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Didirikan:: Dec 2008, by Celestine Chua

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The Personal Excellence Blog

Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform In 2010?

04 Januari 2010 jam 1:30

Image © maurice

Happy 2010 and welcome to the new decade! Today’s article is about choosing the area of your life to transform for this brand new year

By now, some of you are probably armed with your list of 2010 goals to make it a blast. Some of you may not have thought about your goals yet. If you haven’t done so, it’s not too late to do it now! Take out a pen and paper, and spend the next 15 min (or more if you need to) writing everything it takes to make your 2010 the best year ever yet.

You might want to read Part-3 of Goal Achievement Series on Establish Your Goals, which shares 10 key principles behind powerful goals.

Finish the exercise before continuing on with this article. I’ll wait for you here until you are done.

Done? How many goals did you come up with? When I did the 2010 goal setting exercise with my clients, most of them came up with 10+ goals. I personally have a list of 14 big goals for the year. The most I’ve encountered so far is 40 goals, and it’s by a 16 year old girl!

In general, the more goals you set and strive for, the more you will get out of life (assuming these are empowering goals). However, it’s also obvious the more goals you set, the harder it will be to achieve all, simply because the increased number of goals will divert your energy. That’s where setting a focus for your year comes in.

Power of A Yearly Focus

Setting a focus for your year means to identify an area of your life you want to disproportionately focus on improving throughout the year. This focus can be an area of your life which you feel you have been neglecting in the past and want to start working on. It can be an area which, when improved upon, will enable you to have the best experience for the year.

When you set a focus for the year, it doesn’t mean you can only have goals in that area. You can continue to set other goals that may be out of the focus, just that a majority of your goals will be related to your focus in some way or another. For example, perhaps your focus for 2010 is to improve yourself, and then you will have different goals related to that, such as to be more productive, more sociable, increase your income, lose weight, and so on.

Your focus can be anything, from:

An area in your life (career, health, finance, spiritual, family, friends, love, recreation, personal growth)
A skill (communication, writing, public speaking, dancing, swimming, running, etc)
An aspect of yourself you want to cultivate/strengthen (self-love, being sociable, confidence, charisma, productivity, organization, discipline, having integrity, responsibility, etc)
A certain message you want to convey to yourself/the world

Benefits of Choosing A Yearly Focus

Why choose a focus for the year? There are two key benefits, really:

Benefit # 1: Transformational Results in Area of Focus

When I was in my brand management role in my past company, we would design every marketing campaign around a single big idea rather than separate different messages. It had been repeatedly proven that a single, powerful big idea registered with more people and triggered more action than say, having 4-5 different messages, which typically confused consumers and resulted in no action taken in the end.

Similarly for goals, by choosing 1 core focus for our year, you accelerate the achievements and progress within the area in the year, resulting in transformational results. The beauty of a focus is that by being conscious and aware of your focus, it helps you to move ahead with much more clarity. This clarity will drive you to achieve tremendously in this area. Compared to if we were to have a laundry list of 40 goals in some 10 different areas – nothing’s ever going to get done! Chances are, we are going to get overwhelmed before mid-point or we are going to totally forget about the goals we set and revert back to our past behaviors!

Benefit # 2: Sets In Place the Improvements Made

Besides getting more results, it also sets in place the improvements we have achieved in that area. Many people often have the problem of setting goals, achieving results in those goals, then having what they have achieved in those goals after they shift their attention else where. Yet when you spend a whole of 1 year working on an area, the improvements you obtain in that area are going to be deeply set in at the end of the year.

Let’s say you make health a focus area and you achieve a tremendous amount of improvements in the year. Throughout the year, you improve your diet, you exercise regularly, you wake up early every day. By the end of the year, not only would you have made dramatic leaps in your health, but the changes would also become a staple in your life because the actions have turned into habits. You are now more ready to focus on new areas and introduce new changes in your life.

My Focus Areas Through The Years

2007-2008 – Personal Growth

For me, in 2007-2008, my focus area was personal growth through corporate work in my ex-company. Throughout the course of my work, I was consistently requesting for the biggest and the best projects to stretch myself. I strove to exceed expectations for every piece of work I was given. I signed up for the best trainings within the company so I was ahead in my learning curve. I also connected with the seniors in the company to learn from them. In the end, I was able to rotate across 3 different assignments in my 2 years in the company, when the norm in the company was 1 assignment per 2 years. All in all, this allowed me to gain a massive amount of knowledge and learnings, which then enabled me to quit and pursue my passion thereafter.

2009 – Establishing My Passion

In 2009 which was last year, my focus area was establishing my passion to the world. As a result, majority of my biggest achievements last year was centered on my passion, such as setting up The School of Personal Excellence, being featured on media, establishing The Personal Excellence Blog, becoming a full-time life coach, speaking and giving workshops and so on.

