Category Archives: Personal Success

Career Success, Life Plan, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Passion, personal brand, Personal Development, Personal Success, Personal Vision, Planning, Secrets of Success, strategies for success, Success

Passion Matters If You Want Success

If you want to achieve anything worthwhile in life then there is a simple secret that successful people know.

The first principle for achieving success is passion and I absolutely believe that you have to have it in your life if you want to have access to the energy that is required to create success. 

Passion provides our energy, our drive for taking action, especially when those actions are hard and/or challenging. In simple terms we derive energy from our passions.
Try this quick exercise.

Stop and close your eyes for a moment think about your passion. It could be one or more of many things such as:
  • Playing a musical instrument
  • Singing
  • Physical exercise
  • Playing sport
  • Water based activities
  • Drama
  • Art
  • Reading
  • Gaming
  • Studying
  • Learning
  • Cooking
 This list doesn’t have an end! It could go on and on and on.

Once you have identified your passions focus on one of them and think about it, remember yourself doing, see yourself doing it. Notice what happens to your body when you start imagining yourself doing your passion.

When I ask participants in my programs to do this exercise you should see what I see! While their eyes are closed as they are imagining themselves doing their passion, whatever it is, people smile! It is as if they can’t help it. Smiles simply appear on their faces!

It just happened to you too, didn’t it.

If you require evidence that passions drive your energy then here it is! Just notice the smile on your face. 

However a sad fact is that as many of us get older, we stop experiencing our passions. Just when our lives get busier and more serious, just when we need more energy to create the success we desire, we stop living and experiencing our passions. If you think about it, isn’t that just plain crazy?

Our passions ‘leave’ our lives or they simply fade away from being present in our lives. Yet we need our passions in our lives in order to give us the energy to get through some of the less passionate things that we have to do. No matter how successful we become there will always be things that we have to do to create our success that aren’t the most fun in the world to do.

As you consider your passion or passions, are they present in your life now? When did you last experience your passion? When is the next time you plan to experience your passion?

Interestingly your passion doesn’t have to be ‘present’ all the time for you to benefit from the energy it provides. As an example many people have travelling as one of their passions. For many of us such a passion is ‘serviced’ when we have annual leave holidays from our work. So what people with this passion will do is book in and pay for their travelling experiences a long time in advance. As a result they have the positive energy benefits of looking forward to experiencing their passion.

If you don’t have a passion and can’t remember ever having one, you have a wonderful opportunity to include this in your Vision. For example. as part of your personal vision you could write, “In 12 months’ time I will be living and regularly experiencing at least one passion in my life.”

Remember, when planning for success it’s okay to write things down into the Vision section of your plan even when you have no idea about how they are going to be brought into reality. In fact, this is usually true for most things that you write down in the vision section of your plan and why writing them down is so powerful.

In wrapping up, what’s your passion or passions? How are you leveraging the energy that they generate?

Gary Ryan facilitates the OTM Plan for Personal Success® program. Click here to find out more about how you can create a plan for your personal success.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
OTM Plan For Personal Success, Personal Success, Personal Vision, Success, Vision

Knowing What You Really Want Takes The Stress Out of Your Future

Imagine living your life where your concerns, fears and worries about your career, wealth, health and relationships were 80% less than they are today. Does this sound like a fantasy? It’s not.

Over 5,500 people have discovered the power of creating a written plan for personal success. A consistent challenge that people face when creating their first plan for personal success is defining the future that they desire. many people describe ‘strategies’ instead of describing what they really want.

A common example relates to fitness and health. People will often say things like, “I want to lose 10 kilograms, this is the fitness and health future that I desire.”

Losing 10 kilograms is a strategic goal and while losing 10 kilograms is an outcome, it isn’t the ‘end game’. What the person really wants is the lifestyle that comes with being 10 kilograms lighter. That person wants to be more attractive, more able to move and have fun. That person wants more energy. That’s what they really want. 

Defining what people really want is something that a lot of people find difficult to do. Understanding why you want to be 10 kilograms lighter and why that is important to you are the keys to understanding what it is you really desire.

Focusing on the types of activities that you want to be able to do and visualising yourself doing them is far more powerful than focusing on a number, such as losing 10 kilograms. Dewitt Jones, acclaimed National Geographic photographer and an expert on the power of vision explains that the big visions in life shouldn’t be too focused, too tight. Rather, they should be both clear enough, yet loose enough to leave open a thousand possibilities to bring them into reality.

In terms of a whole of life perspective focusing on losing 10 kilograms is too tight a vision.

