Note from the Director: This month I am proud to feature an excerpt from a young local author (and friend) Taylor Jannsen. Taylor’s book Leave Better Than Found is an inspirational read with many easy-to-use concepts that have sound psychological pinnings to help transform your life. If you’re looking for a little motivation, a place where you can go and simply read a page or two and have it positively impact your life, this is it. Read below for an excerpt and for ways to order the book.
Clarify Your Vision:
To live a life filled with purpose, passion, and significance we must first clarify a vision for our lives. Not having a clear vision often leads to disinterested, apathetic, and unproductive usage of our time. In an essence, you are just floating through life. Vision helps you identify things you are passionate about, who you want to become, and the direction in which you want your life to take. Start by writing down the answers to these four questions:
1.) How do you want to be remembered? Someday when your time is up, what do you want your legacy to be? What do you want to be the most proud of looking back on your life? What things would give you the greatest sense of fulfillment?
2.) What are the most important things in your life? These could be things such as money, health, social life, service, work, status, recognition, family, or education. Identify the three things you value most. This may be difficult to identify only three, but it is important to prioritize your life based on what is important to you. This doesn’t mean you engage in only three activities every day of your life, it means that you understand what your biggest priorities are.
3.) What are the activities that give you an emotional buzz? Things that you constantly think about or that you truly love and enjoy doing? Do they correlate with the things that are most important in your life? If they don’t, how you can find ways to incorporate the activities that give you an emotional buzz and put them at the forefront of your life?
4.) What are the five personality characteristics you most value? Traits such as sense of humor, caring, sympathetic, loyal, honest, passionate, and humble are a few examples. Again, it may be difficult to identify only five, and it doesn’t mean that other traits are not important, but in clarifying your vision, it is important to identify what personality traits you most value.
By clarifying your vision, you bring purpose, passion, and significance into your life. Having an understanding of who you want to become will help direct the decisions you make on a daily basis and allow you to direct your focus, energy, and attention to things that you truly value. We all have a limited amount of time on this planet; stop going through the motions and start becoming the person you have always envisioned yourself to be!
Leave Better Than Found:
Leave Better Than Found isn’t a magic formula or complicated equation, but rather a mission that is capable of positively transforming the life of any individual. We may not change the world in its entirety, but we each have the ability to entirely change our world and impact the lives of those in it. Don’t wait until tomorrow to be everything you were made to be today. Leave Better Than Found can be purchased through Amazon as an e-book or paperback as well as an iBook on the iTunes store. To order your copy today, please visit www.leavebetterthanfound.com/books