comfortable life
  5. no debt
  6. an abundance of time to pursue my passions
  7. a fun and adventurous marriage
  8. great opportunities
  9. great health
  10. a stress free life
  11. happy, healthy and fun pets
  12. a business – to be my own boss
  13. a real estate investment portfolio
  14. passive income streams that support our family
  15. ability to pursue all opportunities
  16. a vacation home abroad – Italy or somewhere similar
  17. a nice house with a fenced backyard and mature trees
  18. great friends with similar interests and passions
  19. an in-home gym
  20. a comfortable home – mortgage free
  21. all of the best tech gadgets
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I want to be…

  1. an entrepreneur
  2. developing creative solutions: at work and at home
  3. successful in life: personally and professionally
  4. environmentally conscious
  5. a great listener
  6. inspirational to others
  7. happy and healthy all of my life
  8. satisfied with what I accomplish in life
  9. motivated and motivational
  10. a role model for my children
  11. the best dad ever
  12. confident
  13. fun
  14. testing my comfort zones
  15. making a difference
  16. an advocate for equality
  17. helping others
  18. a real estate investor
  19. a world traveler
  20. satisfied spiritually
  21. location independent
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This is a work in progress.  How’s your list?  Need help brainstorming?

Photo Credit: sgrace


Posted 26 January 2010 † Greg Scharlemann § success principles ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: ,