Week 5

It’s Week 5 !

Passing through this week and on to week 6 marks a significant point in your journey to week 12.

There is good news here – people who follow the system to the end of week 5 tend to make it all the way.

Share your story on so far on the  Facebook Challenge page

This week is different it gives you some respite from the contemplative process and we ask you to complete two preparation exercises on paper.

Down load* this week’s practical exercises here:

How’s it going ?

Don’t forget it takes guts and effort to carve out some time for yourself to make a change.  Change means changing and its not always easy. Just making time for yourself to complete the exercises you have committed to do can test some of us harshly.

In each week we have 168 hours, how many do you have just for you?

For some of our delegates the answer was zero, they spent no time ensuring they were on the right track or doing the right things. No time leading or managing their own life even when their results were less than what they wanted.

 

If you struggle with this and want to read something tat might help check out Joe’s Cliff on Amazon….

Most people don’t look after themselves first.

It’s not selfish to get you right, only then can you really help others and be what they need you to be. If we don’t stop and change what we do we remain in the same situation. We all know this and yet as busy people, it’s not something we tend to do much. Be pleased with yourself that you are taking the time you need to make this change for you.

To help you stick with it we have recorded a further Bonus track this week. We think it  will help you move on more confidently and even faster towards a reengineered relationship that frees up all the resources an aligned Monkey can give you.

 

Standard Weekly exercises

 

If you haven’t yet, get into the habit of recording your survey scores. Being able to see your trended results correlates directly with success in finishing the challenge.  Typical record sheet here for Survey Results

What’s so special or tricky about this week?

This has proven to be one of two pivotal weeks.

You might find it hard to believe that most of us don’t really know with any certainty what we want our lives to be like.

Despite thinking otherwise,  hundreds of our delegates found this to be the case. The reasons for this are varied and often very personal but the key fact remains that a few hours invested in understanding more about what we want changes everything.

This week asks you to look at this in an old school style and refine the ideas and thoughts you have into a written list.

It seems simple and easy. Some of our initial feedback was negative about this but if you take some time and look at it as if you were ordering what you want from the ‘restaurant of life’ then it takes on a new life of its own.

If you don’t know what you are doing you can’t make any valid choices about what you do or how you spend your time.

Today and tomorrow becomes a whirl of things that you find out later didn’t matter to you.

Worst of all circumstances can compel us and we end up living somebodies else’s idea of our life.

If you struggle with this read a coupler of our short stories  Patricia which is all about rising above your lot in life

You can find her on Amazon Kindle at the cheapest price we can set (79 pence) and see how it makes you feel. They are free to Kindle unlimited readers.

From the challenge perspective it’s obvious if you don’t know what you are doing – no one, Monkey included, can help you even if they wanted to.

There are no apologies – there’s something about writing it down and then reading what you write that helps you really sort out the great options, your idea of what you are doing and why.

We had delegates who wrote their lists out , slept on it and in the morning started from scratch. What they thought they wanted their lives to be like didn’t cut it.

It’s not a coincidence that there is a direct correlation between those who really understand their list and those who feel they working towards living their best lives.

Once you get clear on what you really want,  you can easily make better choices in how you allocate your time and what you do.

Your Monkey watches, sees you are serious, understands you are focused and walking the talk.

What you are doing and what you want becomes clear beyond doubt and this frees your Monkey to understand what help they can provide.

Don’t short change these exercises on working out what you want. Trust the process we will have several nibbles at this from different angles before we are done.

For us, as we get clearer on what we want, we see more signs of our Monkeys bringing help. Help clearly defined in the context of what we know we are doing.

When this happens the whole relationship begins to take off as we begin to work together to achieve common aims.

In this fifth week, you may already be seeing some signs of this happening. You may even find your  Monkey beginning to help in defining what you want. Reminding you of old forgotten dreams that have gone by the wayside, lost in the sheer pace and noise of your life.

By the end of the Challenge we will produce something clear and tangible that you can both work towards together.

It is worth taking the time to ensure you are shooting for the right star.

Focus on and Celebrate movement:

Monkey Help –

Keep a list of the help you receive; hints, ideas, thoughts and urges –  they come in all shapes and sizes but one thing is universal, as you notice them and show some gratitude, they get stronger clearer and more helpful.