Because I was so fervently pursuing my passion, it made me realize 2 things which I shared in my previous 2009 reflections article: #1 Helping others is what I want to do for the rest of my life. #2 The reason why I do what I do every day is because of you.

2010 – People, Love and Relationships

This year, my focus is going to be centered around people, love and connections . Putting other people’s needs in the forefront, loving everyone wholly and unconditionally, and establishing meaningful, authentic and real relationships. On hindsight, this is definitely no coincidence especially having discovered the driving force behind pursuing my passion is really helping others grow (see above).

So what is the scope of this focus? Everything, really.

The World: Reaching out to even more people to help them live their best life. Knowing my readers, clients and workshop participants more deeply as individuals.
Familial Bonds: Strengthening my connections with my parents who have always been forever doting on me since young, yet I have hardly ever reciprocated the love.
Friendship: Knowing my current friends even better as individuals.
Networking: Getting out there and knowing others better. Online: connecting with more fellow personal development bloggers and knowing current blogger friends better as individuals. Offline: Connecting with more experts and counterparts in the industry.
Leadership: In 2009 I had been pursuing my passion largely on as an individual. This year marks the first year where I’ll be pursuing my passion with a team of people – incredibly talented, stellar individuals no less, whom I handpicked over all others. So far I’ve been practicing leadership on an indirect basis and have not directly led people yet. In the past, I have been managed by many different managers of different styles and have experienced the pains of poor leadership, as well as the joys of strong leadership. Thus, it has always been my personal resolution to be the best leader I can be and ensure I bring the best out of anyone I come into contact with. This will truly be an area of growth for me in 2010 and I look forward to seeing how it pans out!
Love: In the past, I had been emotionally closed towards relationships for different reasons. The past few years have seen the unlocking of these bonds, one after another. I believe I’m now emotionally open towards being in a relationship, so let’s see how things go moving forward and how the universe reacts

To be honest, I’m really excited about this because people and relationships is something I had never overtly set as a goal in the past. Since then, the past 4 years from 2006-2009 have been a long journey of inner growth, from understanding myself, uncovering blind spots, increasing performance, surpassing personal limits, increasing my consciousness, living in the now, and many, many more. Having done so much inner growth and understood myself to a certain degree, I believe I’m now ready to transfer my attention to the outside world by focusing on the others around me.

In fact, after making the decision to focus on this goal, several blind spots have become apparent to myself. For one, my responsibility towards others. While I’ve always been responsible for my own self, I have not effected the same rigor to others around me. In retrospect, I’m beginning to realize my actions implicate others more than I have recognized. Another blind spot is my empathy towards others. I feel there is room for me to be more empathetic towards others – being sensitive to them, putting their needs first, understanding their feelings and knowing them as individuals. I look forward to seeing more blind spots and addressing them as I move ahead.

While I still have other goals in other areas (such as losing some more pounds toward my ideal weight, learning to manage my energy to maximize my productivity output), the focus on people and connections is the key anchor that holds all my goals together. This key focus is going to be the guiding point for my daily thoughts and behaviors every day in 2010 moving forward

With this new focus for this year, be prepared to see a whole lot more articles on people and relationships this year too

Which Area Of Your Life Do You Want To Transform This Year?

How about you? What is your 2010 Focus? What is the key area in your life you want to transform this year to make it the best year ever?

As mentioned above in point #4, your focus can be a message itself. One of my readers (hey Tatt! ) was telling me that 2009 had been a year where he had grown a lot as a person – particularly on the professional front and his health. His focus for 2010 is boost his productivity through “focusing on the big things“. Another reader, Kimberly, said that her 2009 had been focused on others, and she now intends for 2010 to be “a year of focus for herself”, which I thought is a fabulous idea! To be able to truly help others, you need to first meet your own needs first and foremost. One of my clients’ focus for this year is “To live life to the fullest”, which is the central message behind all the 2010 he is going to achieve.

There is no right or wrong answer on what your focus is. It just needs to (i) be a single theme you want to focus on in the whole year and (ii) resonate with what you feel is biggest block towards living your best life this year.

Decide on your 2010 focus, then start living true to it immediately. You will find that with a focus for the year, everything starts becoming a whole lot more coherent and things flow more naturally. Focus on this area and target to make the biggest progress and evolution this year than you ever have before

2009 Reflections: 2 Biggest Things I Learned, 15 Key Highlights and A Big Thank You To You

31 Desember 2009 jam 0:21

My first snowprint . Taken when I was in China, Jiu Zhai Guo last year

2009.

What a year.

