As I mention in the previous post, the thing that inspired me to start a life handbook was this website called Personal Excellence, where the creator Celestina Chua, created this idea of a tool that contains essentially everything you would need to motivate and organize your life. This thing, she called a life handbook, a description of which could be found at this link-- http://personalexcellence.co/blog/life-handbook/. The Life Handbook grew as an accessory from the PE program, 30 Days to Live a Better Life (or 30DLBL). If you have the time and the inclination, I highly recommend you partake in this program, and its sister program 30 Days to Be a Better Me (or 30DBBM).
Both of these programs can be found at the following links:
**Note that throughout this post I make references to Personal Excellence's website and tools of Celestina's that I modified to generate my Life Handbook. All of those reference are links! Just hover over them and click and you'll be redirected to that information on Celes' site.**
A Life Handbook contains anything and everything pertaining to not only your current life, but also the life you want to live. Everything you've ever been inspired by, yearned for, wanted to achieve, wanted to remember, needed to say, etc., all goes into your life handbook. It literally encompasses any and every aspect of your life that you want it to. That is the overall point of a Life Handbook.
In my previous post, I described the sections that I use and how I organize them in an electronic version of the Life Handbook. I have sense gravitated to a hard copy life handbook. As much as I wanted to move away from using paper and carrying something clunky and large around, an electronic goal setting document never had the same feel to me as a hard copy. I like the hard copy because
I personally get more out of WRITING my goals out than I do from typing them out.
There's something about pen to paper that makes the goal a more personal, tangible thing to me. That is my own person experience. If you do want to explore the soft copy, electronic version, than I suggest you check you out that previous post.
But, if you're interested in seeing the hard copy version...or even just interested in seeing the sections I now include in my life handbook...read on!
First things first, format.
I use the Arc System from Staples in an 8.5" x 11" format. I love this system so much! It provides the same perks as a binder-- flexible and modifiable--with the sleek, flatness of a notebook. I hesitated originally at the thought of doing a hard copy notebook, because a binder just seemed to bulky. But I didn't want to start a bound notebook, because what if I wanted to remove something, or change the order of something? No, I change my notebooks too much to have a notebook. This Arc System provided me with that nice balance! I can change things whenever I want, without compromising the look and feel of the notebook and that is something I LOVE!
You can also use a nice, leather-bound notebook, or a binder...or whatever other system you'd like! Really this is totally about you and what inspires your creativity.
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| My Life Handbook Title Page |
Now, in terms of content.
I suggest you open your book with something that inspires you! It could be a quote, an image, a collage, whatever! For me this quote was perfect! It takes up a whole page, and it's just so inspiring for me!
Now, we get into the sections of the notebook. For me, my sections have gotten incredibly simplified since my last post...
Before I felt the need to get all crafty and clever. Now, my sections are very simple.
-Goal Setting
-Reflections
-Beachbody
-Science
-Projects/Ideas
GOAL SETTING Section.
Basically, this section boils down to the "what motivates me" section. There's many sub-sections of it, and in that sense it is probably my most extensive section.
The first sub-section is my Mission Statement, which can be found in the middle left of the below collage. What is a mission statement you might ask? Well...it's hard to describe but essentially, it's the statement that governs and dictates anything and everything you do in your life. It can be one line. It can be many lines. But it should be so specific to you and so inspiring to you that you just want to GO DO SOMETHING when you read!
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Goal Setting Cover Page (top), Mission statement (middle left),
Vision Board (bottom left), and Values (right) |
My Mission statement reads:
To be fearless in all aspects of my life. To live with confidence and without regrets. To live with integrity, mindful and present in everything that I undertake, achieving my highest potential, so that I may inspire others to do the same. To improve the lives of others by my action and my influence.
For me, that statement gives me butterflies, and makes me want to kick it into high gear and really swing into action. Yours should do the same! I developed my mission statement during the 30DLBL program I mentioned before. It was so incredibly worth it for reason.
The next section is my Vision Board (bottom left). A vision board is simply a collection of images compiled together that encompass all your most pressing goals from all aspects of your life. For me that encompasses everything from being very fit, living healthy, having complete and utter confidence, travelling and experiencing the world, music (which I someday hope to play in public), and scientific goals.
Next are my Values (right image). I was inspired to develop my values when I was reading "Awaken the Giant Within" By: Anthony Robbins...I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to make big changes in their life. These are the things I value in life, more than anything in life. The things that give me the most pleasure, or the things that I think will enhance and improve my life. Not all of these things are things that I currently exercise, but I feel that by incorporating into my life they will improve my life.
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| Life Evaluation worksheet (top left), Weekly goals worksheet (top middle), Action Plan worksheet (top right), 1, 5, and 10 year goal worksheets (bottom left), categorized milestones from 1, 5, and 10 year goal worksheets (bottom right). |
For the next few sections I designed a number of worksheets, primarily using Google Drive's drawing tool. I really LOVE how these worksheets turned out!
The next big section I call my Life Evaluation (top left). It's something I do before I set my goals because it's very important to determine what area of your life you need the most work in before you start setting goals. You'll otherwise set a goal in an area of your life where you don't need help, and what does that help really?
