Author Archives

    Mark L. Casey

    Posted on

    Add Power to Your Forward Story Mind Map by Including Three Groups

    by

    We have seen how effective mind maps can be for organizing your thinking about your Forward Story. We have also seen what happens when you add a time element to your mind map to aid in developing your Forward Story. In the second of those two  articles we introduced a fictional teenager named John and set up the structure of his mind map with various timeframes.

    Now the question arises: “What should John include in each timeframe to develop a powerful Forward Story?”

    His main purpose is to use the mind map as a resource for writing a narrative about his future. Therefore, he really needs this map to include all of the areas of his life that are important. Let’s brainstorm a little about what is likely to matter to John and his life. I suspect he is going to care about:

    • Family
    • Health
    • Fun
    • Education
    • Money
    • Career
    • Spirituality
    • Service
    • The World

    That is not a complete list, but it gets us started in thinking about what John is going to want to include. I think we can further group these items under three headings:

    • Family
      • Spouse
      • Children
      • Parents/Grandparents
      • Extended Family
      • In-laws
    • Personal
      • Body/Health
      • Fun
      • The World
      • Spirituality
    • Career
      • Education
      • Work/Business
      • Money

    Here is John’s mind map set up in his most distant timeframe (at age 30) with the three headings we just developed:

    You may choose to add more or fewer areas to your mind map and to your Forward Story. The main thing is to use this framework as a powerful tool for covering all of your bases. With this framework John can dream big and develop a story for what he wants his life to look like at age 30. Developing a map and narrative for his future does not mean that John is predicting the future. It simply means that he has chosen to write his vision and will work to make it a reality. He is creating something that is uniquely his own and that is powerful for thinking about the future and for acting.

    In our next article we will further expand John’s map to include some specifics in his Family group.

     

    Posted on

    Does Your Forward Story Require a Platform? Your Game Plan Has Arrived

    by

    Your Forward Story may involve creating and selling art, writing a book, writing a blog, making music, creating a product, or some other creative activity. If it does, you are going to need a way to get noticed in a world with a lot of competition. Don’t get discouraged, though, because a powerful new tool is now available to help you create your platform and build a powerful brand. Michael Hyatt has just released his newest book:Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World
    .

    Hyatt has built his own platform into one of the leading blogs on leadership with a large and loyal readership. The most exciting thing about the book is that it provides truly practical step-by-step guidance on how to create the kind of platform Hyatt has built. The book is so rich in guidance that I had trouble finishing it because of my frequent stops to add to my task list. It will absolutely help you build your own platform.

    For a limited time Michael is offering a large bundle of free gifts worth $375.98 for buying the book during its launch week. The details are included here: http://michaelhyatt.com/platform You will have to act fast to get this deal because the offer ends on Friday, May 25, 2012. But I have to say that if you are reading this after the deadline, please do not let that deter you from reading this book. The book can be such a great part of the development of your Forward Story that it is worth every penny even without the freebies.

    _____________________________________________

    Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

    One final word about this. In addition to the free copy I read and reviewed, I have now purchased 3 copies of the book. One is for myself and two are to give away.

    Posted on

    Supercharge Your Mind Maps With a Time Element

    by

    In our last post we discussed using the powerful technique of mind mapping to help develop your Forward Story. Mind mapping can be used for a wide variety of purposes. There is a way to supercharge your mind maps to make them even more effective when it comes to taking control of your future. Since a Forward Story relates to the future, the concept of time is embedded in the term. What if you add the element of time into your mind map? I suggest that adding the element of time to your mind map will supercharge it as a planning tool

    For example, if John is 18 years old and wants to develop his Forward Story, he might want to plan for several different timeframes.

    • Age 30 (his next twelve years)
    • Age 25 (his next seven years)
    • Age 22 (his next four years)
    • Age 19 (his next year)

    When I think about my own future, I may select different timeframes than John will. The reason for this is that I am not 18 years old. I am 50. With my different life situation I find it very easy to envision and plan for timeframes that are twenty or thirty years into the future. If John is like most 18 year olds, he will have a hard time realistically projecting much beyond 30. The ability to think further down the road seems to be a gift (or curse, depending on your perspective) of maturity. Now, back to John. Why might he select the timeframes we suggested?

    • Age 19 (his next year). John has to make some decisions about exactly what he is going to do next. The year between his current age of 18 and his turning 19 will set the stage for everything that follows. Will he go to college? Will he learn a trade? Will he travel the world? Will he get a job? Each of these choices will have a lot of influence over new opportunities that come his way in longer timeframes.
    • Age 22 (his next four years). If John does choose to go to college, four years from now would be the logical timeframe at which he would graduate with his undergraduate degree. If he does not go to college, it also marks a good timeframe for finishing technical school or an apprenticeship program. In short, it is a good period of time at which to set some goals and envision where he wants to be.
    • Age 25 (his next seven years). If John finishes college or technical school at age 22, he will have had three years to be in the workforce earning an income. 25 is a good age for thinking about certain financial and life goals. Perhaps he will be married during this period of time? Perhaps he will save a certain amount of money? Maybe he will run a marathon?
    • Age 30 (his next twelve years). Ideally, John’s thinking and planning for the future will go well beyond 30, but, again, most 18 year olds find it very difficult to think and plan that far ahead. It seems too much like fantasy to them. So, a good compromise for John might be to simply work hard to visualize where he would like to be at age 30.