2009 marks the first year whereby I’m full fledgedly pursuing my passion to help others achieve excellence and live their best life. Subsequently, 2009 marks the first year where I’m in a total state of “flow” in every single moment I live. Everything feels so natural and surreal. It seems as if 1st Jan 2009 was light years ago, as if I’ve been doing what I’m doing now for the longest time ever. I don’t remember when’s the last time I ever felt this way about anything. It feels… like I’m living in a dream. It’s so amazing that it’s indescribable.

I learned many things for myself this year. Some of these have been documented in my articles throughout the year. Many have been duly recorded in my life handbook as part of my personal journey of growth. All the learnings I have gotten – I intend to share on the blog in the future, in its own time and place.

Rather than flood this post with a tsunami of realizations and learnings, I decided to share the two biggest things I have learned for myself this year.

Two Biggest Things I Learned in 2009

1. I realized helping others is what I want to do for the rest of my life.

If you have read my personal story of how I discovered my life purpose, you might have noticed a large part of how I arrived at my life purpose was through logical deduction. In 2006, I realized the pursuit of monetary, material possessions and recognition as ends in themselves was meaningless, because these were impermanent and would disappear one day. From there, I concluded I would focus on personal growth as my life mission – developing consciousness of myself and others, since it is the only thing that is permanent in the world.

Today, 1 year after pursuing this passion/mission/purpose, I can now conclusively say that apart from mental resonance, I’m now in full emotional resonance with my desire to help others grow. I don’t just know it. I feel it in my heart, fully and wholly now. There’s nothing in the world I would ever trade for to stop doing this.

The continuous, heartwarming feedback from readers, 1-1 coaching clients and workshop participants have affirmed my realization. Since the start of the blog, readers have continuously told me how the articles have empowered them in their journey of personal growth, such as taking action on their dreams, getting over life’s setbacks, loving themselves, making bold & necessary changes in their lives and quitting their full-time jobs to do what they love. Clients have told me how amazing they felt after the coaching sessions, how they discovered more about themselves through the sessions compared to all their life so far, how they have created changes they never thought possible before. All these are the best rewards I can ever get for what I do today.

2. I realized the reason why I do what I do every day is because of you.

This realization really came as a result of a serendipitous and spontaneous question that popped in my mind a month ago or so. “What if one day, there is nobody else in this world but me? Would I still be as driven towards life and personal growth as I am now?”

The answer that came back was a quiet, yet resounding, “No .”.

It then struck me that the primary thing that drives me every day is really, you. In the past 2 years since discovering my life purpose, I had been equally driven towards my personal growth and growth of others, with slight inclination towards the latter. Today, it’s clear that it’s the love for all of you out there and the desire to help you live your best life that drives me. As I shared last week, the reason why I openly share about myself and my life to the media and the world is because of you. If none of you exist, I wouldn’t be as driven or passionate toward my own growth as I am right now. The real reason why I strive to grow and be my best self every day is so I can better help you and others grow and live your best life.

15 Key Highlights of 2009

Passion/Career/Business

1. Decided not to return to corporate work and fully embrace my passion now (March).

From there, turned my passion into my full-time career

2. Started The School of Personal Excellence (TSOPE) in September

TSOPE is the first school to help you achieve your goals and dreams. If there is only 1 thing I have to single out as my key achievement for this year, this will be the one

3. Built and established The Personal Excellence Blog, reaching out and touching the lives of people around the world

To date, we have over 140+ free, quality personal excellence articles, almost 2k unique readers every day and 1.7k subscribers
Started The Personal Excellence Blog Facebook Fanpage, with over 2.7k fans currently! Do join us if you haven’t already

4. Became a full fledged life coach and established myself in the profession

Equipped myself with coaching skills through self-learning and experience and became a better coach through the year. Developed my own robust coaching system based on my learnings in life and personal philosophy.
Gave personal 1-1 coaching to nearly 50 clients this year, helping them transform their lives and achieve results in their personal goals and dreams
Since I started coaching in Apr, 1-1 coaching rates have increased by over ten-fold due to the overdemand. The 1-1 coaching continues to be overbooked today, though I plan to remove the waiting list in 2010 due to urgency behind some clients’ requests

5. Started officially speaking and training in the area of personal excellence

Gave speeches, trainings and workshops in various schools and organizations
Spoke to an audience of almost 1,000 people!
Became a better speaker through self-learning and direct speaking experience. Look forward to more developments in this area in 2010

6. Interviewed and featured in local and regional media 12 times

It first started with My Paper in late March, then everything rolled on from there To date, I’ve been covered by almost every media outlet locally and it’s something I’m extremely grateful for.
Check media section for a full list of media coverage and the clippings/recordings of the interviews

Health / Fitness

7. Experimented with raw veganism for 21 days (May-June)

Decided to return to cooked vegan food for now since it’s too hard to upkeep a raw vegan diet in the modern society

8. (Almost) achieved my desired weight / look

Still a few pounds left to lose and toning to do. After that, I gather I’m finally done with weight loss goals after all these years

Relationships

9. Improved my relationships with my parents!

Hugged my parents for the first time since I was a kid! Also gave my family members each a personal card expressing love and gratitude for everything they have done for me. This was a huge deviation from the norm since we hardly ever talk, especially between me and my brother. I think they must have thought I was popping pills.