This section was inspired by the
Personal Excellence Life Wheel. In this worksheet, you consider a number of areas of your life, ranging from business/career/studies, to health/fitness, to relationships, personal growth, etc. You score yourself from 1-10 in each category, and then you explain why you scored yourself in such a way on the right column.
The next section encompasses my Action Plans (top right). I have 3 total action plans, corresponding to 3 different aspects of my life where I was weak and needed to improve. These worksheets outline Milestones I want to achieve and action steps that I want to take to achieve these milestones. These milestones are followed by a section where I evaluate obstacles that I will face and how I plan to deal with those obstacles.
Next I have a number of goals worksheets. These goals worksheets include long term goals, including 1, 5, and 10 year goals. These sections are pretty self explanatory, so I won't dwell on them other to say that I evaluate all aspects of my life and describe the things that I will achieve in those time frames.
I then evaluate my goals on short term time frames--monthly, weekly, and daily.
For the monthly goals worksheet (not pictured), I evaluate my goals for the month primarily in 4 categories--school/lab, love and family, Beachbody, and Personal Growth.
For my weekly goals, I fill these out Sunday evening for the following week during my weekly review. My worksheet contains 5 sections, not all of which are completed during this time. These sections include:
Focus - What will be my focus this week?
Inspiration - What quote or notion is inspiring me this week?
To-Do List - What specific tasks will I accomplish this week?
Something Positive - To be completed at the end of the week describing at least something positive that occurred during the week.
Notes
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Reflections coverpage (top), 4 sections of my reflection
section (bottom left), and example page from my daily
personal development section (bottom right) |
Lastly for this goal section, is my daily goals, though this section is not so much a "goals" section in the classical sense. It is more of a section to focus my efforts for the day. Each morning while I drink my morning coffee, I complete what I call a Morning Ritual. In this ritual I answer a series of questions. For example, What do I desire today? What direction should I take to guide me toward my goal? How am I going to be disciplined today? What am I excited about or looking forward to? Etc.
REFLECTION Section.
This section of my Life Handbook is broken into a few sections--Daily Personal Development, Reflections, Gratitude, and Inspiration/Quotes. I'll tackle each section one at a time, but basically this section is just a bunch of lined paper where I can record the information pertaining to these different sections. But these 4 sections definitely have a specific purpose.
My Daily Personal Development section is meant to accompany the personal development I do on a daily basis. Whether it be reading books, listening to audiobooks or podcasts, occasionally these materials call for assignments or evaluation of specific aspects of your life. Sometimes its answering questions. Sometimes it's pouring your heart out for 5 minutes. But this is the section where I do that writing.
My Reflections section is meant for exactly what it sounds like--reflection! I try to reflect at least weekly. In fact, I schedule and block out a considerable chunk of time for relaxation and reflection every Sunday evening. In this section, I reflect on how my week went. What were my successes? My failures? What did I struggle with? What went well? What would I like to improve upon for next week? All of that information is written here.
The last two sections are very self-explanatory. Gratitudes and Inspiration/Quotes. If there is something I'm particularly grateful about, I record it in the gratitude section. Even if it's nothing particularly special. If I'm having a bad week, or a bad day, I find it helpful to just start recording anything in my life that I'm grateful for. If there's a quote or an interaction that I found inspiring, I record that in the inspiration section.
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| Beachbody section - With tabs for "Team Calls" & "Training" notes (bottom left), my weekly schedule (bottom middle), and an example notes page from a Team Call (bottom left) |
The next two sections of my Life Handbook are very specific to me, but who knows! Maybe you're a Beachbody Coach too, or a Scientist, and you want to include one or both of these sections!
BEACHBODY Section.
This is the section of my Life Handbook where I organize my Beachbody training and information. The majority of this information is contained on an excel document, but there are some things I like to have written out and available to me when I don't have a computer. For example, my daily schedule (shown bottom center). I also have my business tracker, as well as some more specific customer information. For example, keep a printout of Customer Shakeology Ship Dates, particularly for new customers so that I can check in with them prior to their next shipment. Additionally, I have two subsections, which are very similarly organized to the Reflections subsections. They're both comprised of lined paper and are primarily for note-taking during Team Calls and Training.
SCIENCE Section.
This section is a work in progress, but essentially it will contain project organization, plans, and notes relating to my research projects. Additionally, some science related sections from the next section (Projects/Ideas) will likely be moved to this section when it is more fleshed out.
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Projects/Ideas - My checklist for the 21 day journal article challenge my
friends and I are doing (top right), project pages for PD and Science reading
(bottom middle and right) |
The last section, but certainly not the least (though probably the least extensive) is the PROJECTS/IDEAS Section. It's nothing particularly fancy. It contains Project lined paper, and contains project pages for things like Personal Development resources I want to explore, as well as Blog ideas, Science reading ideas, etc.
Eventually, I plan on expanding this book even further to include planner pages so that I can truly make this book the one and only tool I need for organizing and improving my life!
So that is the extent of my Life Handbook! I highly suggest you check out the Personal Excellence website, check out some of her 30 day self-improvement programs, and start your own Life Handbook. If you have any other questions or would like to see larger pictures of any of the worksheets I created for my Life Handbook, feel free to let me know in the comments sections!
Happy Saturday! And as always, never stop improving my friends!
Until next time,
In this article, they discuss the 3 types of self-compassion according to Kristin Neff, a PhD in human development.
