How to Have the Life and Career You Love

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode.

If you're ready to stop living the same year on repeat and start creating a life and career that you truly love, then today's episode of the Leader's Kit Bag is for you. One of my mentors, Robin Sharma, once said, don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life. Well, today's episode of the Leader's Kit Bag is designed to prevent that situation. So to today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, which is designed to help you create this life and career that you love. In order to do this, I've got four simple questions that I want you to think about and reflect on deeply and I encourage you to do this with intentionality and very actively. And all I mean by that is block out 30 to 40 minutes in your diary at a time when you know you're not going to be distracted. Do all you can to block out those distractions. Turn off all your notifications and then grab a nice pad or journal and pen and write down your thoughts, answers and insights based on the four questions I'm going to share with you right now. So the first question is simply about identifying the things that you want to continue doing in the year ahead. So here's the question. Thinking about the past 12 months, what are all of the activities, routines or behaviors that have served you well that you want to continue doing or do more of in the coming year? An example might be not drinking alcohol from Sunday night through to Thursday night. The second question is about identifying the things that you want to stop doing or let go of. So here's the question. Thinking about the past 12 months, what are all of the behaviors, routines, habits or activities that haven't served you well that you want to let go of? For example, it might be trying to please everybody and over committing to activities, tasks, events that deplete your energy. The third question is about helping you to get really clear on what it is you actually want from life and your career. So here's the question. First of all, I want you to fast forward 12 months into the future and imagine you are now looking back on the past 12 months, reviewing what's worked well. I want you to think about in 12 months time, what are the things you want to be celebrating and what are the things you want to be most proud of, both personally and in terms of your job and your career? For example, it might be being a great son or daughter and being there for your parents when they need you. It might be successfully leading your team function or entire business through a period of significant change whilst maintaining really high engagement scores. And then the fourth and final question is really about pausing to very carefully plan your own personal and professional development. You may be lucky enough to be in an organisation that invests heavily in its people's development and that's great, but at the end of the day, we always have to take absolute accountability for our own personal and professional development. The buck with that one really does stop with us. So, based on the future you've envisioned for yourself and what you want to be celebrating in 12 months time, what are the things in terms of personal and professional development that you both want and need to be focusing on? For example, it might be, you really know, you need to start mastering delegation so you can empower your team more and remove yourself as the bottleneck in your own team function or business. Or maybe it's you really need to work on your emotional intelligence. So that's for this episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. As always, I hope it's been useful. Look after yourself, look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, folks, lead on.