In the early 2000’s, overwhelmed by all the personal development pundits, principles and tools, for my own sanity I simplified everthing and came up with my own system. It worked beyond my wildest dreams. I started teaching it to people at my church and my students got similarly amazing results! So, now I have named it the “The Virtuoso System.” and launched “The Virtuoso Underground” to lead people through their personal application of it.
Write a simple sentence describing your mission/purpose in life. Why are you here? What is it you just want to shake the world to get them to change or understand?
Your personal mission statement will contain two fundamental sides: The change you want to make in the world or for a specific group, and the gifts, talents or passions you will use to make that change. For example, here is my personal mission statement: “I joyfully live to motivate, elevate, and equip people to reach their zenith of potential through masterful use of my art, my faith, my exhortation and my life.”
Describe in depth your vision for your life, for all that your life will look like one year, three years or five years from now (you may create or repeat this for any timeframe). If life is perfect and all goes well what will it look like? Here are some categories to consider in creating your vision.
Take your Virtuoso Life Vision and turn it into goals. Remember, goals must be measurable and have a completion date. Then, write them using the three P’s: Person, Positive, Present Tense. You’ll likely have more goals for the year than longer term. MOST IMPORTANT: Set a “Virtuoso Goal” (see bottom). These categories are just suggestions, you may have a few in one area and none in another. That’s fine. There are no wrong answers here, just degrees of good.
Set one bold goal for the year in any category where you know what you want, but have no idea how to achieve it. This means big, as you define big. When you set this goal don’t start by thinking of what’s possible, start with what’s cool. What’s right? The kind of goal that completes this phrase: “OK, this is crazy, but I’m going to _________?” Some call these stretch goals, dream goals, or BHAGS (Big, hairy, audacious goals).
Goals master list for 2024…
List all your goals from each category including your Virtuoso Goal. There would usually be between five to eleven goals on the list. This is the list you will re-write every morning.
Make a plan for each goal that requires one, which is those that have multiple steps in a chronological order, especially your Virtuoso Goal. The following is a set of general directions for making a goal plan and a template you can copy and repeat on another page or document for each goal. You bay have three steps or 30, so expand or attenuate this as it applies to your goal.
Practices are the regular activities you do, usually multiple times per week if not daily, which are the essence of what you do. They might also be called your “highest value tasks.” What do you do that creates your best results? What do you do which, if repeated often enough and well, will logically move you toward the completion of your goal? These may be practices you already do, or they may be ones you need to adopt. For instance, if you are in sales and don’t already read books on sales regularly, that might be a practice to adopt.
Examples…
Mindset is simply the way we talk to ourselves, which controls the way we think, which controls the actions we take, which creates our success or failure. In her book “Mindset,” Carol Dweck identifies a “growth” mindset – open to learning, practice, change, risk – as the most important to have, and a “fixed” mindset – closed to extra practice, work, learning – as the one to avoid. This is similar to having an abundance mindset – “there is enough” – vs a scarcity mindset – “there’s never enough.”
Writing your desired mindsets as an affirmation or mantra helps make them permanent.
What are the mindsets you want or need to develop and adopt in order to grow your impact, influence and income and live your best life?
And what are the mindsets you need to change or drop in order to move forward?
For instance, you may want to develop the mindsets for abundance, being willing to do what others will not, for living and responding in strength, for getting curious, or to get and live above the conflicts, attacks and derision. Turn those into a declarative mantra: “I live above the conflict, attacks and derision,” and write them that way.
Mindsets you might like to change are “I’m not good enough,” “nothing ever works out for me,” “Oh, it’s just my luck,” “I never win anything.”
Make a list of mindsets you will drop, and mindsets to adopt.
You’ve heard it, “You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” So, we intentionally surround ourselves with people who lift us up, people who are already where we want to be, people who exemplify the values we desire. We also actively seek out the right coaches, models and mentors.
You are a creative genius, whether you realize it or not. And creativity can be developed and mastered over time. Creativity runs on curiosity, a willingness to try, a willingness fail a lot, and perhaps most importantly… a playfulness about the world and all you’re doing.
“The measure of your success in life is the measure of your ability to complete things.” You’ve heard it, “Done is better than perfect.” Seth Godin refers to this as “Shipping it.” Finish whatever you start and ship it! Turn it in. Submit your manuscript. The reason we must say this is that so many people have business plans, books, songs, construction projects, and other ideas they start, which then languish and become stale because one or all of these three fears shuts us down – failure, success, and rejection. We need a laser focus on just finishing and shipping it. As Julia Cameron says, “You worry about the quantity, let God worry about the quality.” Just finish!
Time management is really life management. We need to intentionally address our productivity, procrastination, prioritization, daily get-to-do lists, and ultimately our choice of actions in any day. We need to stop using phrases like “killin’ time,” “burn a few hours…” those make up your life.
Top performers are intentional, lifelong learners. They learn what’s most important and get better at it. They also do not waste time becoming good at lesser important tasks. For example, a top salesperson must continue to learn about selling, their products, building relationships, “prospecting, presenting and closing.” A top salesperson probably does not necessarily need to learn more about, say cooking because it’s not their field… so every moment learning about cooking is a moment they’re not learning about sales.
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