Passion. A manifesto must be written with passion. If there is no feeling behind these words then there is no real meaning to them. So, to write my manifesto I must find the passion, and there is no better place to find this passion than in looking at what I value in life, what are the values that drive me to do the things that I do. So that is where I will start.
Values
Above all else, the number one thing I value in my life is my family. The happiness and safety of my family must always come first. When I look at my wife and my 18-month-old son there is no doubt in my mind that they are what is most important. They are what makes me tick and drives me forward to do the things that I do, to keep going each day. Above all else my family will be happy and safe.
I also value adventure in my life, whether it be traveling the world, skiing a new line, biking a trail that is beyond my skill level, returning to school to learn something new, or moving away from family and friends to live a dream. I am happiest when I am in a state of adventure, trying something new or something unknown. Adventure is what makes me feel alive.
Closely tied to both of these I also value economic peace. Notice I did not say I want to be rich, I don’t think I need to be rich to have the life that I truly desire. I only desire a state where my family and I can do the things that we dream of, have the adventures that we want, and know that we will never come up short or be in danger of losing the life style we are trying to achieve.
I want to make a difference with what I do. Not just in my own life, but in the lives of others. When I look back over all of the different things I have done in my life I realize that I am happiest when I am working to help other people. Whether it be as a Crisis and Suicide Prevention Counselor, working to integrate federal parolees back into the world, as a hospital volunteer, or as a high school teacher I have always felt my best when my work has been fulfilling beyond the idea of “earning a paycheck”
I also value improvement in myself. I am not the man I was yesterday, or the day before, and I am definitely not the boy I was years ago. I have done things in the past I am not proud of, I have done things recently that I am not happy with. However, I am always working to improve upon myself and become a better husband, father, friend, teacher, role model. I call myself a recovering pessimist, and this is a big part of who I am, but to improve myself I now struggle with my pessimism and am winning. Each day I am moving more towards a state of being positive and this makes me a better person.
Above all I value me, as I write this I realize that I value myself more than anything else I have written here, even my family. I truly believe that, in the end, I must be selfish, and I must always come first. Only when I am being selfish and have taken care of my own needs and wants, only when I am in a positive and happy place can I truly make a difference. By taking care of myself first I can make sure that I have the energy and the desire to be there for my family, to have the adventures, to make the required money, to help others, and to improve myself so that everyone, including me, benefits. If I am not selfish, if I let myself get run down, unhealthy, and miserable then I will be unable to fulfill any of these other values, and then there will be no true success in my life. By being selfish I can make a difference.
Family happiness and safety, adventure, economic peace, making a difference, self improvement, and selfishness: these are the values I hold most high as I write these words.
My key to making a difference
The question now becomes how can I fulfill the important values I have listed above, what can I do to be true to these values? The past few months I have spent a lot of time reflecting on this, but it was only through discussion with my Sunday Night Success group that I realized what the key has been to all of the different successes I have had in my life. I have realized that there is one thing that has made a difference:
The power of action
I have had success in my life when I am in the “doing” stage of things as opposed to the endless “thinking and planning” stages I sometimes get caught up in. When I am in action I move forward, when I am in action good things happen to me. I can do a brief glance at some of the past events in my life, and each time I remember myself in a state of dis-ease I was also in a state of stagnation, I was stuck in a rut of doing nothing, of wondering why things weren’t working out, of playing the “why me” game. Each time I can remember myself in a state of happiness, when I felt that I was achieving something I was moving forward, I was making change, I was taking action. When it comes down to it, no matter what the situation, or what is happening in my life, I can improve it by taking action.
When I had graduated university and didn’t know what I was going to do with my life I became stagnant and nothing was working out. On a whim I took action and moved to Vancouver. It didn’t work out as planned, I ended up stuck in a coffee shop job, not doing what I wanted, so I took action. If my job couldn’t provide fulfillment something else could, so I became a volunteer at the Vancouver Crisis and Suicide Prevention Line, and I made a difference that way.
When I was living in Vancouver I met an amazing woman in Calgary I had to make a choice, so I acted: I quit my job, packed up my things, and moved. I took action and I took a chance, and now I am married to an amazing woman and have an amazing son.
When stuck living in a big city and realizing that we weren’t happy, weren’t living our dream of living in the mountains we took action, bought a house in Rossland while on a ski trip one weekend, then sorted out how it would all work later.
Living in Rossland and not getting enough hours of work as a teacher, waiting for a contract job I began to stagnate, it wasn’t working out. So, I took action: I tried being a day trader, that didn’t work out, so I acted again and signed up to train as a Professional Coach, I started the Sunday Night Success blog, I began volunteering and now I am back on track, feeling happy, making a difference.
Looking back I can see countless times when taking action has made a difference in my life. Has it always worked out? Of course not! There have been numerous times when taking action has gotten me into trouble, sent me down the wrong path, or made me wonder about the choices I have made. But, there are far, far more times when taking action has improved my situation, gotten me closer to what I desire, and made me a better person. Without the actions that failed, without the mistakes I made, I wouldn’t have learned valuable lessons about who I am and what I want. Without these important lessons I wouldn’t know how to take a different action the next time, an action that did work and did move me forward in the right direction.
