Do you struggle to turn dreams into reality?

When you don’t have life pillars, your goals will only be dreams.

Welcome to the Self-Performance-Strategies (S-P-S) Newsletter 

Estimated read time 4-minutes:

“All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes to make them possible.”

- T. E. Lawrence

Have you ever set a goal and then struggled to complete it?

I can safely say that has happened to all of us.

I was no different when setting goals like building muscle, making more money, or improving skills.

I have set and struggled to complete all types of goals.

Each goal you set requires you to adapt, change, or improve a habit, process, or system in your life.

This is not easy.

You often choose new goals outside of your normal daily behaviours and actions which makes change even harder.

The conventional goal-setting practice tells you to work back from your end goal.

Or you are told to create SMART goals (Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound).

While useful, I have always found this cumbersome.

You are layering new habits and actions on top of everything you already do.

These new SMART goals are often forgotten within days and weeks.

Yes, you could remove old habits before starting new ones. I fully believe in doing that.

You may have heard me talk about removing the dumb sh*t from your life.

If you start there, introducing new goals will be much easier.

But there is a deeper level.

There is an easier way to improve in life.

You start at your foundations and expand out.

I believe achieving goals is harder if they are not aligned with your life pillars.

I believe goals that are not connected to life pillars are just dreams.

Before working with me, most of the business owners I work with jumped from new idea to new idea.

They started a habit, new process, or dabbled with a tool for a few days or weeks and then moved on.

They often felt like they were doing shallow work.

They often felt like they were not making progress.

Looking for the root cause always comes back to a lack of clear life pillars.

Your life pillars are your foundations.

They are the areas you want to see improvement in.

They are often linked to why you do what you do.

My 3 Pillars are:

• Health 

• Family and experiences

• Business and Purpose 

Everything I do comes back to one of those pillars.

If it doesn’t fit, I don’t do it.

If I want to do something new, I ensure it aligns with one of my key pillars.

Doing this has helped me in many areas of my life.

Over the last several years, I have used my pillars to:

• Make over 6-figures in the corporate world

• Start a coaching business 

• Lose 15lbs of weight I put on over covid

• Grow a Twitter account to 65K+

• Improve my freedom of time, money, and purpose

I turned my goals and dreams into reality by blending them with my Life Pillars.

This sounds great, Stephen, but how do you do it?

I am glad you asked.

To help you create goals that blend with your Life Pillars.

I have developed a system for you to use.

I call it the 3-3-3 System.

As we have discussed, many people struggle to complete their goals. 

They often end up as wishes and dreams far out in the future.

Then they find it hard to take consistent action daily and weekly toward those dreams.

But with the right foundations, you can turn your dreams and goals into reality. 

Use the 3-3-3 System to create your life foundations:

3 Life Pillars

3 Areas of focus for each Pillar

3 Actions, standards, or systems for each area

You will end up with 3 pillars, 9 areas of focus, and 27 habits, systems, or standards.

It takes less than 30-minutes to do.

The System:

Pick 3 Pillars for your life.

These are high-value areas of your life you want to focus on and improve upon.

Your 3 Pillars could be:

Health

Wealth

Relationships

These pillars could be more specific if needed.

I have kept it general.

Let’s focus on One Pillar:

I have created an example following the process for one Pillar based on I approach my Health Pillar.

3 Areas of focus for the Health Pillar could be:

Diet

Mental

Exercise

Then, for each Area of Focus, pick 3 Habits, Systems, or Standards.

Diet:

Fasting

Whole foods

Drinking lots of water daily

Mental:

Daily meditation

Daily Journaling

Daily reading/audiobooks

Exercise:

Daily walks

Football training and matches

Kettlebells at least once a week

You would repeat this process for your other two Life Pillars.

To improve in life, you need foundations.

This system helps you take a Life Pillar, and within a matter of minutes, you have daily and weekly standards to help you improve.

Notice how this is not about setting goals but about creating actions and standards you will use.

You expand into your future.

People fear setting goals because they think they will fail.

But if you build your life up from foundations, you can’t fail.

Choose what is important to you and build yourself up daily and weekly to improve.

It’s so simple you can only win.

To recap, use the 3-3-3 System to build your foundations:

3 Life Pillars
↓
3 Areas of focus for each Pillar
↓
3 Actions, standards, or systems for each area

You will end up with 3 pillars, 9 areas of focus, and 27 habits, systems, or standards.

Now go build your pillars.

Big love.

Make it a great one,

Stephen