A FINAL LETTER FROM CHRIS SUAREZ
IT’S TIME FOR A CHANGE
There is a time in our business and in our life that we need to take a step back and make sure we are willing to start doing the things we need to do more of and stop doing the things we need to less of.
It is important to acknowledge that it doesn’t mean those things that we were doing were negative, unimportant at that time, or counterproductive. It does mean that if continued into the future those things could distract us from our preferred future. They could distract us from both achievement and fulfilment.
How do we determine what to start and what to stop. I follow a process called my 5 R’s.
Review
Reflect
Redesign
Reprioritize
Reorganize
This week at our Xperiential MBA event perhaps my favorite session will be going deeper on how this 5 step process can move us from being just goal and achievement oriented to fulfilment oriented. Here is a quick review of this process in an attempt to have us all think about what we need to start to do and what we need to stop doing.
The first step is to review. This involves looking at all of the things we have currently said yes to and have collected on our weekly, monthly, and yearly calendar. It requires us to objectively look at the gains we have made while committing to this activity as well as finding the gaps in where we’d like to be, what we’d like to accomplish, and who we’d like to become.
Once we identify those gaps and gains, we need to reflect. This may be the hardest step in the process, as it is not always easy to be honest with yourself. We have to uncover where we are spending time and donating energy and effort to activities that are not contributing to our preferred future. Admitted that something that once served us no longer does is harder than we may imagine.
Once we’ve reflected and accepted the changes that will be required to move towards fulfilment in each of our life pillars, the heavy work of redesign begins. What in our routines, rhythms, and ruts need to be changed? This will require us to redesign different areas of our life. It could be redesigning our mornings, our weekly work and meeting rhythms, our relationship ruts. The process of redesign includes sketching out what we know needs to be added to our lives, and crossing out what we know needs to be removed from our lives.
The reprioritizing process allows us to compile all the things that should be on our schedule in the order of importance. It is a step that allows us to see that it’s ok to have both important and unimportant activities in our lives, however they must show up in the right order. Get clear on prioritizing and the things that matter the most will always be done first.
Lastly, reorganize. For me this is always a very tactical process of building the calendar that I am certain will move me towards the most important things in my life centred around my work, personal growth, wealth building, relationships, health, and spirituality.
Over the past few weeks I have been spending quite some time on this 5-R framework. You will begin to see some adjustments in my commitments - ensuring that everything I do moves the needles forward towards a life of fulfilment. My weekly processes and even my Sunday blog will look a little different. After 254 consecutive Sunday morning letters that turned in a blog, I will take a few weeks off to reorganize both my schedule and my thoughts around how to continue to have an impact with the lessons learned each week, while also making sure the process and rhythm of communicating those lessons moves me towards that fulfilment in the six key pillars of my life. To be honest, it’s hard to think of breaking a rhythm, a habit, or a system that has been working for just over 5 years. And the 5-R framework requires thinking objectively about everything in our lives at that moment.
Look forward to sharing more in the future, and perhaps with a different rhythm and medium after I finalise my review, reflection, redesign, reprioritization, and reorganization.
Chris