Time for some organization
How does all of this break down into my manifesto, my declaration of my intentions? I have made some important new discoveries this past year about the power of action and how to use it to make a difference in my life. Through my training as a coach, but, even more importantly, through the work with my Sunday Night Success group, I have broken down this vague idea I have lived with, this idea of taking action, into something more tangible, something I can write about and share with the world. Because of my Sunday Night Success group, my Action Setting group, I have put myself into action at a higher, more conscious level than ever before, and I have had more good things happen to me than ever before.
Vision
First I need to start at a higher level of this whole process, I need to start with the idea of vision, of having a vision. Taking action is great, but without having a vision the actions don’t necessarily have a direction, and actions with direction hold a great deal more power than actions at random (although actions at random, as my past has shown, can be vital in showing you what your direction is).
So, vision. I live my life in two worlds at once: my current reality and my ideal reality. My current reality is all of the information I currently have of where I am, what I am doing, and how I am living my life. My current reality is a mix of the things I desire and the things that I have not yet perfected in my life. My current reality is not the life I truly want to be living, but it is the life I have.
My vision is what is most important. My vision is the image I hold in my head of what I want my world to eventually look like. My vision is the world that fulfills all of the values I stated at the beginning of this, it is also the world that fulfills the desires that my wife and my son possess. My ideal reality is where I am trying to travel to, and once there I will feel at peace and have true happiness.
By living in both of these worlds at once I have created tension in my life. My mind knows where I am but it also sees where I want to be, and by creating this tension in my life my mind starts to work on ideas that will take me from here to there. This tension between my current and ideal realities provides the structure for the pathway I will follow.
So first, I must have my vision.
Ideas
A vision is a big piece of thinking to deal with, and if I had nothing but my vision I don’t think I would ever get anywhere. My vision is where I want to be someday, but my vision doesn’t tell me how to get there. So, I need something smaller to work with, I need to break the vision into smaller pieces that I can better comprehend.
These smaller pieces are my ideas or my goals. The ideas that I come up with that I believe will move me towards my vision. My ideas are like the map I am creating, and if I follow that map I will eventually arrive at my vision.
Day trading was one of these ideas.
Training as a professional coach is one of these ideas.
Sunday Night Success is one of these ideas.
Moving to South America to live, teach, and coach is one of these ideas.
Here is the important part: the ideas don’t have to work, they don’t have to be right. The important part is having these ideas and trying to turn them into reality. How can we tell if an idea we have is the right one unless we make it happen? Only after we have brought an idea to life will we know if it moves us in the correct direction.
Getting my first degree in genetics was an idea that didn’t work. Being a research scientist wasn’t for me, but I didn’t know that till I made it a reality. It wasn’t a failed idea, I learned a great deal, enjoyed it, and later in life it gave me the background I needed to become a teacher.
Being a day trader was an idea that didn’t work. I didn’t have the time to properly commit to it, and the stock market crashed while I was learning. However, I learned a great deal about the markets, and more importantly, I learned a great deal about discipline and mental/emotional strength.
Moving from Calgary to Vancouver was an idea, and, as it turned out, one of the most incredible ideas I have ever had. I am now married to an amazing woman and have an amazing son, and live in an amazing place. Did I know any of this would happen when I originally had the idea of taking a risk and being with my wife? Of course not, but that is the point, you have to try out your ideas.
So, use your vision to create your destination, use your ideas to make the pathway from where you are to where you want to be, and then try all of your ideas out, make them happen. If they don’t work then learn from them, use them to come up with new ideas, and then make these new ideas happen. The more of your ideas you bring to life, the more likely you are to learn from bad ideas, and discover amazing ideas.
I must bring my ideas to life.
I will not sit and wait for the universe to provide
I don’t buy into the “Law of Attraction” concept. If you do, that is great, I wish you luck, but for me, I don’t want to wait for the universe to provide for me. I want to go out into the universe and grab what I want. I don’t want to wait for things to happen to me, I want things to happen because of me.
Even if the law of attraction does work, and maybe it does, I am not interested, because I think I can accelerate the whole process by taking charge of my life and making the universe work for me. Why would I wait for opportunities to be attracted to me, when I can seek out those opportunities and make them happen?
So, if you want, wait for it all to come to you, I will be waiting for you at the finish line, because I know I am going to get there faster.
Ideas are still to big
Now we come to what I believe is the true core of this manifesto. A vision is to big to work with in one piece, but so are ideas. Each idea is a part of the plan to reach the vision, but an idea is still a large piece of thinking, each idea has a lot of different parts to it. So, if I focus only on my ideas I end up trapped in the thinking and planning cycle. Forward movement comes to a halt.
The idea for Sunday Night Success is to create a dynamic community of people who join together to make their ideas into realities. I think that is an amazing idea, I think that is going to help me help others make a difference in their lives. I think the idea of Sunday Night Success is something truly worth bringing into reality, and I am going to work hard on making it a reality. But how?
