Leadership to Freedom

Last Saturday night I had blast with my friends by organizing a dream session. This is where a bunch of people get together and brainstorm and share what they want there future to look like. As I discuss on my top 100 goals and dreams page, this is super important if you want to achieve greatness. As many leaders have said, if you don’t set goals, you’ll hit them with amazing accuracy!

What was great about this group of friends is how on a Saturday night, when most people are out at bars, watching the hockey game, or some other activity that will give them pleasure for the moment, this group was working on their future and what will give them pleasure for a lifetime. This is one of those things that makes you stand out from the crowd and be above average.

It was actually even more fun than when I used to go to bars and watch hockey games. Don’t get me wrong, I still love my Bruins; but when they won the cup 2 years ago, even though it was fun being in Montreal as a Boston fan, it didn’t do anything for my future. It goes without saying that this future includes being able to go to every Stanley Cup final game, and Olympic Hockey medal round game.

What we did instead was plan our future. Most people spend more time planning their 2 week vacation than they do planning their life time. I started with an idea I heard on one of Life’s CDs, about how to come up with what really matters to you.

The speaker said to separate the sheet into 3 categories; Do, Have, and Become. We took 20 minutes to list the things we wanted to do in our lives (vacations, activities, etc.), what we wanted to have (cars, houses, etc), and what we wanted to become (best selling authors, great parents, recognized leaders, etc).

I then wrote everything down the board as we all said what we wrote down, there for everyone too see and get inspired from. I copied down a few things into my own notebook that I didn’t have earlier; you’ll get to see these on my new top 100 list in January.

Here are pictures of each of 3 categories. I apologize if I’m the only one able to read my writing, and who knows what’s in the dark areas; feel free to ask 🙂

Here is the board on what we want to do:

Here is the board on what we want to have:

Here is the board on what we want to become:

The next part is probably the most important. It’s great to set goals and list them out, but if we want them to happen, we have to really focus on them properly. I have actually not been doing what I should have for the past year, as I only looked over the list over and over again. What I was missing was what some people refer to as the commercial we play to ourselves; the visualization.

The last step of the evening was to try and figure out which of the items we had written down called out to us the most; which were we the most passionate about. When we had that, it was time to create that commercial for ourselves. Some people started working on their dream board (a board with pictures of that passion, cut out from magazines or printed from pictures online) that they can keep looking at, while others started writing their future story. This story should not be just a list of actions, but it should be referring to your senses. Our subconscious minds which we are trying to program doesn’t function in words; it works with images and feelings. You need to write about how your going to feel, what your going to see and smell; what you will sense.

I cheated a little here, as I have two strong passions I think. One is to leave my job and not have a boss or a company that owns my days, and the other is more about recognition and speaking in front of others. I started to write about when I’m going to talk on stage at a seminar here in Montreal, about my last day at work.

I wrote about the song that’s going to be playing as I walk out on stage (its Nightwish’s Ghost Love Score starting at the 5:34 mark; although it is still a debate on whether I start at 7:09). I wrote about the bright lights and the nervousness of speaking in front of people that I know personally since I’m from Montreal. I then started to write about myself describing my last day at work, and how that is going to feel. I haven’t finished this yet, but it’s a work in progress that I plan on finishing before the week is done.

Once it is complete, I will need to start reading it everyday and imagining it in my mind each time.

Have you focused on your future lately? Do you have a commercial that plays in your mind everyday? Or just to get you started: what would you do if time and money were no obstacle?