Life Lessons—Your Own Personal Life Plan

Today I'm excited to welcome back my friend, Reba J. Hoffman. Reba is a life coach and has agreed to share a regular Friday spot with us every week. 

Before you ask about last week, let me confess and ask for everyone to forgive me. Reba sent me the post a week ahead of time, but I was out of town when it was supposed to go live and didn't check to see if I'd scheduled it correctly. I hadn't and we missed out. But I'm back on the ball this week and promise to do my best to make certain it never happens again. 

If you missed Reba's first post, Dare to Dream, be sure to check it out! 

Your Own Personal Life Plan

by Dr. Reba J. Hoffman

I meet people every day who wander through life, letting it live them rather than them living life. Why? They have no plan. I hang around writers all the time. Some of them are plotters who map out their books completely before they put their fingers to the keyboard to write. Others are pantsers, those who fly by the seat of their pants. While both can be very effective in prose, the latter isn’t a great way to live life.

We all have a finite number of days on planet earth. That won’t change, and once they are gone, you can’t get them back. I’m sure you want to get to your last day, look back and be satisfied that you lived the life you wanted to live. That will only happen if you have a plan.

Thomas Nelson Publishers Chairman, Michael Hyatt, wrote a wonderful e-book tool to help individuals write their life plan. Creating Your Personal Life Plan is free, easy to use and will help you moving in the direction of living your dream of being a writer and more.

Here are a few reasons why you should have a personal life plan:

• It maps out your goals and gives you clear direction. Want to be a published author? Great! Plan the steps you need to take in order to get there. Maybe attend a writer’s retreat, craft group, conference. Whatever it is, create the plan.

• It gives you instant GPS. At any given moment, you can look at your life plan and know exactly where you are and which way to turn to get you to your destination.

• Written plans are compelling. They have a type of seriousness to it that does not exist when you leave it all as an idea inside your head. It compels you to move forward, work on that life plan. After all, now it’s real!

• It’s easy to make small adjustments to keep you on course. You won’t get miles down a road only to realize you took a wrong turn. Small tweaks require far less energy and net higher results.

I highly recommend that you take the time to develop a personal life plan. Remember, until you write it down, it’s only a dream. When you write it down it becomes a plan. As you follow the plan, you’ll not only have a great chance of making it to your destination, you’ll enjoy the trip.

Do you have a life plan? Why not share it here!

Reba J. Hoffman is the founder and president of Magellan Life Coaching (www.magellanlifecoaching.com).  She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Counseling and is a natural encourager. She serves as Member Care Coach for My Book Therapy and is the author of Dare to Dream, A Writer’s Journal. You can connect with Reba through her motivational blog, Finding True North, or by email at reba@magellanlifecoaching.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at @RebaJHoffman

Twittering Away Your Time—Part One

I’ve found Facebook useful, but Twitter has left me baffled—until now. I’ve spent today learning everything I can about Twitter and I have to confess. I’m a definite convert! Twitter has all the community building capabilities of Facebook—in 140 character bursts. I’m going to spend the next few weeks sharing all that I’ve learned and bringing you up to speed on this misunderstood tool.

Twitter 101

Twitter is easy to join. Just visit the Twitter homepage and click on Get Started—Join. Set up your user name and password. Click I Accept then Create My Account.

At this point Twitter will ask you if you want to find friends. Come back to this option later. Instead, I suggest the order I've outlined below.

Settings are VERY important on Twitter!
Click on the Settings Tab to ensure everything is ready for visitors.

• Enter your full name—only spammers and newbies hide their identities. You’re on Twitter to be found
• Make sure the Time Zone field is set correctly.
• Enter your location—again, you’re here to be found.
• Do NOT check Protect My Updates—this negates the whole point of Tweeting.

Say Cheese!
That’s right—it’s time to upload a photo. Photos are important, spammers are known for having no photo. Personally, if you don’t have a picture and I don’t know you well, I won’t follow you. (This is a common problem for those new to Twitter and can keep you from gaining followers)

• First click on the picture tab.
• Browse your files and select a photo.

At this point you can click on the Design tab and do a little customization. We’ll get into advanced custom backgrounds in a later post. But there are several attractive options on Twitter.

Now that you’ve got your homepage set up it’s time to find some people to follow. You can import contacts from Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. But I choose not to. I dislike invitations to follow someone and prefer to choose whom I follow.

I recommend you take your time here. Instead of inviting everyone you know, search for some close friends/associates that you’d like to follow. Start with about 20 to get used to the feeds.

A note on etiquette here—if someone follows you, it’s considered common courtesy to follow them back. This etiquette isn’t set in stone. If you’re really not interested, don’t bother. But unless there’s a good reason NOT to follow them you should.

Common Terms
I'll leave you with an introduction to Twitter Terminology.

• When you post something it’s called Updating Your Status or Tweeting. Michael Hyatt has the best explanation of the Twitter community I’ve ever read. He likens it to sitting in a roomful of people. Updating your status tells everyone in the room something.
• Replying to an update answers a specific person, but everyone can hear (all your followers can see your update). You do this with the @followed by the person’s name. Example @EdieMelson. This is actually a clickable link so others can click on @EdieMelson to get to her feed.
• A Direct Message is like whispering in someone’s ear. The message goes to them only.
• One other term that’s important to know is Retweet. This is when you repost something someone else has tweeted.

This should be more than enough info to get you started. Next week we’ll go more in depth with how to develop communities and follow conversations. There are lots of neat and easy applications that make Twitter a valuable tool for writers.

I invite you to visit my Twitter Homepage—I’d love to become one of your followers!

Don't forget to join the conversation!
Blessings,
Edie

(Here's the link to part 2 and part 3 of this series)