This journal or record will help you keep on to the end and build a growing understanding of the incredible resource you are slowly getting access to.

 

Weekly scores from the survey –

These will show changes in your assessment of the relationship you have with your Monkey. Typically you may experience some higher and lower scores in these first few weeks and that’s ok, it happens to many of us as we :

  • begin to calibrate our understanding of the nature of the relationship we have with our Monkeys.
  • set higher expectations for what is possible

Ongoing Action

  1. Hold the thought. – “If this contact from the Monkey was designed to help – what would it be helping me with?”
  2. Make a note of any evidence you uncover of Monkey Help.
  3. Hold your destination and your plan in your mind whenever you can.
  4. When you are ready – Consider sharing your scores and experiences on our challenge page on Facebook.

 

Why we must work out what we want :

  1. Our Monkeys are unable to help us if we don’t know what we are doing
  2. Even if they do this lack of clarity means its hard to positively asses or understand the help they do give

We may think we know what we really want but often a moments reflection or a friends challenge can show us we are not really clear. Unfortunately some of us find out what we thought we wanted won’t do only when we have made the effort to achieve and this state should be avoided at all costs.

For so many reasons, it’s worth spending time and getting this right.

This part of the challenge encourages you to spend the time working to get a clarity of purpose that really means something / resonates with all of you.

Whatever you intend footed rest of your life this is a simple and yet great investment of your time.

Read More about each of this week’s exercises below –

Week 5 timetable is shown below:

Week 5 Day Exercise Planning and organising
  29 Exercise 9 Make a List
  30 Exercise 10b More of, Less of
  31 Exercise 9 Make a List
  32 Exercise 10b More of, Less of
33 Exercise 9 Make a List
  34 Exercise 10b More of, Less of
  35 Exercise 13 Survey Exercise 14 Week 6

This week’s exercises

Exercise 13 is the Misaligned Monkey Relationship Survey which you can complete on line. In week one we take this day seven as we will every week but in addition in week one, we also take the survey on the first day. This gives you a starting score before the completion of any of the exercises and so this gives us a more accurate before and after result when you compare it to the final score on the final day.

Exercise 14 is simply the opportunity to plan your challenge experience. We know that taking a moment to make things a little easier / organise or plan when and how you will get things done will make the challenge far more user friendly. So on the first day take the time to plan and organise for both the whole challenge and for this first week.

On day seven of each week Exercise 14 is simply about planning and organising for the following week.

This involves thinking about how it’s going to work for you.

If you can its worth having a regular time each day and even a regular place or situation in which you complete the exercises. Whether it’s in your bedroom or on the bus makes no difference it’s just somewhere that you find works for you.

It’s also worth making sure you can access to the relevant recordings and have headphones and the time and space to spend 25 or 30 minutes or so on you.

There’s also a link below about making change easy / completing the Challenge.

Practical exercises / Audio

Exercise 9 overview

 

In our programmes at Sales Academy, we tested many ways of helping delegates specify a desired future that they felt comfortable with.

One method that helped delegates think differently about setting goals was a week-long list-making exercise of what you could call goals, or, more simply, the changes they wanted to make in their lives. This forms the basis of Exercise 9.

On Monday, most delegates would be able to write a list of some sort even though the majority had not given much thought about their goals or what they wanted for the future.

We then asked them to look at the list every night and add or edit as they felt appropriate.

On Wednesday night, we would ask them to review the list to:

  1. see if there was anything on it that would be more trouble than it was worth and delete these items and
  2. consider what they might add if they knew that they couldn’t fail,

and then rewrite the list as necessary.

By Friday, everybody’s list had changed significantly from the lists they made on Monday. Some lists were smaller, some bigger, some more elegantly worded, some more precise and most were a better reflection of what they felt they really wanted. Almost universally the biggest change to their lists was not new items they added but older items they discarded. It shocked many people to realise they were putting time and effort into things they either did not want or things that would not contribute to their quality of life.

For the majority of our delegates, a little focus, 30 minutes a night for a week, transforms the list of what we think we want to what we begin to realise we ‘really’ want.

Repeatedly writing, reviewing and rewriting this list allows us to uncover our real, often hidden desires and this exercise helps us set goals that are truly meaningful to us. Once we know what we are really trying to achieve we can choose actions and time allocations far more effectively.

