Yesterday I got a chance to sit down with Lori at a cozy cafe in Richmond and chat about time management. To me, Lori is a Super Powerhouse of life. She is an accomplished martial artist who runs a successful Jiu-Jitsu dojo, a prolific writer, a budding entrepreneur, and e-marketing expert. On top of that, she enjoys a happy personal life with her husband and two cats.
Here are some suggestions Sensei Lori gave me:
L = Lori K= Kris
K: How did you manage to achieve so much in life?
L: You know there’s a book called “Harmonic Wealth” I’d like to recommend to you.
There’s one thing I find that it’s a really good piece of advice for anyone. If you have a number of goals in life, at the beginning of each day you write down 6 things that you can do to forward your goals. It doesn’t have to be one goal, it can be four or five goals, or more. Anything beyond that 6 things are lower priority. Try to put the most important ones first. Whatever you don’t finish should be on top of the list the next day. Always, during the day, look at the list of 6 and try to get all of them done. Keep doing that every single day.
They don’t have to be career goals, they can be relationship goals or anything you want in life. Say, I consider having a good relationship is an important life goal for me. For example, going out for a date with my husband would be on my top 6.
It’s important to put your life goals down on paper and break them down into various categories like financial, relational, mental, spiritual, and physical. Before you set those goals, it is helpful to write down all your roles in life, future and present. Roles are like... you’re a daughter, a wife, an artist, an entrepreneur, and etc. Say if you’re not a mother yet, but you want to be a mother some day, you will write down mother as your role as well. These are the roles you are taking on and want to take on in life. It’s not necessarily in order of importance, they can be equally important. Once you know your roles in life, you can draw up the plan for them, the more specific the better.
K: What if you don’t know your goals? You might want to be a cop today and a restaurant owner tomorrow, and then keep switching?
L: It’s ok to change your goals. But if you change your mind too often, it’s hard to achieve anything. You have to know why you want to have those goals. Say you want something, but in your heart you don’t really want it. For example, you want a job to support your family, but is that truly what you want? You want to be a martial artist and instructor, but you’ve already set it in your head that, “I can’t do it. I can’t be a martial art instructor and make money. So, I’ll just say I want to make money instead. I’ll take whatever odd job I can get.” You know what I mean, you’re kind of selling yourself short. If I said that to myself years ago, I would never be running my own dojo and teaching martial arts today.
K: So, you have to be honest to yourself.
L: Yeah. Say everybody wants to be rich, but is that true? Or is it having the freedom to do exactly what you want? There are other ways to engineer that life style without winning a lottery, you know.
K: There are many people out there who don’t know what they want in life. Isn’t that the first thing you have to identify in order to set goals?
L: For those who are not clear on what they want, I’d recommend the book called, “What Color is Your Parachute”. It’s more career oriented, but it touches outside of career too. It tries to get out of you, what things make you happiest in day to day life. It helps to determine the things you can do to make you happy.
A lot of people just fall into the career of their life because that’s what they’re expected to do.
K: How about you?
L: I wanted to be a high school teacher when I first started university. I later changed my mind and transferred to Communication instead. That’s the degree I got. It ended up not a bad choice for me, because it makes use of many different skills that I have. It’s quite broad. But throughout I’ve been doing the things that I’ve wanted do. I’ve been doing martial arts, teaching, and writing. As for the communication side of thing, it helps me to become a better teacher and marketer. It also harnesses my skills as a martial art teacher and writer.
Lori is now writing her second book. It’s a martial art instructional book with DVD. One day, she was contacted by a well-known martial art publishing company because they really like her writing on her martial arts blog. She has been quietly writing that blog for 3 years now. Another dream comes true for Lori.
All the information above are also on Lori’s current blog entries. To find out more tips from Lori, check out her blog at http://jiu-jitsusensei.blogspot.com.
Keep planting the seeds!
