Future Proofing - Level 1 Meaning & Purpose

Given the circumstance that we all find ourselves in business today and in honour of my first mentor in speaking and coaching the great Dr. Denis Waitley - who first introduced me to the concept of Future Proof - I intend to outline a 9-point future-proofing programme of personal development in the coming weeks

This Futureproof programme is a powerful facilitation exercise that can assist you to make important decisions about what drives you, your career or your business, how you present yourself to the wider world and how to increase your influence and your sense of professional control about the future.

Through a series of over 90 thought-provoking questions I want to guide you through nine key developmental levels:

1. Meaning & Purpose

2. Vision

3. Control & Influence

4. Work/Life Balance

5. Performance

6. Communicating and Influencing

7. Profile and Personal Branding

8. Sales and Business Development and

9. Delegation.

When faced with crisis and change on an everyday basis many of us tend to reflex or to react unconsciously to what is going on around us. 

This kind of response (while sometimes appropriate) can often create more problems for us as we tend to allow ourselves to get ‘dragged into’ the problem and therefore end up constantly ‘fire fighting’ while not making any significant change in our circumstances.

The stress and the sense of a lack of control over things just continues to grow – along with a fear of the future.

 

The unique and powerful set of questions in this programme can help you to move to a position of ‘reflection’ rather than ‘reflexion’ allowing you to effortlessly move to a more (and therefore usually more effective) considered response rather than a ‘knee jerk’ reaction response. 

Level 1: Meaning & Purpose;

Living a life based on meaning and purpose is the one

certain way of living a life full of personal fulfillment and satisfaction.

However, we do have a tendency to compare and contrast ourselves (usually materially) against the lives that others lead and often find ourselves wanting in that process of comparison.

There will always be those greater and lesser than we are. It is the nature of things. But living a life that we have chosen, a life that resonates with our values and our true spirit, is the only life that will provide us with the sense of a life well-lived that we all seek.

Having some understanding of what is meaningful for us is a powerful thing. For some, it takes a lifetime of seeking. The following questions however may help you on that journey. Sit back, relax and listen.

1. Why do you do what you do? Why is it of value or of importance to you personally?

2. How would you rate the importance of what you do for you - not your business or your company or your team? What drives you? What is your fire? What animates your soul?

3. How do you feel about what you do? What do you get personally from your business or your career that you truly value?

4. Are your mental images of yourself at this time in your life/career in synch or in balance with the work or the role that you do? Are you where you wanted to be at this time in your life? If not –what do you need to let go? What do you need to build on?

5. What do you understand as a meaningful life/career? What do you understand as personal fulfillment – what do you feel or see when you think of it?

6. If you could do something - anything - else, that would have even more meaning and value for you – what would it be?

7. What could you change, such that, if you were to change it, would create even greater meaning and personal fulfillment in your current career or business or role for you?

8. What specifically would you need to do to change that? What actions must you take?

9. How might we go about making that happen? What first steps could begin the change to a life well lived?

10. By when would you like to see this in place – when will the idea become reality for you?