The problem is the idea is too big of a chunk to deal with. The idea is the end product, like a mini-vision on the way to my larger vision. The idea does not tell me how to do anything, how to move forward on bringing it into this world. So, I still need something smaller, something I can work with on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis.
I need actions.
Ideas to actions
Actions are the functional piece of this whole process. Vision is the overall guide, ideas are the map, and actions are the piece that I actually work with to get from here to there. By turning my vision into ideas and then my ideas into actions I now have pieces that are small enough to wrap my head around and work with. By focusing on actions I get the forward movement in life that will result in me making a difference, a difference in my life and in other people’s lives.
But, even actions aren’t enough, even certain actions can be too big to work with. The core of my new belief, after looking over my past successes, and after working with my Sunday Night Success group is that actions are not enough, what must be focused on are SMALL ACTIONS.
Small Actions
Big ideas → small actions → big results
I believe this is the key to getting what I want. By breaking my ideas down into small action steps I now have something easy to work with:
“Create a community of people working together to achieve what they desire” is something I can’t wrap my head around and work with.
“Create Sunday Night Success, the blog” is a bit smaller, a bit better, but still to big for my mind to move forward with.
“Buy a domain name, load wordpress, find a theme, write a post, make an about page, write a manifesto” Now I am breaking things down into chunks that my mind can understand and work with.
The small actions work for so many reasons!
1. Bigger actions, and especially big ideas are scary. Actually accomplishing them can put me in a state of fear where I don’t move forward.
2. Each small action has little consequence to the overall picture so each small action is less scary. In effect, small actions let me “sneak up” on the big idea that may frighten me a bit.
3. Continued success is about building momentum. Small actions can be completed in less time than big actions, and for each small action completed I get an increased sense of achievement, and this achievement gives me momentum to finish the next small action.
4. If a small action doesn’t work it doesn’t have a huge effect. I can learn from small actions that go wrong with little serious consequence, and the learning experience allows me to come up with the next small action that will work.
5. I can accomplish multiple small actions each week so I move forward at a faster pace. Big actions take longer to complete, you have to think more about them, and this slows forward movement down.
Small actions are something that I have only started working with in the past year with my Sunday Night Success group and the difference has been phenomenal. I have learned more and achieved more in the last few months than I would have thought possible.
Have all of my small actions worked? Of course not, but that is the point! They are small, so when they don’t work I haven’t lost a lot of time, money, or effort; and, I have gained the information that the action didn’t work and that I need to move in a different direction.
Wait there is more
Small actions require one more vital step to be successful, and it is this step that many people skip. Small actions must be written down to be done successfully. There is too much going on in our minds on a daily basis to try and keep track of the small actions that we need to carry out to be successful, so write them down.
When I write my small actions down they become more real. When I write my small actions on paper, or on the computer screen I begin the process of becoming accountable to the actions I have stated I will accomplish. If I keep my small actions in my head they can disappear without a worry. When I write them down they are always there to remind me of what I must do. Once on paper I can keep track of what is next, and, as importantly, what I have achieved. I can review past actions to see what has worked and what has not, which helps guide me towards the correct actions to take in the future.
Writing my small actions down brings them from my mind into the real world, and once there, I can truly interact with them.
Am I done?
My vision leads to all of my ideas and my ideas are broken down into small actions, I write these small actions down, and it is these small actions that, in the end, make all the difference.
There is still something missing.
Community and accountability
Now that I have written out the general process that I have used to explain how I have increased success in my life I come to what is truly the most important part of the equation that has made this all work:
I cannot do it alone.
In the past months I have learned how important having help in achieving my actions/ideas/vision truly is. When I attempt to do this in isolation IT DOES NOT WORK. I can set my weekly actions, that is not difficult, but without someone to talk with about them, without someone to hold me accountable, I never make it.
When I set my actions in community, at this point a community of three, my actions become reality. When my actions become reality I move closer to creating my ideas, and this brings me closer to my vision. But I NEED this community to support me and move me forward.
I believe we all need this community to achieve our actions. We all need this community to make our ideas a reality. We all need this community to reach our vision. We all need this community to be successful.
Community may be a husband or wife, a few trusted friends, a colleague at work, or a gathering of like-minded people on the internet. The only common factor that your community needs is that they must be supportive in helping you get to where you want to go. You must find this community, whatever it means to you, and you must share with this community, and you will move forward, you will get what you desire, you will succeed.
Sunday Night Success, the group, three of us, is my community for setting my actions, creating my ideas, and moving towards my vision.
Sunday Night Success, the blog, is a step towards a bigger idea, the idea of bringing these concepts to a wider audience, to helping as many people as possible to achieve what they desire.
Sunday Night Success, the community, is an even bigger idea, the idea of not just helping people achieve, but helping them by being part of something bigger, by making them part of a larger movement that will help everyone within the community to do bigger things than they ever thought possible.
I will use my vision, my ideas, my actions, and my community to bring this larger community to life. I will make a difference with what I do.
This is my manifesto.
Jeremie
Check out the Action Setting category to see some of this manifesto in action.