Let’s Do the Hoki Poki

Okay, everybody stand up. You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out, you put your right foot back in, and you shake it all about. And then you do the hokey pokey, turn yourself around. And that, my friend, is what life is all about. 

We learned it back in kindergarten, didn't we? It is that way, put your right foot in, put your right foot out, put it back and shake it. Do the hoki poki, you've turned yourself around. You're doing the Hokey Pokey. And then we're going to try another body part. 

You see, there's no such thing as work-life-balance. Years ago, some smart well-intended people, gurus, started talking about this idea, starting with the idea that there's a life wheel that you can slice your life into a number of different areas. And if you're paying attention equally to all those different areas, and you know, all those things get attention every day or most days, then you're going to have a successful life. 

Well, I'm going to call bull on that. 

For over 30 years, working with people, studying this and observing successful goal oriented people, ain't gonna happen. Sometimes we have to just absolutely throw everything we've got... all of our time, our money, our competency, our focus... to the exclusion of a lot of other things in life that are important to us, in order to get things going. In order to get things done, in order to get things to a new level of advance, and trajectory so we can go on, and work on other things. 

So what is the right paradigm here? What do we do? How do we handle this very, very busy life? And not regret that when we're focused over a year, that we're neglecting something else and get and be okay with that? What's the secret? Well, here it is. 

There's four specific domains of success and fulfillment, that's my term. Four domains of success and fulfillment targeting outcomes. You see, activity is not the same as outcome. And so when we focus on outcome, there's only four areas of life, four areas of a successful life. And you can put every single aspiration, every single goal that you have into one of these four categories. And those are wealth, health, connection, and influence, wealth, health, connection and influence. 

So Wealth is about how much money we're making, how well money is serving us, and how secure we feel about our financial future.

Health is about, of course, how fit we feel, how strong we feel, but it's about our energy. It's about our happiness, it's about our vibrancy, it's about how well we are able to bring the 100% of us to 100% of what we do. 

Connection. Well, that's about relationships, and there's concentric circles and relationships. There's the most important and intimate relationships that we have, then there's important, but maybe less connected relationships. And then we have connections with now in the marketplace today, potentially globally with anybody that we choose. And whether those relationships are working or not working, whether we were able to contribute and support and whether we are able to receive contribution and support. 

And then finally, Influence --  and this is the biggie. Most people, once upon a time, they get to a place where their outcomes are sufficient and satisfactory and exciting and wealth and health and in relationship connection. And, and then sooner or later, we start asking the question, but what does it all mean? How do I matter? How am I making a difference? Am I making an impact and influence that's bigger than me. It's going to carry forward into my legacy. 

So I've got a challenge for you here. Throw out the life wheel, forget about trying to balance it all, ain't gonna happen anyway. I want to ask you, what are your specific, most important, most relevant and most critical goals in those four areas: wealth, health, connection and influence? 

And if you don't know what those are, if they're not clear to you, then I want you to decide that right now. Stop everything you're doing because it's probably a waste of time if you're not clear about these things. What is the most important outcome that will advance your life and create a sense of success and fulfillment in each of those four areas? Write it down.

What's the next thing that will improve your sense of success and fulfillment in wealth? Then in health. Then in connection. And what are we doing, what are we focused on for influence? 

Now if you take time to really think about that, I can promise that you'll feel a lot better about what you're getting done in life. You'll stop feeling guilty about not getting to everything all at once because you can't anyway. And you'll be moving yourself aggressively toward a full, rich life of what matters. 

So one more time, everybody, right foot and right foot out, right foot in and shake it all about. Turn yourself around, and you're doing the Hokey Pokey. Have a super day.