Focusing on being able to play with your children or grandchildren, being able to participate in a hiking holiday, or dancing with your friends are loose visions that have a multitude of opportunities to bring them into reality.

Losing weight may be a strategy that is required to enable you to keep the possibilities alive for you to bring your vision into reality. It is at this point that focusing not only on losing weight but on creating a new lifestyle where you can maintain the weight loss becomes critical. At this level of personal planning you become more focused on your goals and you take specific actions to achieve them. Actions may include engaging a personal trainer and training four times per week. These are what Dewitt calls ‘tactical visions’ and are more detailed and specific. They identify exactly what you need to do to bring your vision into reality

How do you know if the future you are focusing on is what you want or is a strategy to achieve what you want?

The easiest way to approach this question is to reflect on the content of your vision once it has been created. You will discover that you have a mixture of statements that reflect both what you want and the strategies regarding your approach to achieve them.

For each statement in your vision statement ask yourself, “Why do I want this? What will this really look like once I have it? What will I be doing when I have this?” and keep asking this question for each answer that you arrive at, possibly up to five times in a row (this is known as the Five Whys Technique).

In a financial context people often suggest they they want to be rich or to have ‘x’ amount of dollars as part of their vision. Once again having money is a strategy that enables you to do want you want to be able to do. Asking yourself, “Why do I want this money? What will I be doing with it?” can help to uncover what you really want and makes it so clear that taking the necessary steps to create the wealth you desire (legally, of course!) becomes more and more doable.

Why is it that people initially struggle with this challenge?
Having assisted more than 5,500 people establish their initial OTM Plan for Personal Success®
the facts are that less than 0.1% (that is less than ten) of those people had previously created a detailed or strategic plan plan for themselves. The reality for the vast majority of people is that creating a personal plan is something that they haven’t done before.

Like most things we do for the first time we are usually not very good at it the first time. This can be frustrating for adults because we like to think that we can quickly achieve an expert standard when we perform a new task, even though our experience has taught us that this isn’t really how we learn.

Learning to use iterative cycles when creating your plan for personal success enables you to more quickly establish a personal plan that both clearly articulates what you want and what you are going to do to achieve your vision. This means that you develop the skill to continually ask yourself, “Why do I want what I have just written? Why is that important to me?”

That said, having an initial plan is more powerful than not having one. David Ingvar’s ‘Memories of the Future’ research highlights the power of having a written plan. In this context having a plan is far more beneficial than not having one at all. If you create you plan and then become disciplined on reviewing it, say once every six to 12 months and also become disciplined at constantly challenging yourself to reflect on why you want what you want, you will, over time create plans that are even more powerful than your first plan. This is normal and part of the learning process that is associated with creating and living your plan for personal success.

Please visit here for more information on the options available for establishing an OTM Plan for Personal Success® and sign up for my regular newsletter here.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Development, High Performance, High Performing Teams, Karate, Personal Development, Personal Success, Public Speaking, Speech, structure drives behaviour

Learn how structures drive development – an example from karate

One of our close friends had invited our family to watch their 10 year old son Joshua complete his grading for his Black Belt in karate. Having been training in karate since he was six years old this was a ‘Big Occasion’ for him.

A crowd of over 200 people had assembled in the local karate club’s hall to support children from the age of nine through to 14 complete the requirements for their various Black Belt or First Dan assessments. The formworks and kata were performed to perfection to the delight of everyone. This was followed by various fighting stick assessments, jumping and tumbling kicks & strikes, a nun-chuka formwork and finally wood breaking strikes. Considering the ages of the children their performances were very, very impressive!

Finally, six of the boys and girls who were also being assessed for a special leadership award (which is specific to this club) took it in turns to perform a speech about leadership. As each child gave their speech on their own in the middle of the gymnasium floor, no notes in hand, a structure for their speeches became apparent. The structure was:
1) Introduce yourself and your age
2) Identify your favourite karate activity
3) Name a high profile leader of your choice
4) Provide a ‘key-point’ history of your leader
5) Share a quote created by the leader
6) Explain how the quote relates to your own personal circumstances
7) Thank your parents for their support
8) Thank the audience

While I had been highly impressed by the various karate demonstrations, I was astounded by the performances of these six children. It was clear that they all had different personalities yet each of them was able to stand up in front of a crowd of predominantly adults and provide their speeches. One of the children spoke about Ghandi and provided great detail as he shared an accurate account (including dates) of Ghandi’s life. This boy was nine years old!