    There are no hard and fast rules about which timeframes you should select in developing your story. Pick timeframes that make sense to you and that you can really get your mind around. Go as far out as you are comfortable with.

    A mind map is simply a tool. It is not going to be John’s Forward Story, but it is going to help him create his Forward Story. How might his mind map look when set up with the timeframes above?

    With this simple map John can begin to organize his thinking about each separate timeframe and begin to do some dreaming, planning, and goal-setting. Where will he start in his planning? It is always best to begin with the most distant timeframe in your mind map and then work closer to today. This makes the overall plan more coherent. If John can develop a good story for where he wants to be when he is 30 years old, it will make his planning for ages 25 and younger more relevant because each of those preliminary timeframes will have to build toward and lead to age 30.

    John will begin with his Age 30 timeframe in creating his mind map, but this raises the question of what should he include in his Forward Story for each of these different phases of his life? What will he include in his map for Age 30? We will explore that in our next article.

    Note: As stated previously, there are many mind-mapping tools available. The one I use is Xmind.

    Posted on

    Using Mind Maps to Develop Your Forward Story

    by

    There was a day when I used a Big Chief Tablet and a # 2 pencil for my big plans. I have to confess that I am still partial to a yellow legal pad from time-to-time. However, most of my work is now done on a computer or a wireless device. Regardless of your writing tools of choice, mind mapping is a powerful technique for organizing your thoughts and making plans. Have you ever created a mind map?

    Let’s see how it works on a sample project. The task before you is to tame that unruly garage. The challenge is that taming the garage is not a fifteen minute “to do.” It is actually a fairly complicated project that needs to be thought out carefully and organized into smaller tasks. So, let’s create a mind map of the project. Here is what it might look like with pen and paper.

    From this humble beginning we begin to brainstorm with all that will be required to tame the garage. We begin adding branches and bubbles with the items that come to mind:

    The mind map can be as sparse or detailed as you want it to be. I actually no longer use pen and paper to do mind maps. I use a program called XMind to generate my maps. There are also excellent mind mapping tools available on all of the various mobile devices. Here is our familiar map created in XMind:

    How does this technique relate to your Forward Story? Well, it is a powerful tool for organizing your plans and the writing of your story. What if instead of taming the garage the mind map is about going back to school to finish your undergraduate degree? (Note: The image below can be enlarged by clicking on it).

    From this XMind mind map, you can export into a spreadsheet or format it in a variety of ways. By doing this type of mapping and brainstorming, you can envision and organize great things. When you add the element of time to your mind map, the technique really becomes powerful. We will focus on the time element of mind maps in our next article.

     

     

     

     

    Posted on

    How To Select a Great Coach

    by

    Coaches are everywhere. It is difficult to find a domain where coaches are not present.

    • Football Coach
    • Track Coach
    • Golf Coach
    • Tennis Coach
    • Debate Coach
    • Job Coach
    • Executive Coach
    • Career Coach

    Even if the title “coach” is not applied, often a person is still functioning as a coach. Sometimes we use the words “mentor” and “teacher” to refer to a coach.

    What does it mean to coach, and why is it so important? To coach is to instruct, direct, train intensively, and to demonstrate. If you want to learn some new practice or activity that is not natural, you will learn faster and become better if you have a competent coach who can show you how to do it. Perhaps you want to learn to play golf. There is nothing natural about playing golf. How should you grip the club? Which club should you use? How is the golf swing started? What about the stance? Where should the ball be placed relative to your feet? How do you putt the ball? All of these questions and hundreds more need to be answered in order to become a good golfer. Not only do you need to know the answers to these questions, you need to actually practice doing them. Golf is a physical game that requires you actually golf. So, in addition to telling you how to do something and demonstrating how to do it, a coach also trains you. That is, she has you practice the behavior over and over until you do it right. Depending on what you are learning, the coach can be very demanding. This is the reason coaches are often viewed as strong leaders and disciplinarians. They train, direct, and instruct.

    You Have to Want It

    The truth is that no coach can coach you if you do not want to be coached. If your coach has told you to go run stairs to improve your fitness level, you will only run those stairs if you choose to do it. If you choose not to run those stairs when the coach has directed you to do it, there may well be consequences. For instance, you may be removed from the team. Or, you may simply not get to play. But, that is your choice and your right (at least in environments with individual liberties to choose). So, even though we may gripe and complain about how unreasonable the coach is being, ultimately we choose to be coached because we think it is important to achieve our ambition.

    Have you noticed that it is not only the beginner that gets coached? The teams that are at the top of the sports world have coaches. Professional teams have the highest paid coaches. What this demonstrates is that coaching is vital in not only learning the basics, it is vital in learning how to achieve higher and higher levels of expertise. If this were not the case, the world’s greatest golfers would just direct their own practices and analyze their own swings. The better the player, the better coach he or she demands. This is because those players recognize the need for coaching and they want it. If they did not want it, they would not submit to coaching.

