Live Intentionally!

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Shalom!  Blog is late today, I am sorry.  But it is for a good reason.  You know how I have been asking us to try and put together a plan for 2013?  Well, today, I had to move away from telling myself and jotting down what it was I was looking to work on next year to bringing others in to see if they could help me shape some of my ideas.  So you can say that the rubber met the road today.  It was a soft exercise that you know can be very hard yet essential, but I am glad I had that session this morning.

So what is up on today’s blog?  Well, aside from quickly sharing with you, this morning I am reminded again that ‘two good heads are better than one’, and that if you intend to move forward with your plans for the new year, then maybe at this stage you need to begin to involve your team members.  Today, my team helped me set a few timelines and helped clarify processes for some of the things we want to achieve for 2013 as an organization. (Thanks Ladies).

Okay, someone asked me how planning will help if it is not followed up with execution and I did say to him that planning was useless if it was not backed with action.  He then went on to ask if I knew that the likelihood of not following through was really high, and my response again was yes, it is easier for people not to follow through than for them to tackle their plans head on.

His next question was, so how does one avoid or deal with a lack of motivation to follow through?  My answer is the core of today’s post.  The first thing I suppose we can do is to be intentional about what we want to achieve.  I had to personally put a pen to paper to list the overall objective for my life, professionally, as a wife and mother, and Minister of the gospel.  My goal turned out to be just three words “To Live Abundantly.”  But that was still vague and far from something others could understand and so I had to break it down into differently parts. 

 I came up with this:

a.      I want to maximize every potential. (This got me listing out the potentials, what I have done with them so far and what else I need to do.  Which led to identifying the different aspects of my potential that were either dormant or not maximally in use).  Each step led to another and in the end I have like a map of where maximizing my potential is likely to lead.  Consequently, I have drafted a plan with deliverables and before the end of this week, will insert dates and timelines. 

b.     My second leg of living abundantly was to Be Intentional.  Now what this means for me is that I will do my best to have a plan, with a goal in sight and follow through on the plan.  The reason we don’t follow through sometimes on our plans is that we become distracted by equally important issues and ultimately get sidetracked.  So what will I do?   

      I am spending more time thinking than I am even talking right now, because I want to be sure that where I am headed is where I want to intentionally end up.  So if in the course of the year, life throws me a curve, because I am intentional, I will not lose sight of what I want to achieve especially since everyone on my team will have a copy of the destination for the year and can bring me back on track.

The key is to recognise where you want to go and intentionally work towards it.  Life will happen no matter how water tight our plans will be, but the more intentional you are, the easier it will be to get right back on track.  This isn’t about asking God to support the plans you have personally made though, this is about stepping into God’s will and finding your peculiar way of expressing His mind concerning you.

Finally, someone asked how she will know that her plans are aligned with what God wants for her in the New Year, and while I cannot exhaustively answer her, it is important to recognise that you can use the Value, Impact and Gift test to ascertain if you are in line with God.  What is your gift? Are your plans and dreams supported by your gifting? Does your dream add value? And who else will be impacted by it?

Till next post, remember that as long as you are intentional, you will make it NeverTheLess.  It may not happen in a day, but if you keep using your building blocks you will get there. I promise you will… NeverTheLess.

Hugs

Sistar B

Who is on your Team?

Now that you have shared the Vision, did you have any buy-ins?  What do I mean ‘buy-in’? I mean how many people seem excited about what you have shared?

The mistake a lot of us make is we employ people and expect them to fall into our team.  I know this might sound like reverse psychology. I have found out, with most of the things I do, that those who walk up to me after hearing me share a bit of my Vision and tell me that what I have said resonates within their hearts, if we get to transition into a team, are usually the ones who stick and go the long haul with the dream irrespective of situation or circumstance.

When looking for a team, a few things must come to mind, my first litmus test is to ask someone who seems to fit into your team to share the Vision you have shared the way they understand it.  This usually makes things clearer for me because you will be able to tell right away whether they believe in the integrity of that Vision, or just need a job.

Also, there are those who in the process of sharing the Vision the way they have understood it, end up amplifying what you want to do sometimes even into horizons you were probably not looking at.  These I will call co-dreamers and they are a must for every Vision.

Let us move to those who are there to solve the issues and problems that might arise; these ones when you ask them to share the Vision the way they understand it, will almost always be very empirical and surgical in how they want to approach and deal with the seamless working of the Vision.  These are for me the problem solvers. Their job, it seems, is to look for what might go wrong and so have a solution ready. These are also extremely important as well.

The next set for me are the ones whom when you ask them to explain the Vision, come at it from the angle of how it will add value to society.  Now this is the catch, because we are moving from organizations that create businesses to make money to organizations that do business by first identifying the Value they can add to society. These set of people form the conscience of your business and as long as you have them, your business is bound to remain relevant. 

Finally, for this post please remember that every Visioneer has a need for people who will inspire them, people who will be willing to tell them the truth and people who bring something different to the table.

Your dream is your life work as I always say and it doesn’t matter what you think right now, you need others to make it happen for you.  In the words of my Coach John C. Maxwell, “the size of your dream will determine the size of the people attracted to it.  If you have a very big dream, you have even greater potential for good people to help you.”  Just know that you will not be able to do it alone, so pick your team carefully!

Love

Sistar B