Complete Fulfillment

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Good thing that I realize complete fulfillment is a work in process because this week has been back to working all the time. I did work out this week and will do it again on Friday. I have been eating better. I need to start breaking out some more techniques to bAlance better. I will be working on one around finances this weekend. I will write more on it later. Night all.

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For some time now I have woken up feeling stiff and exhausted.  I just assumed that it was the long hours and stress but after a week of vacation I realized that there might be another factor.  For a long time I have bitched about our bed and how I thought it was no good.  Last week at the beach I slept on a AeroBed for the week.  This is basically a glorified air mattress but I felt better every morning than I did at home.  I was not sleeping any more but I sure felt a ton better.  So this weekend I did something about it.  I finally broke down and bought a new bed.  Bed shopping is about as bad as car shopping but the good thing is that they will deal with you.  I ended up buying a Tempur-pedic Rhapsody.  It was great and I know about 4 people at work that have these type of beds and love them – not just like them but love them.  This is a little piece of the health category that I am putting rocks in the jar for but probably taking some out around the finance piece.  The bed was $3800 – Yikes!! - the only reason I ended up buying it was because they gave me 3 years no interest which makes it about $100/month – which I can handle.  They deliver it tomorrow so let the sweet dreams begin.

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This post is in relation to the last post I did about categories.  You only have a finite amount of time and you can’t do everything in each category.



Remember – I would love to know your comments.

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In my last post I talked about the beginnings of Complete Fulfillment.  Once I had this concept in my head I was thinking about it all the time.  I realize that I had to actually figure out what the categories of my life I wanted to balance.  There are all sort of these out there ranging from simple to very complex.  I had to come up with something that fit my life.  I was discussing my thoughts on this with Karin and I was guessing at the categories just to get the broad point out there.  (Karin tends to be my sounding board for my crazy thoughts)  During that session she asked if I had looked at the Wheel of Life concept.  I had not so I looked it up and here is a version of what I found.

For the most part I like these categories but I added Spirituality or Faith.  I'm sure this fits into this model somewhere but it an important piece of my life that needs it's own category.  You will notice that there are points associated with each of these categories.  These are very judgemental which seems to me a guess at how you are feeling about each category.  That does not really work for me.  Below are the categories that I came up with and some subcategories.  This is important because of how I am choosing to look at the points each week.  I will explain that in my next post.  

Spirituality

• Faith
• Service
• Goodwill

Family/Friends

• Spouse
• Kids
• Extended Family
• Friends

Heath

• Diet
• Physical Fitness
• Mental

Personal Growth

• Intellectual/Knowledge
• Emotional Intelligence
• Self Actualization

Career

• Leadership
• Management
• Self Development

Finances

• Debt
• Savings
• House
• Retirement
• College

Physical Environment

• House
• Cars
• Yard

Romance

Fun & Recreation

• Activities with wife
• Activities with Kids
• Activities by myself
• Activities with friends

Note the lack of subcategories in Romance - if anyone out there has some suggestions about this or anything else I would love to hear.  One of the things I came to realize about his framework is that I wanted to make it something that anyone could adjust to fit their needs.  You will see this in the point system also.  As always please let me know your comments or feedback.

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There are so many thoughts going through my head this week it is tough to get them all down to get this blog rolling. One of the first things I want to do is to lay out the framework of what Complete Fulfillment means.  I work a lot and I take a ton on responsibility for what I do. I am currently running a startup within a larger company which has totally consumed me over the last 9 months. I would like to say that is not normal but taking on a ton has been a constant theme over my career.

As I mentioned in a previous post I had a very eye opening week at a class at Harvard recently.  Out of that for me came Complete Fulfillment.  I realized that I have long struggled with the balance of all the areas of my life but had never found a good way to really be better about getting them in balance.  They always tend to be 90% work and 10% everything else.  I have worked with an executive coach (one of the great resources I have at Tripwire).  Her name is Karin Kolodziejski - she has probably been the most impactful people on my professional career.  Many of the things we have chatted about have directly overlapped with my personal life.  As many conversations as we have had over the years I have still never been able to effectively balance things out over any period of time.  

The class I took at Harvard was on leadership with some of the top professors on the subject and the most surprising thing about the week for me was that they talked about soft skills most of the time.  What I realized was that for me to perform at the highest level at work and enjoy life to the fullest I needed to balance things out better.  