It was also interesting to watch each of the children stumble at some point in their speeches. When this happened, each of them drew a long slow breath, gathered their thoughts and then continued with their speech. Imagine the pressure that could have been mounting and the ‘self-talk’ that could have been going on in their heads. Yet they remained focussed and completed the task at hand. It seemed to me that the children had been well taught with regard to the structure that they should follow in providing their speeches, including what to do when they lost their train of thought. It really was a delight to watch.

To me the high level of performance that the children were able to achieve was due to a clear structure that they had been provided in preparing for their speeches. No doubt each of the children had also practiced and practiced this structure, much like they had practiced their kata and formworks. Imagine the confidence that these children will have in their lives going forward. Many adults would run away as fast as possible rather than provide a speech in front of 200 hundred people. Yet these children did it and did it well. They will have that experience to draw on for the rest of their lives. As each child finished their speech the applause sounded like it was coming from 1,000 people and not just 200. It really was extraordinary to witness!

This experience once again highlights the power of having structures to support the outcomes that you desire. While the structures that the children used for their speeches may appear simple on the surface, their importance is no less valuable. What similar examples do you have where a clear structure has supported your own or someone else’s development? What stories are you willing to share with our community? What key lesson stood out for you from your experience?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Career Success, Happiness, Life Plan, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Personal Success, Planning, Success, Vision

Don’t plan your future – just live in the moment

“I don’t plan for my future. I live in the moment and everything works itself out. After all, I used to plan everything and then I got burned by my ex wife. Everything that I had been working for came crashing down around me. So living in the moment is what matters. You need to be happy now. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow.“

I hear this type of view fairly regularly. There is no doubt that it is a valid view for some people.

However, when I have the opportunity to drill down and ask a few questions from people who hold this view I discover that when they said that they used to plan for the future, the plans that they are talking about were in their heads and contained no detail about how they were going to be put into action. Their plans were really just high level goals.

When they then got “burned”, usually by their partner or their employer, they externalised the situation and believed that they had no control over nor contribution to the negative outcome. It was everyone else’s fault. It was also the fault of their plan, even though it wasn’t really a plan, it was just a list of high level goals. So that’s why they don’t plan anymore. It’s safer to just go with the flow.

My experience is that when you have a plan that includes your high level goals and what you are going to do to achieve those goals, you are more likely to be happy in the moment as you travel the journey of creating the future you desire.

Recently my eldest son and daughter provided such an example. My wife and I have clear plans regarding how we want to raise our children so that they are respectful, happy and contributing members of society when they are adults. The journey of implementing our plans is at times challenging as we balance teaching our children vital life lessons while enabling them to enjoy life at the same time.

On a Sunday morning when I wasn’t home my daughter noticed our 85 year old neighbour struggling to mow his lawns. Sienna called to her 12 year old brother who was still in bed to let him know what Joe was doing. Liam quickly climbed out of bed, put his clothes on and went across the road to offer his services. Thankfully Joe let him complete the task.

When I returned home and was told this story I was delighted. My daughter and my son had both seen an opportunity to help our neighbour and had taken action to do so. This was an example of the behaviours we are hoping to instill in our children for their future being lived today. Do you think my wife and I were happy in this moment?

Absolutely!

When you plan for your future and you know both why and how you are going to bring those plans into reality, your capacity to be happy in the moment increases. So planning for your future is not about post-poning happiness. It’s about doing the things that will enhance your happiness in the future, that also increase your awareness of happiness in the moment.

How are you planning for your future?

Gary Ryan facilitates the OTM Plan for Personal Success® Program. Visit here for information about this program.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Career Success, Life Plan, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Personal Success, Personal Vision, Personal-Plan, Secrets of Success, Vision

Carry Your Happiness Forward

“Gary, there are a lot of elements in my life that I am very happy with right now, so I don’t know that creating a plan for the future requires me to do anything. After all, I already have a lot of what I want in my life now.”, a program participant said to me.

“Do you want to continue to have what you are happy with now in the future?” I asked.

“Yes”, came the response.

“Did you have to do things to create the current level of satisfaction that you have in your life.” I inquired.

“Absolutely!”

“Okay. So wouldn’t it make sense that if you wanted to create a future that included many elements of your current life then you more likely to create that future by consciously putting strategies into action? This would ensure that you maintained those elements, rather than leaving them to chance.” I followed.

“Yes, there is no doubt that I would be more likely to carry forward the elements of my life that I am happy with by consciously putting strategies into action to create that future. I can see that even though much of the future I desire is that same as I have now, I still need to be conscious in my efforts to continue to create that future.

