To get the benefit of your Life Plan, you have to implement it. Incorporate your action plans into your day-to-day routines.

Include your action plans in your day-to-day activities by:

1. Protecting the basics. Review your current appointments and see how they relate to your Life Accounts. If they are not essential consider canceling them
2. Eliminating the nonessentials. Ask yourself, “What can I eliminate from my life and not suffer too many consequences”?
3. Rescheduling some of what remains. While some things are important, they are not important now. They can be rescheduled without significant consequences

Without regular review, a plan becomes worthless.  Keep it Alive by reviewing it daily, weekly, and yearly.

One day can change everything.  By creating a Life Plan, you will unleash a set of decisions that will affect future generations.

“A Life Plan needs pull power. It has to be done in such a way that impacts your heart, not just your head. Otherwise, you’ll just end up with a glorified to-do list. And who needs one more of those? Pull power requires that you get caught up in the full scope of the plan. You can’t do that piecemeal.”

You need to be decisive when it comes to dedicating one day every week to review your plan.

Steps you could take include blocking your calendar, deciding where to go, taking the necessary supplies, determining to be offline, and enrolling your family and colleagues.

Cultivate a positive attitude throughout the process, and stay focused.

Also, in this episdoe I review the ENTIRE process for creating a Life Plan, including a new way of looking at it NOT in the book.

To Chart the Course, break your life account into five sections:

1. Purpose statement. Determine your purpose for each account. For example, the purpose of your health account could be “to get healthy”
2. Envisioned future. Imagine how your account would look like if you had a positive net worth
3. Inspiring quote.  Find a quote that resonates with your future purpose
4. Current reality. Be honest about where you are with your envisioned future
5. Specific commitments. Make specific commitments that move you from your current reality to your envisioned reality. Make them measurable

“We tend to think effective people are busy. Not so, unless they’re busy with the right things—and many people aren’t. When things in our business or life get busy and hectic, we often lose sight of our priorities. But by keeping the truly important things front and center, we often get the perspective we need to make better decisions.”

You have to decide what is best for you. There is no point in keeping up with others if they are going to a destination that is different from yours.

Life Accounts: Life can be viewed in terms of compartments. These compartments are called life accounts.

• The Circle of Being. These are things that emanate from you. They include the spiritual, physical, and intellectual accounts
• The Circle of Relating. These are things that are centered on you in relation to others. They include your marital, parental, and social accounts
• The Circle of Doing. These are activities that deal with you in relation to your output. They include what you do for work, what you do as a hobby, and your finances

Review each account and determine where you are. Just like bank accounts, your life accounts could either be growing, stagnating, or declining. The goal is to have a positive balance in each of your accounts.

Today ... is your funeral.

What would people say about you?  What do you WANT them to say about you?

We talk about these issues today and go through an exercise of writing our Eulogy.

A legacy consists of the spiritual, intellectual, relational, social capital, and vocational capital that we pass on.

“Truth is, everyone is in the process of creating—and leaving—a legacy. The question is not “Will you leave a legacy?” but “What kind of legacy will you leave?” The sooner you come to grips with this reality, the sooner you can start creating it.”