One of the concepts that helped my thoughts about this was something my wife and I tried with our kids.  I have two great daughters (and now a son) and as for most parents every day is a new challenge.  As parents, my wife and I try different techniques to see if they work. A while back we made jars with the girls names on them and we had a bunch of rocks.  The idea was when they did good things they would get a rock in the jar.  For example - when our 2 year old would go on the potty she would get a rock.  If they washed their hands without being told they would get a rock.  If they asked nicely and said please they would get a rock and so on.  If they did something bad they would get a rock or rocks taken out.  If they hit each other, threw a fit, etc. rocks would come out.  If they filled the jar to a certain level they would get to go to build a bear and get a new stuffed animal. 

What does this have to do with life balance?  A lot.  I started thinking about life in this same framework.  Each week you are given only so much time.  That is finite and you can't change it.  The objective is to spend the week filling up your jar with as many rocks as you can through positive experiences and minimize the number of rocks you have to take out from negative experiences.  If you can maximize this over time you can achieve Complete Fulfillment.  

When I applied this to myself I realized that I spend much of the week filling up my jar with rocks from work.  The problem is that also beat myself up because I am exhausted each night for my kids.  I eat like crap.  I don't work out.  I don't spend any time reading my bible or praying.  All of these other areas of life I neglect and they cause me stress because I feel like I should be doing them.  As a result I take rocks out of the jar.  Work is also stressful because of the shear mass of the project we are taking on and the amount of responsibility I put on myself about it.  Don't get me wrong about work - I like my job and vWire is very exciting but the net impact is that I don't fill up the jar very much.

The next few posts I will lay out some more of the concepts I have been mulling over the past month.  

- All rocks are not the same size.

- Rocks change size over time.

- Time is not variable.

- The categories of life.

- This is a game of math not judgement.

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See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Spending time at the beach hanging with the girls and having fun playing in the sand. Two parts of Complete Fulfillment.

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One of the great people I met at Harvard had a great technique for reducing stress and bringing yourself back to the present moment. It is very simple. Take a few seconds and recognize each of your senses in the place you are at that moment.
 
Sight - look around you and notice all the details. Look at the cracks in the wall. Look at the speck of dirt on the floor. Recognize the shadows and so on.
 
Sound - Focus on the details. A bird chirping, a baby talking and rolling in his bed, etc.
 
Smell - this one is hard for me as I don't seem to notice different smells. Things like food baking, people walking by, etc.
 
Taste - This is powerful if you are eating or drinking, otherwise it might be what is still in your mouth from earlier.
 
Touch - the best example for me on this was if you are standing feel how you feet touch the ground.
 
Most of the time we are thinking about was has happened or what is going to happen not what is happening. By doing so we rob ourselves of the present moments. This is one way to bring yourself back to the present.

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I recently had the opportunity to spend a week at Harvard in the High Potential Leaders Program – a week long Executive Education program. I have always had high expectations of Harvard but I really had no idea. I was blown away by the level of teaching, the facilities and the logistics of the entire program. The class was made up of 99 executives from around the world (65% non-US). We had about 10 cases to read prior to the program and no idea what to really expect beyond that. The program started on Sunday night and we went through a small case. That evening we meet with our group for the week. We lived in the executive housing with our group. We stayed on the same floor and each group shared a common area that was as good as any conference room we had at work in addition to a kitchen and TV area. You can see my pictures from the trip here.

The next day we went through some more cases and I remember thinking – this lady sure knows a ton about this case. I soon realized that Linda Hill (one of our instructors) wrote the case. While the rest of the country’s MBA programs are teaching the Harvard case study method using Harvard cases, there is no substitute for learning from the best minds in business academics who also wrote the case. 

The next day we spent with an acting group. Our living groups worked with one actor all day. It was an amazing experience that was a big hit with everyone. The intent was to make us better presenters and give us some skills that we may not have had. An amazing day.

The next day was spent with John Kotter. He is basically the godfather of leadership. I was not sure what to expect. I thought he might be a little full of himself and stuffy but boy was I wrong. If Linda was a 9-10 as a professor – Kotter was a 12. He was really amazing. His ability to teach through storytelling was something else. He was the most engaging and friendly teacher I have ever been around. After that day everyone walked around by themselves trying to absorb what just happened. It was a very powerful day.

Thursday we went through some more cases and one on Friday morning. It was such an intense week that I did not have time to reflect on it until the 6 hour plane ride home. When I did I had one of those ah-ha moments that happen very few times. I have long struggled with balancing all the priorities of my life and the way I actually live my life. I have a very strong ambition that drives me to work hard and neglect other areas. I came up with this concept that I call Complete Fulfillment. I have decided to use this blog to write about my thoughts on this subject and as a way to detail my journy in balancing my life and honing this principle.  More to come on exactly what that means.  I am also experimenting on using Posterous - my stream is at matthixson.posterous.com

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