“Spot on!” I responded.

This brief conversation highlights a misconception that many people have about creating the future they desire. Irrespective of whether you have current elements of your life with which you are happy, if you want to continue to have those elements in your life having conscious strategies that you can put into action will significantly increase the probability that those elements will continue to stay in your life. This is how you can carry your happiness forward.

Otherwise you are leaving it to chance. If you have elements in your life that you are happy with, why would you want to leave them to chance. Take relationships, for example. Lots of people are happy with their relationships but don’t consciously put strategies into action to maintain and build on the strength of those relationships. Eventually, something goes wrong and the relationship breaks down even though the people involved never imagined that could happen. In many cases people will blame the other person for having ‘changed’. Yet they could have planned to change together and/or plan to be able to sustain individual changes.

What are the elements in your life that you are currently happy with?

How are you planning to keep those elements in your life?

Gary Ryan facilitates the OTM Plan for Personal Success® program which has now had over 5,500 people complete variations of the program.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Career Success, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Personal Success, Personal Vision, Vision

The Power of Questions for Creating Success

Less than 2% of the people I work with have a written plan for personal success.

A main cause for this number being so low is that people often say, “Gary, how can I write down what I don’t know? I don’t know exactly what I want for my future. And that scares me because it seems that I am supposed to know what I want!”.

I have now worked with over 5,500 people and helped them to create one version or another of their OTM Plan for Personal Success®. I have never had a single person who was not able to write down something that related to the future they wanted.

The evidence is overwhelming. Even when people say that they don’t know what they want for their future, they are able to write down future focused descriptions of at least some aspects of their life. You don’t need to know everything. In fact, knowing the direction that you want your future to go in is just as powerful, if not more powerful than having a single clear objective.

Identifying the questions that we would like to have answered in our future provides direction for our personal success. When we know the questions that we would like answered, we then have the power to create a plan to explore those questions so that we can discover our own answers.

A common statement that people say to me is, “I’m not sure if this is the career that I want to have.”

When creating a personal plan for success this statement can easily be turned into the desire to have answered a powerful question. In simple terms, when a person is saying this type of statement, they are really saying something like; “In three years time I want to have discovered the career that I want to invest the majority of my working life in.” or something to that affect. What a wonderful vision!

Obviously this person’s starting point would be that they aren’t sure about their career. In addition they may have a job and qualifications and even some experience. They can then establish a plan that will enable them to explore career options over the next three year period.

Are they likely to experience dead ends?

Yes of course they will.

In the context of exploration, are dead ends bad?

No they aren’t.

Humans are amazing explorers. In fact we have created this amazing world through our ability to explore.

So I encourage you to explore the questions that, if you could have them answered, would provide amazing foci for the future that you are trying to create. The process of answering our own questions is a powerful secret to personal success.

What questions are you exploring?

Gary Ryan helps people clarify what success means to them and then how to create it. If you’re concerned that because you don’t know what your future should be that you will therefore end up a failure, then contact Gary at info@orgsthatmatter.com now.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Anthony Robbins, Brian Tracy, Personal Success, smart company, Success, Time management

How to start your day – lessons from the successful

This article by Kevin Purdy from Smart Company provides some practical advice from some of the worlds high performance experts in Brian Tracy and Anthony Robbins.

Best of all is the fact that the advice is practical.

Check out the full article here.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Action, Life Plan, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Personal Success, Planning, Realism, Realistic, Secrets of Success, Vision

What does ‘Realistic’ mean?

Through my work in facilitating the OTM Plan for Personal Success® Program, which has now been provided to over 5,500 people in various formats, I am constantly asked, “Is this goal that I have written down realistic?”.

I reply by helping the person to understand that there is really only one person who could possibly know the answer to that question, and that is them. In addition, it may be a question that does not have an initial “Yes it is” or “No it’s not” response.

Often the only way to find out if something is realistic or not is to go and try to achieve it.

Our mindset plays a huge role in self determining what is realistic and our mindset regarding ‘reality’ is forged at a young age.

What’s your definition of ‘Realistic’?

Recently my 10 year old daughter had a wonderful life experience about taking a chance and doing some hard work to discover  what ‘realistic’ meant for her.

When the school year began in January this year, Sienna was commencing Year 4. In 2011 as a Year 3 student she had participated in her school aerobics team and had attended the inter school championships in her school’s third ranked team. Her primary school’s first ranked team, which consisted of girls from Years 5 and 6 ended up becoming National Champions, which was a terrific result for them. My daughter’s team were State finalists but that is where their journey ended.

