Paul Gibbons - Reboot Your Life: A 12-Day Program for Ending Stress, Realizing Your Goals, and Being More Productive

Reboot Your Life:

A 12-Day Program for Ending Stress, Realizing Your Goals, and Being More Productive

Paul Gibbons

Table of Contents

Preface

What you will get out of reading this book

Nothing. Not a thing.

But if you do the 3 minutes of daily reading and do the 30 or so minutes of daily exercises for twelve days, you will get astonishing results.

Some of those will be:

1. Clarity on what you care most about and how to make time for that
2. Reconnecting with your passion and purpose
3. Learn to use your natural creativity in all areas of your life
4. A life spring cleangetting rid of unwanted baggage
5. Knowing how to realize goals, not just set them
6. Much better personal organization
7. Enhanced productivity and time management
8. Peace of mind and lots less stress

Why Reboot Your Life?!?

Computer owners know that once the beast has been running for a while, the innards get clogged with cyber-sludge and the only solution is a Reboot. Turn it off and on, and then start up the stuff you need. Life is like that also.

Most people make goals and plans, but having coached hundreds of people, I know that those dreams can stall before escape velocity is reached. In rocketry terms, if they dont make orbit, they fall back to earth with a bump. When plans stall, or dreams are forestalled, it take great effort to reconnect with why they mattered, and plan again for their success.

Reboot is a crazy-simple process for starting over and relaunching your dreams. It must be done step by step, and some tools make it much easier.

Life coaches offer tremendous value, but typically charge a few thousand dollars. They provide: (1) the process that produces the result; (2) great questions; and (3) great probing, listening, and challenges.

This is a book on how to coach yourself.

Although having a coach is great, the advantage of learning to do this yourself means that whenever you feel out of touch, off-target, disconnected, stressed, overwhelmed, or depressed, you can get to it.

You may feel none of those things nowbut life often throws up transitions like promotions, marriage, kids, divorce, new jobs, windfall incomes, and retirement. At each transition, it is worth taking stock. Where am I now? What is next?

Reboot is, in other words, a toolkit for self-transformation.

Who is this book for?

Ive worked with everyone from CEOs, celebrities, and politicians to administrative assistants, professional poker players, social entrepreneurs, and struggling artists. They all rave about the results.

I do Reboot religiously every year. I spring into January on fire and reconnected to my passion and dreams. I used to have big inspiring dreams in my twenties, but as I became more successful, I lost track of the big picture and felt as if I were going through the motions. After Reboot , life feels exactly as it did in my twenties. Since working through that process, my life has never been the same, and Ive never looked back. Just the vision- and goal-setting process was worth its weight in gold. The transitions of the last two years were really hard, especially coming one after another. I needed a fresh start, and working through the process gave me much more value than I expected. I had a lot of great things in my life, but I still woke up some days thinking Whats the point? I needed to reconnect with the big picture: why I was on the planet, what I cared about, and what I was doing to do about that.

I cannot think of anybody who would not benefit from doing an exercise such as this from time to time. Nobody has all of these life-critical conversations 100 percent cooked all of the time. The most effective people I know are revisiting and revising them often. So the answer to who is: everybody!

You might never have done anything like this; or, you may have done goal-setting at work, but not elsewhere; or, you might have worked through something like this in coaching, but would like to do it on your own; or, you might already do some of this, but need structure, tools, and a comprehensive way to do it. Wherever you are, whether you are a beginner or an experienced hand at leading yourself, Reboot! will give you the boost you want.

When is the process most valuable?

This process began as way to bring in a New Year with refreshed goals, plans, and vision, and to put the missteps from the previous year firmly in the past. The great advantage of doing it then is that most people take time off and workplaces are less busy. The New Year is also, symbolically, a good place to make a fresh start.

Here are some other times:

1. In transitions: divorce, retirement, promotion, big move, kids leaving
2. When overwhelmed and stressed by the number of your commitments
3. When it feels as if lots of junk has accumulated (material, emotional, spiritual)
4. When you feel insanely busy, but also that you are not getting anywhere
5. When considering a big move (career or other), and want to put it in context of your whole life (How will this affect different areas about which I care?)

Better with others

This process works terrifically when done in isolation as an individual. It also works very well (with some modifications) for businesses and for families.

At the very least, you should share important discoveries with people a few times during the process. It would be absurd, for example, to go through all twelve days without sharing with your partner.

The more you talk, the more you bring your reflections and hard work into reality.

If you do this with heart, people will be inspired by your vision and goals and want to help.

Share what you are up to, and if sharing is difficult for you, the value will be multiplied.

Why did I write this book?

Because these tools were transformational in my own life. When I use them, I prosper and flourish. When I fail to, I struggle. In summary, I love this process and so does everyone who has done it!

Here is what it did for me: I was dealt a pretty good hand intellectually, but an awful one in other respects. I am pathologically scatterbrained, unfocused, and forgetful. That I have been able to harness my talents at all has been the result of very hard work on my Achilles heel: personal effectiveness.

Left to my own devices, I scatter my attention and do what is in front of my face, not what is most important. I start a million things and bounce from one to another. My scatter-brain comes up with tons of ideas, but then the weight of undeveloped ideas, unfinished projects, and unfulfilled ambition can be soul-crushing. What I needed to do for myself, to address this shortfall, became so powerful and popular that people have repeatedly encouraged me to write it down.

Each year I get e-mails from people who have hit PBs in their personal and working liveslaunching a business, or running a marathon, or dropping three pants sizes. There are people who twenty years after doing this process with me, have said (and continue to say), My life has been completely different since.

This book is my invitation to you to join them!

Day 0 Getting ready

It is no use frantically climbing the ladder of success when it is leaning against the wrong wall.
Steven Covey Leading yourself

When it comes to the arc of your life, leading is a sacred responsibility. It is also a gift, that of living in a time and place where choices are available to us. We do not face the bone-crushing poverty of Bangladesh or the North American inner city.

Casting that gift aside is, in my view, a sacrilege.

A LIFE IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

Self-coaching is a way of grabbing the arc of your life and reclaiming authorship of your destiny.

The story I have no timefor exercise, for recreation, to participate fully in my kids lives, to spend time adoring my spouse, to start a business, to write a bookis about the unhappiest story of them all. There are the same 168 hours in the week for book-writers and dream-livers and spouse-adorersthey have simply chosen those commitments and said no to others.

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