I’ve spent a lot of time cultivating strategies to improve my life, both my experience of life and what I’m able to make happen in this world. I’ve been blessed to have spent a significant amount of time with a number of world class mentors and coaches including Tony Robbins, Dr. Lou Stolis, and the 7 Habits Inside Prison team. But one of the most valuable things I’ve done recently is go through Jon Butcher’s LifeBook program.
Lifebook is simple, unique and incredibly valuable. Michael Gerber in E-Myth makes the vital distinction between working in your business and working on your business. Jon Butcher makes that same distention about our lives we MUST work ON our lives, not just live them!
“Lifebook” is about creating a master plan for your life, with enough detail, purpose, vision and strategy to make every area of your life rock. If you are in business you have to spend time being strategic, thinking about your business, defining your vision, clarifying your goals, developing strategies to make it all happen and finally honing the tactics to make those strategies a reality. And in our personal lives. . . we’ll most of us totally wing it! How crazy is that? How many of us have a written plan for every area of our lives? I do now, and it really really helps.
Jon Butcher is an incredible guy and has a unique approach to “having it all” on this journey of life. One of the things I appreciate most about him is that his life is centered on his relationship with his wife, and their relationship is not just an important piece of the puzzle of his life, it is center of it. And when you think about his, it makes total sense. All studies of human happiness have shown the single largest predictor of happiness is close relationships and none is more important than the relationship with our significant others.
The Lifebook process dives into twelve key areas of your life by having you answer four key questions:
#1) What is your premise in this area? (your beliefs, good and bad)
#2) What is your vision for this area?
#3) What is your purpose in this area?
#4) What is your strategy for accomplishing your purpose?
The twelve areas are:
Your Health and Fitness-This addresses a foundational area of your life. Many of us struggle to manage our health and fitness, without fully understanding the critical role it plays everywhere else in our lives.
Your Intellectual Life– This category focuses on one of your most important assets, your mind. When your mind is healthy and your intellect stimulated, you can think rationally, make clear decisions, and pursue your goals with confidence.
Your Emotional Life-This fascinating category focuses on the emotions that affect you every day, but can sometimes be difficult to understand. When your emotional outlook is healthy, it has a positive effect on every other area of your life.
Your Character-The path your life takes is determined, for better or worse, by your character. Your character determines how you handle your relationships, your career, your health and fitness – virtually every aspect of your life.
Your Spiritual Life– Spirituality has been an important part of every culture in human history… Yet it is very difficult for people to agree on exactly what “spirituality” means. Few of us take the time to think through and clarify our personal, spiritual beliefs, even though the benefits of doing so can be immense. Bringing consciousness to your spirituality will give you power, clarity, and inner strength that can’t be created any other way.
Your Love Relationship-Perhaps more than any other life-category, your Love Relationship directly affects your overall levels of happiness. A fulfilling love relationship can produce tremendous joy, wonderful memories, and an entire lifetime of emotional and physical pleasure. On the other hand, a poor love relationship can produce painful emotions, chronic stress, uncertainty, and negativity. This is the most intimate of all the categories and one that can yield amazing benefits if you have the courage to fully explore it.
Parenting-Raising a child is one of the richest, deepest experiences life has to offer. It’s an incredibly important intellectual, emotional and spiritual journey. Yet very few parents have taken the time to clearly define their own life path – let alone carefully plan the most loving and effective way to help their children do so.
Your Social Life-The peer group we choose is one of the most important factors that contributes to our success or failure in life. Yet most people never take the time to consider what they really want and need from their social relationships. Even fewer create a strategy to nurture those relationships and help them flourish.
Your Financial Life-This category addresses one of the most important factors influencing your overall quality of life: money. For most of us, money is a subject that is surrounded by mixed signals, mystery and confusion. We’re taught that the love of money is the root of all evil, yet just about everyone we know spends most of their waking hours trying to make more of it.
Your Career -This life-category takes up more of our daily time and attention than any other. It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO, a stay-at-home mom, a plumber, an entrepreneur, a salesman, a scientist or any other profession – choosing a career that is exactly right for you is one of the most important responsibilities in life.
Your Quality of Life-Consider the things you’d like to own, the environments you’d like to be surrounded by, and the experiences you’d like to have in your life. These things can greatly enhance your life-experience in important and sometimes unexpected ways. As you delve into this category you’ll discover that your quality of life can lead to rewarding spiritual, intellectual and emotional breakthroughs and improve who you are as a human being.
Your Life Vision-Your Life Vision addresses your sense of future and the strength of the forward motion in your life. A strong Life Vision entails a clear picture of who you are, where you are going and what kind of a life you want to create. It allows you to choose the right actions and stay focused and balanced on your life path.
Taking Lifebook is the first step in a lifelong process of reviewing and updating these twelve categories and spending enough time in each area to make substantial improvements. Really great stuff transformational if you do it.
If you don’t do anything else, make a plan for your primary love relationship, it’s the simplest way to add a ton of juice to your life, have some real fun and put what matters most on the top of your priority list.
To get a deeper look at these twelve categories and hear a short video of Jon’s take on them, click here.
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