Crafting a Playbook
Why Craft a Playbook?
Are you satisfied with the quantity and quality of your learning the last 10 years? Are you confident in your personal life mission and the intentional actions that guide your weeks and months? If so, great! You are where you want to be. If your answer is “not so much”. . . or something along the lines of “honestly, I imagined that by now I would have made more progress in fulfilling my life mission”. . . I challenge you to experiment.
A Growth and Learning Playbook Approach
This is - by no means - the “approved solution”! This is simply just my playbook, customized for my own goals and dreams. . . and (as some may say) customized for my own crazy self. :) Create yours to be “you” too and enjoy the process of creating your life mission with supporting guiding principles and INTENTIONAL actions!
My Sample
So. . . how to begin?
Review Being Intentional for general Playbook concept and start your own personal reflection. Print out the Playbook Template to get your juices flowing and begin jotting down ideas.
The first question to ask yourself: do I have a life mission and have I documented it?
We document many things in our years, but taking some time to ponder what you really stand for, how you want to live your life, and providing yourself an aspirational vision should rank right up there!
The fun part about crafting a life mission statement? It’s an opportunity to experiment with how you reflect and meditate on the big things. . . it can become an iterative process all your own. Trust me — you’re not going to “get it right or wrong” - it’s yours to privately ponder. Think about your passions and what really drives you, meditate on the areas where you’ve experienced great positive strength and energy, and reflect on those items you desire to transform. This is a great exercise for your spiritual connection. At the end of the day, this really isn’t about you or me: It is about how WE can be used as vessels for positive impact — how we can most effectively and productively live our lives while here on this earth! And if you get lost in the process of visualizing and documentation and need some practical tools or navigation to get you “unstuck” give me a shout for completely free support and guidance.
Dream a little too! This is actually a great exercise to shed all your constraints from adultness and just dream and imagine like a child. Who do you want to be? How do you want to positively impact your world? What do you want your legacy to be when you leave this earth? Yes, it’s kind of heady stuff. . . but for many of us we let decades pass us by before we really document and evaluate our progress.
Your life mission may change as you transition into very different stages of your life, but I suggest you really stretch yourself to think wide and vast. At your core, why do you think you are here? (wow, this really is heady stuff! :) )
Once you have a starting point for your mission (you’ll continue to play with this, trust me) now it’s time to fill in the 5 pillars and the Spiritual Foundation with guiding principles and intentional actions. You’ll probably find that some pillars are more natural for you to complete. For example, perhaps you already have a financial approach and can fill in those areas. Or perhaps you are grounded in great local or global service opportunities and feel prepared to document your actions and principles around that.
Don’t worry about the number of principles and actions per pillar or in the Spiritual foundation piece. Those will likely grow with time. Some of you that have previously documented life goals may notice this flows easier for you. No one is grading this though. . . and remember that the most articulate Playbook with elaborate principles and actions that is never WORKED OUT in real life is senseless. :)
So. . . relax and be gentle with yourself as you reflect on the Emotional, Family, Service, Physical, Financial, and Spiritual areas. You are taking positive steps in just beginning the process.
As mentioned in My Sample section, create yours to be “you” too and ENJOY the process of creating your life mission with supporting guiding principles and INTENTIONAL actions! Once you have your draft established you can experiment with how this fits with your daily life travels! In the section below we really bring it to life through an established cadence of private assessment/evaluation (see Playbook Checkpoint template).
Why Assess and Evaluate?
It’s important to periodically assess “how it’s going” with your playbook. This is not meant to be a time to beat yourself up (leave that to the world - it’s really good at that!). Evaluation is simply meant to be that reflective time for you to privately explore where more growth can occur. Likely, you are always going to want to do more, be more, grow more. . . this is simply your chance to prioritize the intentional actions for this part of your journey and a chance for you to be honest (with a huge serving of grace on top). Similar to the Playbook development, this evaluation phase can be a great spiritual connection for you too. Ask for our Creator’s wisdom and meditate on where you can begin creating more positive impact. He is faithful to guide you in your journey!
A quarterly assessment cadence provides you 3 solid months of live “data” and good insight into playbook actions and where you might want to better align with your guiding principles. The assessment itself does not need to be time intensive; this tool simply provides an opportunity for a reflection snapshot along your life journey. This small effort will also create a very simple journal documenting your steps - your agility, resilience, and your desire to CONTINUE to GROW.
See page 2 of Being Intentional for context.
Quarterly Reflection Questions:
What do I need to STOP doing that is preventing learning in a certain area?
What do I need to intentionally START doing to produce momentum in a particular area?
What should I CONTINUE doing as it has proven to produce some desired forward progress?
Overall, am I “starving” one particular pillar?
Finally, are my intentional actions really contributing to my stated overall life mission?
Playbook Checkpoint template for your assessment