Most of our delegates had never done this before. Your internalised, often unconscious idea of how you want things to be shapes and drives everything you do say, do and think. It’s an understatement to say it’s important.

All the more important to ensure what you think you want is accurate.

You and your Monkey stand more chance of working together if you both know what you really want. Even the wildest, frantic, most-energetic Monkeys, will calm down and distract you less when they see a firm set of goals from you. They will stop and think about what they are doing and whether it’s helping you create the life you want.

Exercise 9: Make a List

For the first day of this week, take the full 25 minutes and write out what it is you think you want. If you don’t know where to start or get writer’s block simply make two columns titled ‘More of This’ and ‘Less of That’ and start writing out what you want to be different.

What you write down may feel like it’s coming out of nowhere and surprise you. You may realise you have been spending time and effort on things you really do not want in your life.

The recording lets you write while we talk in the background, providing some examples and ideas that may help you get something meaningful on paper, so listen and enjoy while you write your list.

Your list will evolve as we progress through the week. The next time you do this exercise, you can review the list you wrote and see if there’s anything you can delete. You can also consider what to add to your list.

Exercise 9 objectives

The objective of this exercise is to consciously review what it is you think you want and then create or evolve your list to be a true representation of what you actually want.

We ask you to do this exercise on Days 1, 3 and 5 of Week 5 and we will give you the chance to revisit it again in Week 7.

By the end of these exercises, you should

1 have a written list of what you think you want to achieve,

2 have had the opportunity to stop, look and reconsider,

3 have taken the opportunity to delete, add and generally tune the list to fully meet your requirements, and

4 by default begin to see better choices of where to allocate your efforts and resources.

Make any notes that seem relevant to you.

Ongoing Action

1 Whenever you get a spare moment, take a deep breath, drift up and look back at yourself and

2 When you become aware of your Monkey distracting you, use this framing question:

“If this contact from the Monkey was designed to help me, what would it be helping me with?”

3 Make a note of any evidence you uncover of Monkey Help

4 Continue to review your list to see what feels true for you and note any resistance to doing the things you must do to create the life you say you want. Your resistance may be more than laziness or inertia, it may be telling you something.

Exercise 10b More of, Less of

Following on from Exercise 9, we are going to add another perspective to the list we have just created using teh perspective from Viewpoint 3.

We have used questions in a number of previous exercises to direct our focus and shape the answers we get. You can now take the time to do this and get a better grip on what you really want.

Typical big picture questions for this are

“What do I really want in my world?”

“What do I want my world to be like?”

“What would my best day (week, month, year, life) look like?”

You may have a question that you feel would work better for you. If so, use that question.

But if like many, you struggle with these big questions or it all seems a bit too uncomfortable then we suggest you start small.

Simple questions that work well to start the process include those we recommend as titles of the list building in Exercise 10b:

  • What do I want more of?
  • What do I want less of?

This exercise can be completed on your own or with your Monkey. We suggest if you are still not happy with what you want, you work on this exercise on your own a couple of times this week before inviting your Monkey to join in next week. It’s your life but if you have not taken time out and are not focussed on what you really want, it’s easy to get distracted with the first shiny thing that comes along.

When you have finished, take a moment to consider what happened and make any notes that seem relevant to you.

Exercise 10b objectives

The objective of this exercise is to review what it is you think you want from Viewpoint 3.

We ask you to do this exercise on Days 2, 4 and 6 of Week 5.

By the end of these exercises, you should

1 have had the chance to check your conscious list from Exercise 9,

2 have a more valid written list of what you think you want to achieve,

3 have taken another opportunity to delete, add and fine tune the list to reflect what feels true for you.

4 be able to see better choices of where to allocate your efforts and resources.

Make any notes that seem relevant to you.

 

Exercise 13 Misaligned Monkey Relationship Survey

Remember to take the survey again on Day 7 so you can build your picture of the effect the exercises are having.

Useful links

This week we have also supplied an additional track to listen to that will help you pass through this key week.

The timetable is here  Challenge Course timetable 2022

Background reading / Listening  remains the same if you have not yet completed it –

Continue to have a listen / work through any remaining refresher / background recordings