The Life Squared Challenge Part 2 - Foundation

First off let me congratulate you for making the personal choice to take the challenge! Very few people will ever do more than just give this idea of squaring away their life more than a passing thought. You who have decided to step forward and do something meaningful and valuable for not only yourself, but for those friends, family members and the community at large, are an exceptional group of individuals. Give yourself a pat on the back for making a wise choice.

Before anything stable can be built, there has to be a solid foundation upon which to create the structure you desire. In the case of an actual building, whether a simple home or a giant skyscraper, it is important to know what is below the surface of the structure you will create. In the case of The Life Squared Challenge, you form the foundation which everything will be built upon. So, just like a site planner and construction contractor does when making their plans, you must self evaluate yourself as the foundation to be built upon.

This is the first step in your Life Squared Challenge and one of the most important. What you determine during your self evaluation will identify the areas in your life where you are strongest and those where you are weaker. You will be challenged to ask yourself some tough questions and to be forthcoming and honest in your answers. This exercise alone gives you the opportunity to consider things about yourself that you may not have contemplated before, or had the slightest desire to ever contemplate frankly. Honesty and integrity are two words you will become intimately familiar with throughout this challenge and now’s the time to exercise those admirable character traits.

In order to keep track of your progress I want to introduce you to two of your best friends throughout this challenge. Your number one friend is going to be a notebook and your second best friend is a writing utensil, also known as a pencil or pen.

Yes, you read right. This challenge is going to have you relying on some time tested, age old technology, and eliminate a myriad of problems inherent in modern popular technological devices. You won’t ever have excuses for not completing a self assignment. You will avoid having to tell yourself things like it isn’t your fault you didn’t complete your assignment because your device needs charging, it broke unexpectedly, it came up missing or was stolen, you lost track of time surfing your favorite social sites or playing some game. You will never have to worry about your attention being taken away from what’s most important here; you!

I guarantee that by the time you are well into this challenge your notebook will become far more valuable to you than any piece of technology ever has or ever will be, unless that piece of technology happens to be a pacemaker. The physical act of creating something by hand from your own thoughts is very powerful. It’s so powerful in fact that the mere act of writing something down, making it physically real to you, is enough of a catalyst to move you to further action. You will need as much of this catalyst as you can create, so the first step is to get yourself a good, non-loose leaf notebook and a dependable writing utensil. If you need a suggestion I’d recommend the good old 100 sheet, college ruled, composition books by Top Flight. Their website is topflightpaper.com, but you can find them at virtually all the top stationery and mega-everything mart stores across the nation.

Okay, you’ve gone out and invested in your low tech recording materials, so now what? Your first exercise is going to be a tough, honest self evaluation. Here are twenty questions to ask yourself:

1. What are my strengths?

2. What am I good at? Not what do I WANT to be good or better at, but what am I REALLY good at?

3. What do others tell me that they envy about me and wish that they were as good at as me?

4. What are my weaknesses?

5. What do I truly suck at and feel ashamed of because I do?

6. What do I know I need to improve at?

7. What would make me happy if I were better at?

8. What do other people, like family, friends, co-workers or teachers, tell me that I need to improve or should improve on in my life?

9. What do I like about myself?

10. What do I hate about myself?

11. What have I accomplished so far in my life that I’m proud of?

12. What do I have yet to accomplish that I haven’t so far?

13. What have I done in my life that I’m not so proud of?

14. What goals do I have for my life?

15. What am I doing when I feel the most alive, happy and at my very best?

16. What’s most important to me in my life?

17. What do I think I need to do to become the best I possibly can at what I love to do?

18. When I look at my future self, five, ten, twenty five years from now, who do I see, what am I doing, and where am I headed?

19. When people who know me come to my funeral, what do I want them to say about me?

20. In ten words or less, what’s the most important thing for people to know about you?

There are so many more questions you can ask yourself. I suggest you begin with the ones above and then add ones that spontaneously come to mind. This isn’t going to be a quick or easy task, but again, it’s the most important first step in this challenge. Think of it like going on a long adventurous road trip. You wouldn’t want to leave home without knowing where you’re currently at on a map and the route you need to take to get where you’re going would you? In the same way you need to know where your foundation is currently located, what shape it’s in and how to proceed to best build upon it to create a sound and solid structure. Find a quiet place alone where you can give these questions the proper thought and time they deserve. It’s perfectly fine if you need more than one session to complete this in. The important thing is that you do complete it before moving further along in this challenge.