10. Initiated and re-established contact with people from my past

Most of these were people whom I had negative encounters with previously and didn’t continue contact afterward. Figured that as I’m going to be coaching others to release personal blocks, I needed to first walk the talk!

11. Established and fostered strong friendships in the personal development industry

I’m very thankful for the work I do, because it enables me to become acquainted with such incredible people. Moving forward in this journey, I look forward to meeting even more of such people.

12. Got to know over 2k new readers and friends on both Facebook and Twitter, thanks to the blog

If you have FB and/or Twitter but haven’t added me yet, please feel free to do so!

13. Mutually parted with my best friend of 10 years

Our friendship had served its role in the earlier years, and it had come to a point where it was preventing us from living in full alignment with purpose and our highest selves. In the end we mutually parted to progress in our life journey.

14. Forgave and finally completely let go of someone who had been in my heart for the past 4 years

I never did realize this was preventing me from receiving new people into my life. When I finally realized that, I consciously let him go from my heart, and what resulted was a feeling of liberation I had never felt before.

Spirituality

15. Strengthened my connection with my higher self (subconsciousness)

While I had not actively worked on my spirituality this year (deprioritized for now as I want to solidify the foundations of my personal growth first), my intuitive connection has definitely strengthened over the year. This becomes especially apparent through my 1-1 coaching and new people I meet. This actually doesn’t come as a surprise, since everything I’m doing now is directly aligns myself with my higher self and hence strengthens my connection with my subconsciousness.

A Huge Thank You to All of You

Thank you so much to all of you who have reached out to me at one point or another to send me your well wishes, feedback and appreciation, whether through email, facebook, twitter or in person. Thank you to all of you who have helped spread the word of The Personal Excellence Blog and/or my message to others around you, be it your friends, your family and other people. Thank you to all the personal development bloggers – Armen, Kristi, Vincent, Jonathan, Dragos, Dani, Mark, Albert, Luciano, and many others who have in one way or another helped drive awareness of this blog to many others.

Thank you . Thank you to all of you for your continuous support. Thank you for giving me the chance to do what I do today. Without any of you, I wouldn’t be who I am or what I am today. Because of you, I’ve become a better person than before. Because of you, I’m living the best life I’ve ever lived. You guys are my strength, my pillar and my life. Thank you for being who you are and for being alive. Because of you, I will go on to create even bigger things, things I never thought I would achieve.

Reflecting on Your 2009

Just like I have been doing 2009 reflection with my coachees the past couple of weeks, I would like to invite you to do the same. There’s always something to learn from everything, and what’s most important is to crystallize the learnings so you take something valuable from all the past experiences. Reflecting enables you to bring these learnings forward and improve your experience of life. It’s all about living your best life! .

Take out your pen and paper and think about the following in the context of 2009:

What are your major achievements and notable events this year?
What have you learned for yourself this year?
What are your key goals for 2010 to make it a huge blast?

Many readers and clients have told me they found 58 Noteworthy Resolutions For The New Year very helpful for them as they set their resolutions/goals for 2010, so you might want to check that out too as you set your 2010 goals.

Comments are open if you would like to share your reflections with the rest!

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010!!!!! Let’s work together to make 2010 a BIG BANG!! I’m feeling so excited about 2010 ahead – I have absolutely no doubt this is going to be the best year ever for all of us!!

The Best of The Personal Excellence Blog 2009

28 Desember 2009 jam 12:12

As 2009 draws to a close, I thought it will be good to look back and take a trip down the blog memory lane: By recapping the noteworthy articles of 2009, especially since we have seen an inflow of new readers towards the 2nd half of the year! It doesn’t really matter when the articles are written, by the way – All articles at The Personal Excellence Blog are not time bound. This means the principles, ideas and concepts shared will apply to your life regardless of whether you were reading them earlier this year, right now, or even years down the road.

Be prepared for a huge reading fest! As it’s impossible to finish reading all these articles in 1 day, the best is to bookmark this page so you can return later to continue your reading. This will go hand in hand with #23 on 58 Noteworthy Resolutions For The New Year – To read a self-help article every day as you enrich and live your best life!

So without further ado…