Charting your Purposeful Path

Charting Your Personal Path

Begin your journey on the right path with this powerful, yet simple, activity to begin your inner exploration process.  Set a specific time each day to journal.  Establish it as a part of your normal routine. And most importantly, truly commit to the process. When these three things come together, the activity ceases to be a novel idea you keep in the back of your head and starts the self-awareness process.

• Copy the following phrase on a note card and place it in a location where you often find yourself multi-tasking. “I Consciously Choose™ to remain totally focused in all my efforts and concentrate on one task or conversation at a time, instead of multi-tasking.
• Create a journal or a file on your computer where you can easily record your “single-minded focus” experiences. Putting pen to paper is a powerful thing, but your computer will do as well.
• Write about one experience per day when you consciously chose single-minded focus instead of multi-tasking and examine your beliefs and behavior regarding this activity. For example, perhaps you spoke on a conference call without checking email or engaging in “silent” conversation with others as they passed by you. You noticed that remaining focused on the call gave you better understanding of the situation and caused less stress.
• Remain fully aware, mindful and conscious of this activity every day. You will have recorded thirty experiences by the end of the month.
• Explore and self-examine your thinking, beliefs and behavior regarding this activity as you journal your experiences. Is it helping you become more aware?  Do you find yourself noticing just how much multi-tasking is part of your life?  Are you noticing positive changes in your work, your schedule, etc. attributed to giving single-minded focus to one task or conversation at a time?
• Consider enlisting the help of a friend, co-worker or spouse to hold you accountable for completing this activity throughout the month. Your journal may be the first casualty of a busy day or week. But remember, it is also the one task that could make the most dramatic and beneficial impact on your journey for your life’s purpose.

Use your journal as a road map to gain insight and become aware of what you learned about yourself. Through a process of self-discovery, inner exploration, experimentation, application, practice, repetition and reinforcement, you will begin to awaken to self. That is why it is defined as SELF-awareness.