This is truly where your Life Squared Challenge begins. You will potentially discover things about yourself that you’ve never given much thought to before. You may get angry, embarrassed, frustrated, confused or even refuse to answer some of these questions. You may also find that this is a way of clearing the air and your conscience by admitting to things and facing challenges you have never had the opportunity or desire to face or admit before. Keep tissues handy. You’ve been warned.

The second part of this exercise is going to require you to be humble, open and very brave. After you have finished answering these questions, take only those having to do with how you feel about your strengths and weaknesses and have two people, who know you well, and who ideally don’t know one another, and ask them to evaluate you using these same questions. This can be a parent, a best friend, co-worker, mentor, coach or teacher that you’ve known for some time who is willing to give you, in writing, an honest, unbiased, assessment in their words. It’s not recommended that you share the personal assessment you wrote about yourself with these people. That’s personal and no one’s business but your own. The idea is to get the opinion of others, who see you from their perspective. Other people will always view you in a unique way that you won’t be able to, but that you must take into consideration if you are to complete your foundation honestly and fairly.

I’m sure that your evaluators are going to want to know what’s going on and why you’re asking them to spill their guts about how they REALLY feel about you. Just tell them that you’ve accepted a self help challenge that requires you to get other people’s opinions about your character and personality with the goal being personal improvement. If they ask more questions please feel free to direct them to this Life Squared Challenge. Who knows, maybe they’ll be asking you to evaluate them at some point!

A foundation is the most important part of any physical or social structure. Without knowing what that foundation is made of and what areas will benefit from improvement it’s impossible for you to build a solid, sustainable, sound structure upon it. I’m reminded of the story of two people who built houses near the same beautiful point overlooking the ocean. The weather was good and although storms regularly rolled through, one of the two people disregarded the advice given to build further up the beach on more solid ground. In their excitement and haste to have the most sought after, envied and beautiful spot, they built a huge elaborate structure right on the beach with the waves nearly lapping their door at high tide. The other person who built, having learned to be wiser, heeded advice from those who had experienced the strong storms to come, and chose to build their house further inland, on a hill far away from but still overlooking the waves. The storms eventually came, and sure enough, the person who built their house right on the beach saw all their hard work and efforts washed away by the thundering waves, while the house on the hill stood tall and solid, unscathed under the onslaught of rain and wind.

Unfortunately the story usually ends here, with the moral being to take heed of the actions of wiser more experienced people and don’t be a fool by building on shaky foundation. What isn’t told often enough is what happened shortly thereafter. When the house on the beach was washed away, leaving the person who foolishly built it there homeless, helpless and without a place to stay, the person on the hill, seeing what had happened, even though it was obvious why it happened, welcomed the less fortunate person into their home. They let them stay not only until they could once again build, this time on solid ground, but actually helped them rebuild in a safer place. You see what the once foolish builder on the sand didn’t know is that he wasn’t the only person who’d been foolish in the past and been taken in by kind strangers after making a bad choice. The person who built wisely on the hill had learned a valuable lesson from their own foolish mistake in years past and that’s how they knew where to build.

I hope you will be back next week for Part 3 of the Life Squared Challenge, when you’ll discover the four important sides making up the foundation you are preparing to build upon. In the meantime and to make this challenge a fun one I’d like to suggest a movie for you to watch from 17 years ago. It’s a great story that contains an allegory that I think you’ll like, involving the building of a house or the upkeep of one anyway. The name of the movie is Unforgiven starring Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman and Gene Hackman. It won an Academy Award for 1999, but it’s a timeless story. As always I appreciate your comments and questions. Please let me know how you feel about The Life Squared Challenge. I’d love to read your comments and to hear from you.

#michaelddavis

  "I simply write what I feel, because it matters to me. Hopefully some of it will resonate with and matter to you as well" - MDD