    Competent Coaches

    Unfortunately, not everyone that desires to coach is very good at it. If the golf coach you select doesn’t know much about golf or doesn’t know how to effectively teach you the game, how will that impact you? You will learn wrong information, develop bad habits, and likely not achieve your ambition. This is why it is so important to select your coaches carefully. Not everyone that wants to coach you is competent to do so. If you are a  middle school athlete, you don’t have a choice about who coaches you. If you want to play, you get the coaches that the school has assigned to coach you. Many of those coaches are outstanding, but some of them are still learning themselves how to coach.

    Let’s move from school coaching and athletics to other domains of coaching. As stated at the outset, there are executive coaches, career coaches, and coaches for many different professional ambitions. If your ambition is to be a great sales professional, you need to select a great sales coach. You need someone competent to coach effective selling philosophy and to help you develop good selling behaviors. It is extremely important that you select someone with a proven track record of success. You need competency and effectiveness. How do you find it? The same way you select the hiring of a key employee or the purchase of an expensive car or piece of capital equipment. You do your “due diligence.”

    Due Diligence

    The concept of due diligence is well established in business and law. The term refers to a process of research, conversation, and discovery by which you get to the real truth. If you are looking to purchase a business from someone, you need to know the true status of the business, not just the pretty photos and the company narrative. You need to look into the books to see what the revenues and expenses are. You need to see the balance sheet to understand the company’s assets and liabilities. You need to speak to employees and customers to gauge the company’s strengths and weaknesses. Before you spend your money to buy this business, you need to be sure you have done your homework.

    The decision about who will coach you deserves the same level of scrutiny. There are three important ways to search for a competent coach:

    1. Internet. As with most research these days, it will probably involve the internet. There is a wealth of information at click of a SEARCH button.
    2. Network. Speak to the people in your network about the subject of coaching. Find those people who are the best at what you want to do and ask them if they use coaches. Ask for specific names of coaches that they recommend.
    3. Interview. Once you have identified potential coaches, schedule an appointment to discuss their services. Plan your questions before you meet, and treat it like an employment interview. In a way it is. You will want to know his coaching philosophy, formal instruction methods, and costs. Don’t forget that a great coach can help you achieve levels that you never before thought possible, so while cost is important, the cheapest is not necessarily the best.

    People who are serious about their careers, sports, or other endeavors look for the best coaches. Hopefully your Forward Story will include the need for and commitment to personal growth in one or more fields of endeavor. If so, having a great coach can be a vital ingredient. The best coaches are competent and have a track record. Make it your goal to find a great coach to help you achieve your ambition.

     

     

    Posted on

    Today I’m 50 – Now What? Maybe Write a Book!

    by

    I recall as a kid being really excited about birthdays. What was not to love? My friends and family made a big deal out the fact that on that date some number of years before, I made my exit from one environment into another. I was the center of attention on that day each year. There were presents, there was cash, there were games, there was singing, and best of all, there was cake. Let them eat cake! What a great thing.

    At some point in my adolescence I stopped getting so excited about birthdays. As an adult I observed the annual ritual with indifference as the various milestones clicked past like so many center stripes on a long road trip.

    • At 30 I remember feeling like a “real” adult.
    • At 40 I felt like I had gained some wisdom.
    • Now that I am 50, what do I think? What am I feeling?

    According to the United Nations, the average life expectancy of an American male is 75.6 years. What does this mean to me?

    • The hypochondriac in me says that there are a lot of things that will probably get me well before 75.6.
    • The optimist in me says that I will live to be 100.
    • The realist in me says that this means I only have around 25.6 years left. Unless, of course, the Mayans are right (but that’s another story).

    Which will it be? I have no crystal ball, so I have no idea. I am not losing sleep over it, either.

    I began this blog on July 20,2010 with an initial post on narrative. Before now I have never promoted the blog. I have told a few people about it, and a few more have stumbled upon it, but I have not sought widespread readership. In the past 20 months I have written on a variety of topics all revolving around the idea that all people should be working on a story that looks forward, into the future. I call it a Forward Story.

    As I celebrate my half century on the planet today I am taking the wraps off my plan to publish my first book in 2012 entitled Forward Story. While I have been sporadically writing the blog, I have also been working on the book. In writing style the book will be specifically targeted to young people up to their mid-20s, but it will have something to say to all of us, including those 50 and above. The fact is that regardless of your age, you need to have a story for where you are headed. Writing the book Forward Story has been a part of my personal Forward Story for a while now. This is the year to launch it.

    This website will be the primary place to keep informed about the book. Feel free to subscribe to the RSS feed or otherwise bookmark forwardstory.com. You can also follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/forward_story The exact timeframe for publication is not set, but I am committed to publication before the end of the year. In the meantime, feel free to poke around the site and join in the conversation.

    Regardless of how many candles you will find on your cake this year, I hope you are writing a beautiful and meaningful Forward Story. Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon.

    An Update: It took a lot longer than I hoped, but the book has arrived. You can get your copy here:


    Forward Story: Write the Future You Desire