How to get more out of life

Just under 150 years ago a wise soul appeared on earth - Marie Curie.  She is quoted as saying

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.  Now is the time to understand more so we may fear less.

How much time do you spend worrying about stuff or fearful about what might happen?  Go on be honest.  We all do it to a greater or lesser extent and it is such a waste of energy.  This was brought home to me very clearly by Dave Ellis, a leadership coach, who came over to the UK and spoke to over 100 coaches about 10 days ago.

He reiterated the rationale for long term forecasting - ironic as I am currently reading a book by a renown American strategist that forecasts what will happen in 21st Century.  When I think about some of the successful local business people, they all make the same error which is to focus their energy on the next year to five years.  Naturally their goals tend to be very self-orientated.  When we start to look

out 50 to 100 years even 500 years then what we want to happen tends to be much more altruistic in nature.  Try it and see for yourself.

The magic starts to happen however when you spend say 15 mins a day writing down and considering your long term priorities/ goals.  It changes your attitude to life and you start to believe anything is possible which is different from a new age belief that if you manifest it correctly you can have anything.  I don't agree with that and I got the impression that Dave Ellis does not either.  There are two things to remember - be as specific as possible and make sure that you get a balance between these three foci:

1. What you want to be;
2. What you want to do; and
3. What you want to have.

This is a challenge but is important to remember as you do it.  All that said there are two steps that come before that and they are:

• Filling yourself up - what makes you feel good about life?  For me it is spending time with my kids and working on my allotment principally.  How about you?  If you think of a balloon, it has much more oompf if it is full and next to none if it's depleted; and
• Living your life in love and service to others (hence the suggestion to focus on what you want to achieve in 100 to 500 years time.

Many within the coaching community of which I am a member have already commented on this.  For me the biggest thing is meeting someone who has become a multi-millionaire by being generous and living from a philanthropic perspective.  It's radically different to the prevailing paradigm in the world today but it is definitely one that I want to be part of.  I really recommend you try these ideas and I would love to hear how you get on.