5. "To Do" Lists as Daily Organizational and Leadership
Habits to Meet Plans & Goals
Use the resources listed below to customize your own a list of affirmations
("self-talk") of both the positive things about you now and
the positive things you would like to see about yourself in the future
as the result of change. Thus, define your roles and their routines
and affirm them. Use them to customize a list of the principles
you affirm which you say you use to guide your personal and professional
roles and routines (behavior). Turn these into affirmation statements
as well. These are the motivational sayings you say to yourself
at least once daily and preferably twice daily. Recite this list
in the morning and at night before bed. What you recite so will
you become. So be careful. You are putting together a powerful
list. It will enable you to take the steps necessary to run your
daily marathons, to make your dreams/goals come true.
Make these your daily ORGANIZATIONAL HABITS to facilitate becoming a more
effective person in your own life so that you can be better organized
and, as a result, be a more effective model, mentor, and teacher to others,
at home, at work, and in the community, neighborhood, church, school,
etc.
The books you read and the people you meet make great resources from which
to make lists, for the greatest influences on you are people and books.
They become "coaches" and "mentors" and "script
doctors" to our little life play.
We can learn from the best, who can uplift us and enable us to expand
and grow OR we can be lazy and unmotivated, and associate with those who
are not good at life, who cannot coach us to victory, who will only provide
scripts that lead to failure, to shows that close down after only a couple
of performances. Again, our daily, social relations are socially
constructed. This is why it is so important who we associate with.
They are part of our "destiny's construction team." Just
as we are what we eat, we are who we associate with, as seen in these
two famous quotes:
As Charlie "Tremendous" Jones, a famous motivational speaker
and author, says:
One of the greatest thoughts I've ever heard is, "You will be the same in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read." You know, that's absolutely true.
In other words, association is very important. In a very real sense, you could say association is destiny. Tony Robbins has a tee shirt which states:
Remember, we become who we spend time with. The quality of a person's life is most often a direct reflection of the expectation of the peer group. Choose your friends well.
Back to singular importance of "self-talk": Goethe said
"Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness
has genius, power, and magic in it." As Mary Mannin Morrissey
has stated, "Out of thought, we construct our reality and our experience.
Begin to think in bigger, bolder ways." Mark Twain is very
clear: "Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that, but the really great, make you feel that
you too can become great." Perhaps this is why Abraham Lincoln
said "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether
you are content with your failure.
Sometimes people just settle, either because they have become "fat
and happy" or because they have sabotaged themselves with negative
self-talk or have allowed others to do so.
The Question: How can we inspire and motivate each other to develop
the best habits possible to enable us to grow the best relationships possible,
now and throughout our lives?
The Challenge: Each book/guide will be seen differently by each person.
Read the ones that "grab" your fancy, and read/enact them through
three means of focusing your inner mind and soul: smiling, breathing,
and asking my role? These can also be your "pause buttons" for
others to say to you to calm you.
Back to the image of theatre and the "plays" of our lives (yes
there are more than one: home, extended family gatherings, work,
school, church/synagogue/ mosque/temple, neighborhood) and we are all
our own directors and script writers, borrowing from the best, echoing
the worst, or ad libbing without any preparation, as if life was one long
impromptu performance, or a life of reactions, as in the theatre of "improv"
(improvization), which often becomes a life in the theatre of the absurd.
Back to Berger, who often uses the imagery of the theatre to help explain
the dynamics of our daily lives. Indeed, Shakespeare called the
world a stage and we are but those crossing it playing our roles.
He even talks about the many stages of life on which we play and the many
roles we play. Understanding this is crucial to success in whatever
endeavor we embark.
To return to Berger's use of Schultz's terms: each "stage"
or "reality set" on which we find ourselves, has their own "finite
province of meaning," their own "enclaves within the paramount
reality," their own script writers, directors, actors, etc.
In our daily life we emigrate back and forth between these different,
"multiple realities," as in spending a week in New York and
taking in a different play each night.
In Berger's elegant words, "The transition between realities is marked
by the rising and falling of the curtain. As the curtain rises,
the spectator is 'transported to another world,' with its own meanings
and an order that may or may not have much to do with the order of everyday
life. As the curtain falls, the spectator 'returns to reality,'
that is, to the paramount reality of everyday life by comparison with
which the reality presented on the stage now appears tenuous and ephemeral,
however vivid the presentation may have been a few moments previously."
This is how we interact in our daily lives with different people in different
settings. If we are optimistic, and if we have the right "scripts"
or "shopping lists" or "recipes" to obtain what we
need to be successful on each stage, success will be ours.
This paper helps provide the lists and recipes and scripts needed to successfully
navigate the many stages of the theatre of life.
If these LISTS and RECIPIES are followed, the life as hard adversities
will make no difference, as the trials and tribulations will be overcome,
the mountains climbed, the visions realized, and meaning and purpose found.