Sienna said that she wanted to be in the “First ranked team this year”, but believed that it was “Impossible” because she was only in year 4 and hadn’t even been in the second ranked team last year.

I said, “If you could have what you really wanted, which team would you like to be in this year?”

She replied, “The first ranked team… But it’s impossible for me to get in.”

“When are the trials?”, I asked.

“Late March.” was Sienna’s reply.

“So, you have about six weeks between now and the trial.” I stated.

“Yes. But it’s still impossible.” Sienna re-stated.

“Okay, just go with me for a moment please. Let’s pretend that it is possible for you to make the first ranked team.What would you need to do to give yourself every chance of making the first ranked team?”

“Well, I suppose that I would need to train every day.” Sienna suggested.

“Okay, what else?”

“Maybe I could ask my teachers what they think I should focus on when I’m training so that I’m doing the right things?”

“That sounds pretty smart.” I affirmed.

“Now, you’ve said that this year you want to be in the first ranked team. You’ve also come up with a couple a smart things that you could do to give yourself every chance to make that team. What if you go and do the two things that you have suggested. Do you think that you might have some chance of making the team?” I asked.

“Well, yes.”, was Sienna’s response.

To her credit Sienna did the practice and she asked her teachers what she should focus on.

In March she made the team, along with two other Year 4 girls. They went on to win their Regional Final. They then became State Champions and last weekend won a National Silver Medal.

So between January to August Sienna went from believing that it was impossible to get into her school’s first ranked team, to becoming a National Silver Medalist.

What a wonderful lesson to learn!

If you are clear about what you want, work out what needs to be done to create what you want, then go out and do it, it is amazing what can then become possible.

The lessons in this story are just as applicable to adults as they are to children.

What are your examples of creating your own definition of ‘realistic’?

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Ball of Light, Denis Smith, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Passion, Personal Success, Secrets of Success, Success

Passion and The Ball of Light by Denis Smith

Passion is the first principle that underpins the OTM Plan for Personal Success® Program. Several years ago Denis Smith held a high pressure sales job, was drinking too much and suffering from depression.

His life lacked passion despite all the trimmings of a successful sales career.

Fortunately he knew ‘something’ was missing from his life and he went on a search to discover his passion. He quickly found photography and realised that he was somewhat of a natural with the camera. Upon uploading his photos to sites he discovered that his ‘good’ photos were the same as everyone else’s. But he didn’t want to be the same as everyone else.

So his evolving passion took him on a journey of discovery where he came across the concept of ‘light drawings’ through photography. With passion comes innovation and he decided to ‘play’ with the concept, creating surreal ‘Ball of Light‘ images in his photographs.

Today Denis has turned his passion into a business. More importantly he is living a life full of positivity and energy. View this short video to learn more about Denis’ story.

Personally I feel energised when I hear about stories such as Denis’ and I thank my good friend Andrew Scott (an amateur photographer himself and a personal friend of Denis’) for recently sharing the story with me.

How present is passion in your life?

Learn about the OTM Plan for Personal Success® Program here.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Action, Focus, OTM Plan For Personal Success, Personal Success, Personal Vision, Success

You don’t ‘have’ to do anything. Period.

“I have to submit this project tomorrow.
I have an assignment I have to complete tonight.
I have to go to a dinner with my partner.
I have to attend my child’s performance.
I have to prepare for a meeting tomorrow.
I have to. I have to. I have to.”

Guess what. You don’t.

You don’t “have” to do anything.

Sure there are consequences for not doing these things. There are also consequences for doing them too.

Which brings me to my point. Think about how differently you would apply yourself to the above activities if you actively chose to do them or decided that you are doing them because you want to do them rather than you “have” to do them.

Think about all the things that you are doing because you believe that you “have” to do them. What would happen if you didn’t do them?

Maybe the consequence would be that you would miss out on something that you really want, such as your partner feeling that you really do love him/her. Or maybe you would miss out on a promotion that you really want.

What if you were to switch from the perspective of “have to or else…”, to “want to because…”?

When you understand why you are doing what you are doing in the moment and how it will help you to achieve what you really want, it is amazing how much happier you are right now when you fully apply yourself to the activity whatever it may be. This also increases the chances that you’ll also be happier in the future.

This is one of the key success strategies when you plan and action personal success.

Try it out and let me know how you go. I’m confident that you will be positively surprised.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com