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Posts Tagged: plan of action

Are You Reaching Your Goals?

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

To succeed with personal or professional goals, we must first define specifically what we want. Assessing and evaluating takes thoughtful consideration. Clarifying what is important is the first step in preparing to work for it.

Today on my blog and podcast, you’ll find a series of exercises to help you recognize behaviors and choices that worked and those that didn’t and why they didn’t.

We’ll look at the most common obstacle to achieving goals, and you’ll learn how free-writing unlocks the brain and allows creativity to flow.

Turn Your Gravel Pit into a Beautiful Life Garden

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

In the late 1800s, Robert Butchart began excavating limestone from a quarry behind the home where he and his wife, Jennie, lived. When all the limestone was extracted, all that remained was a huge, ugly, expansive hole in the ground.

But Jennie was not willing to let it lay there discarded, ugly, and debased. With the help of architects and landscapers, topsoil from neighboring farmland was brought in and a beautiful design created.

We, too, have our personal gravel pits — those places where we feel scarred and flawed. How can we transform our seemingly hopeless situations into satisfying, productive and pleasing futures?

Read on to find out…

Become the Director of Your Life Story

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

Become the Director of Your Life Story | FocusWithMarlene.com

Directors determine what is essential to bring life to a script – who will play the different roles, what problems need to be worked out, staging, etc. When you go see a play at a theater, you see that script come to life on stage.

A director takes a screenplay, and reworks or rewrites it as necessary to achieve the outcome wanted. The director knows the strengths and weaknesses of the players involved, and achieves a positive outcome by bringing together all the elements required for that desired ending.

Today on my blog and podcast, I’ll share the story of a woman who felt locked in a life with no future. Together, she and I created a plan that enabled her to become the director of her life. Read on…

Step 7 in Designing a Meaningful Life: Plan Your Goal

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

Goals enable us to accomplish what is really important to us. It involves ongoing evaluation and monitoring to correct time frames, remove obstacles, or break into smaller components if necessary. When replacing an established habit, for example, it takes time to put a new one in place.

Goal-setting helps us become aware of all the things we could accomplish that seemed impossible before.

Creating that goal statement and developing a specific plan of action is both exciting and keeps us on course. Goals need to be personal and have value to us.

Today on my blog and podcast, I’ll show you the basic components of any goal and give you an example of my own goal-setting process.

Step 1 in Designing a Meaningful Life: Start Where You Are

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

tree of life

Whether constructing a sunken garden or building a house, we begin by evaluating what we have to work with.

What do I have and what do I need?

I was involved in building three homes. Each required not only construction plans for the house, but also an adequate plot of land, lot preparation and, after construction, landscaping. When it all comes together it forms a unique beauty all its own.

When examining the steps involved in building a new home, there are many commonalities we can apply. It takes a desire and then a vision, an architect to help in the design, a cost analysis in time, money and materials, a plan of action, motivation, and commitment.

Path? What Path?

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

Path? What Path? | focuswithmarlene.com

Difficult times compel us to stop and make an assessment of where we are in life.

  • Are we achieving the ambitions and aspirations we had?
  • Are our goals and plans to achieve stated in such a way that even when faced with unexpected obstacles, we have a clear direction on how to get there?

Such an evaluation can enlarge our vision. We may need to abandon unclear goals and replace them with new, more coherent, or articulate ones.

At these crossroads, we are given the opportunity to clarify what is really important to us so we can step out with a new purpose and ending in mind.

Turn Your Gravel Pit Into a Beautiful Garden

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

Turn Your Gravel Pit into A Beautiful Garden | focuswithmarlene.com

Can something ugly and scarred be turned into something beautiful and inviting? Let me share with you a true story about a real gravel pit.

A gravel pit is a piece of land where bulldozers and huge earth-scooping machinery have removed the soil to extract gravel and other ingredients needed to build roads, make cement, gather building rocks, etc.

What remains, after all the extractions, is a huge scarred and pitted hole in the ground with unstable and crumbling sides, water seepage from underground springs, stagnant pools of rainwater, huge, discarded pieces of rock and other un-usable mounds of earth. Debris is scattered everywhere, discarded by individuals who consider this a worthless piece of land; a place to throw away their pop cans, beer bottles or candy wrappers.

Venturing into the Unknown

Posted by Marlene Anderson, MA, LMHC, NCC

Venturing into the Unknown | focuswithmarlene.com

The plaintive sound of a foghorn filtered through the grey morning mist as our sailboat pushed away from the protective harbor of Victoria, BC and slipped silently into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The stillness of the morning was broken only by the low constant chug, chug of our diesel engine and the caw of a lonely seagull taking flight overhead.

The shoreline and our boat were soon swallowed by a grey, colorless matter silently and swiftly moving over the water. Although it had no shape or body, it was as unyielding and impenetrable as any brick wall.

One moment we saw the sky and receding shoreline; the next minute every point of reference was gone.