REBOOT YOUR LIFE

Day 0 – Getting ready It is no use frantically climbing the ladder of success when it is leaning against the wrong wall. —Steven Covey Leading yourself When it comes to the arc of your life, leading is a sacred responsibility. It is also a gift, that of living in a time and place where choices are available to us. We do not face the bone-crushing poverty of Bangladesh or the North American inner city. Casting that gift aside is, in my view, a sacrilege.

A LIFE IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE Self-coaching is a way of grabbing the arc of your life and reclaiming authorship of your destiny. The story “I have no time”—for exercise, for recreation, to participate fully in my kids’ lives, to spend time adoring my spouse, to start a business, to write a book—is about the unhappiest story of them all. There are the same 168 hours in the week for book-writers and dream-livers and spouse-adorers—they have simply chosen those commitments and said no to others.

Enriching an already great life Leading yourself requires that you become a self-coach. Self-coaching is not just for people who feel the ache of an unlived life. Very successful and very happy people sometimes let areas slip and dreams fade. I have known great business leaders who are prosperous and respected by their communities, shoot scratch golf, and read great books, but have given up on looking for someone to share that with. Even the very best, most successful people can have an Achilles’ heel, some part of living the dream that is slipping by.

One enriching practice is to look at ways that an already amazing life can be improved. Some people add hobbies, some romance, some vacation and rest, some public service, some extending their education, or some enhancing their career. For example, one year, while using this process, I noticed that I was not being of service in the civic or public sphere. I had no previous political experience or interest (except moaning about politics and politicians). Some friends had suggested I might run for Parliament one day, so I decided, with reservations, to peer over the political fence.

I joined a political party and got involved in policy discussions. By the end of the year, I had had discussions with a dozen Members of Parliament and the leaders of my new party (the equivalent of the Minority Leader in the US). I was most star struck by my meeting with Baroness Shirley Williams, who had negotiated with Mao, Mandela, FW de Klerk, and Brezhnev in her role as Foreign Secretary. (She was the UK’s Henry Kissinger in the 1970s.) All this was birthed out of a few hours’ reflection at the beginning of a year. While it is doubtful I will ever run for office, my life was deeply enriched by this experience. In my view, everyone has scope to enrich their lives. The spoils go to those who dare to begin.

Self-leadership and business leadership Much of my work during the last twenty years has involved developing senior business people in leadership programs. There is a skills portion of leadership development, but leadership experts largely agree on one thing: leadership comes from within (and isn’t just about skills). In other words, you cannot lead people effectively unless you’re “living the dream” yourself. Having a life in which you realize your potential inspires people to realize theirs, to fight for big dreams, to start companies, go the extra kilometer, and take great risks.

A leader grappling with stress, conflict, unrealized hopes, and too many commitments will lack power, even if she is very good at getting her “game face” on. With the results of the Reboot process in her back pocket, however, and with a foundation of authenticity and integrity, she can tap into new power. No program that I run for senior executives begins without a process like this, because to work on their leadership, they need a clean slate (or one in the process of being cleaned).

Why is this different than New Year’s resolutions? In 2003, I was moving house with a new wife, Cari, and a baby on the way. Cari was emptying drawers and she came across a two-page document called “Paul’s 1999 goals.” The goals were big, and there were a lot of them, including starting a business, finding a relationship, getting a master’s degree, getting certified as a coach, becoming debt-free, running a 10k, meditating and doing yoga, and starting to write. People achieve much more than that in a lifetime, but in the mid-1990s, although I had an amazing job, my life looked like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Running a trading desk at an investment bank in the 1980s had earned me a ton of money, but the hedonistic ‘lifestyle’ (a euphemism) had nearly destroyed me. Miserable, I knew there was more to life than money, but I had no idea how to get whatever that was.

How then do you ‘get a life’? I read everything I could, but the most transformative was Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He talked about things like mission, vision, values, goals, priorities and discipline – which were, for me, completely alien concepts. Following Covey’s prescription, I had written the goals in January 1999, and by December 1999, they were all achieved or well underway. What is amazing here is that I spent two days thinking about them, wrote them once, and never looked at them again. As if by magic, I found myself insanely busy but doing the right things often enough so as to create a miraculous year. Lots of people set goals at New Year’s and call them resolutions. Fewer than 25 percent of resolutions make it into February. What was I doing right?

Here is $100,000 answer: You cannot make new commitments, or dream new dreams, or start afresh in any way without “completing” what is already in place —that’s like trying to build a beautiful temple on a garbage dump. “Completing” might not mean finishing everything. (It would be pretty silly coaching advice to say, “Finish everything you are working on, then we will start living some dreams.”) When you enumerate the obstacles that are in your way and your current commitments, however, some things will be discarded and some will be postponed, but in a conscious manner and for the sake of bigger things. I don’t live in the fantasy that you can, today, start from a blank piece of paper. Your life is already a network of commitments to family, friends, employers, and your community. What is often true, though, is that some commitments need to be pruned, some revitalized, and some new ones invented. By doing that, you create the space for great things (things you say you want) to happen.

A new life in twelve 30-minute steps A journey of 100 miles begins with a simple step—and this process tells you exactly what steps to take. The process requires 30 minutes each day. There is reading, writing, and reflection in varying proportions every day. Reading is always the smallest portion, taking 3 to 5 minutes maximum. Writing will vary between 5 and 15 minutes, and reflection will take the rest. On most days, most of the process will involve thinking about your life. There are 365 days in a year and 168 hours in a week. This entire process takes six hours, or a quarter of a day. For that tiny fraction of investment—3 percent of one week, or .07 percent of a year—the returns are bountiful.