Keeping your eye on your 5 year result will keep you on track to do things every day that keep you moving toward the goals.  Just as in short term decisions about going to a grocery store, if you don’t keep your eye on getting to the store but allow yourself to get side-tracked at the park or the yard work or talking on your cell phone, you will take longer and experience a more indirect path to the store. This is no big deal with groceries but the result will be delayed or forgotten food items.  For me, this takes away from my satisfaction in creating what I want daily.  To go through a day with lots of satisfaction is really fun. Being satisfied with what you do, contribute, improve or share is a fabulous feeling. Getting it with most things you do, contribute, improve or share leaves you going to bed at night feeling whole, complete and centered. You are a more fun person to hang out with because you aren’t bitching about your life or other people or what happened “to you”.  You are in control because you have decided what you want to do and to what level of Satisfaction.

For instance, as musicians we all go to rehearsals. What if you decided that rehearsal destination was going to bring you 100% Satisfaction?  When you are finished with the rehearsal you will be able to feel great about it?  To get this level of Satisfaction you need to know what your destination looks like.  How do you prepare for the rehearsal? What is your attitude like when you walk in? What is your dress like at this event? What do you say to others, what words do you choose to use?  How do you act during the rehearsal to your colleagues and the conductor?  What results to you get playing? How can you improve your playing while there?  How can you use your imagination to bring more to the music making?  How does your attitude affect people around you and the actual rehearsal performance level?
If you make these decisions  before you go to a rehearsal, you can then come away and assess how close you got to what you wanted.  Once you compare your destination decisions to the actual results you then have your level of satisfaction from that event. If you get 85% satisfaction then you have that much satisfaction and 15% learning. How do you get a higher score next time?

I don’t know about you, but this process is a lot of fun for me and for every client who has taken http://www.creativepeoplecoaching.com/. It is a game I play with myself and I have fun assessing my results and choosing new destinations. Over a long period of time I get to build my bigger results and keep checking in on my vision board to see how much closer I am to what I want in my life.

I encourage anyone to try this process out. I do highly recommend you get support and coaching for bigger results because it will make the path much easier and faster. Having mentors who have already accomplished what you want gives you the advantage of not making all the mistakes they have made. Most people I know WANT to help you out if you know exactly what you want. It is difficult to help someone out who doesn’t know exactly what they want.  If you say “I want a job” versus “I want to play 2nd trumpet in the Toronto Symphony in 5 years” there is a big difference in the quality and specifics of the help you can receive from someone.

Remember, those 5 years are going to pass no matter what. It is your choice about what they look like and the destination you will arrive at when they are over.  You get to choose and my advice is to not lose another  second figuring it all out.

The reason I created www.creativepeoplecoaching.com is because I saw so many musicians so unhappy. Many students and professionals in music seem on a path where they feel out of control of their destinations.  The following is a list of complaints and reasons why these musicians are not where they say they want to be (although they have not yet specifically defined their destination): The audition circuit, the pressures of performing, the supposed cliques, the “luck” of winning, the “hope” that a performance would go well, the lack of money, the poor advice they got, and ultimately the myriad of excuses of why they didn’t get what they wanted, etc..

I truly want to help people gain clarity and move forward happily and with great satisfaction. The more people who can achieve this will make the experience of being a musician that much better and of course, our audiences will see, hear and feel this clarity and purpose from the stage. It is not up to the conductor to make your experience of a rehearsal or concert satisfying. It is up to you. A musician’s contribution is to the members of the audience and to colleagues in creating a “whole” that is bigger than the sum of the “parts”.

Grab hold of this daily opportunity to choose your destination, near or far, and then take the first step. It is fun and easy!

Every day we decide what we are going to do and plan out how to get there.  It could be going to the grocery store, going to a class, meeting a friend, etc… The plan is simple. You decide where you want to go and then decide how you are going to get there.  Some of these decisions are automatic. You know where the grocery store is and you just go there, get what you want and come home. Dead simple.

There is no difference in making decisions that won’t happen immediately. For instance, we make destination decisions for events like Christmas. We know this will happen Dec. 25th in the morning and we need to create presents under the tree ( if that is your tradition) for each person we decide we want to gift. We go through a process of choosing an appropriate gift, looking for good value, shopping, wrapping it and placing it expectantly under the now decorated tree. We have anticipation of the event and the reward ( satisfaction) of seeing our gift opened and appreciated.

Longer term, there is deciding what you will be doing in 5 years.  You know where this destination is:  Feb. 10th, 2017.  You know how old you will be :  ___ years old.   No matter what, you will be that old in 5 years.  You have a choice as to whether you create the path there or not.  Well, actually you are always creating the path there but deciding what that path will look like for you takes a bit more thinking and self- discovery.
That self- discovery is looking inside and choosing what is most important to you. What do you really love to do?  What are you doing right now that you would like to keep doing for the next 5 years?  What results would you want to create over those 5 years?

There is no more “luck” involved in this than there is in being “lucky” to get to the grocery store. In creating your daily decisions, like going to the store, you go through the same process you can use for bigger goals and ones that are further away.  You decide what you want and you take the first step toward it until you are there.

What is curious to me is that most people seem to feel that the daily decisions are easy, even routine, but the longer term decisions are unsure, difficult and scary.  I want to take some of these qualities and explain how you can make these decisions easily, with security and with a lot of fun.  Graduates of  www.creativepeoplecoaching.com all say “ I didn’t realize how much fun this would be!”

It is fun because the process of discovering what you truly want in 5 years is like being a little kid again. If you feel you don’t know what you want in 5 years there is a simple process to discover it. Here is the process and I have had this process work for every single person who has done it!
Using your imagination, project out to what your life could look like on Feb. 10, 2017.  What would make you deliriously happy to have in your life? What is your day like?  What amount of money do you make? Where do you live? Who do you hang out with?  What is your health like?  What is your family and friends or social situation like?  Where have you traveled? What are you surrounded by that you know is really important to you?

Just play with this picture. Enjoy being creative and choosing to put  whatever you want in that picture. It doesn’t cost you anything to dream. If you want to you can actually create a hard copy of that picture: a Bristol board with pictures, saying, photos on it or a movie on your computer or decorate your practice room wall with pictures etc..

If you are still not sure about what that picture could look like then I would suggest you start a file called: “Things I really love….to have, to do, to be, to see, to look at, to touch, etc..”  Take a month to fill the file with pictures or whatever you decide to put in there.  At the end of the month, schedule some alone time and take out your file. Buy a $1.50 Bristol board at the drugstore or $1 store and sit down to paste your pictures on the board.  This is really fun.  I have had people draw, paste, knit, colour, sprinkle sparkles on it…endless ways to create the picture of their life, their complete life, in 5 years.  For more details on this process and support to complete it, I suggest you check out www.creativepeoplecoaching.com. This is a wonderful process and fully rewarding at the end. You will have a very clear picture of your life in 5 years. You will be totally motivated to take the first step toward that destination.

With this board in front of you, you now know your destination.  Now it is very simple to know what the steps are to get there.  The HOW is not that important. The HOW will present itself as you go along your path. What is important is knowing the specifics of the destination that will make you very happy in 5 years. Many people feel scared to commit to a vision in 5 years but there is a different way to look at it…

Is this etched in stone once you create it?  Absolutely not!  As you go along your path to 5 years from now, you will change and your priorities will change. I suggest you plan on re-doing your board once a year, just for fun!  Any good business does this.  They create a strategic plan for 5 years out. At the end of Year ONE they do the plan over and create another 5 year plan adjusting for changes and new data and reviewing what works best for their company.  You want to do the same thing.  At the end of Year ONE you will redo the 5 years vision board to reflect the new you and how you see yourself 5 years out. This will not change drastically if you have been honest from the start about what makes you happy. You will change for the better over a year but your basic loves and passions will remain constant.

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