Denver Home Living Huettner Capital Summer 2017 | Page 15

2. GET CLEAR ABOUT WHO YOU
ARE AND WHO YOU AREN’T
So many voices shape and inform our sense of identity,
and that can lead to confusion. We start living the life
others want us to live rather than the life that f lows out
of our own values, priorities, gifts, and personality. • Where are you overextended?
• What are you spending time and energy on
that’s not a core value or priority in your life?
• What are you doing simply because it is
an expectation others have put on you?
Lack of clarity around who you are and what is truly
important to you will lead to complexity and clutter. • What do you sense you need to stop doing?
3. Calendar = the discipline to execute.
All my life, I have been a type A, driven, ambitious,
overachieving person. It is in my DNA. I am a fairly
typical firstborn. But the script I learned from my
family also contributed to my driven personality. The
script I learned was work hard, be responsible and
do good. That’s how you get affirmed and loved.
This is where your values and priorities get
operationalized. Your calendar is far more
than a tool to keep you organized and get you
to meetings on time. It is the primary tool for
helping you become who you want to become.
Your calendar can be a bit like a junk
drawer. It can get filled with all sorts of
random things that clutter your life.
You are only as good as your latest accomplishment.
At least for me, the end result was a compulsively busy
and complicated life. And while scripts impact us and
shape us, we don’t have to be held captive by them.
Let me encourage you to find some time to get alone
and ref lect on this question: What would it take for
me to move toward a life of greater simplicity?
3. IDENTIFY THE HIGHER YES
Once you are clear about your purpose and your
identity and what you value, you have to put a firewall
around them. And one of the best practices is to
learn to say “No.” Learning to say “No” can create
margin and lead to greater simplicity in our lives.
Part of our challenge is that we want to do it
all. We can do almost anything we want, but
we just can’t do everything we want.
Every “No” needs to be rooted in a higher
“Yes.” The higher “Yes” is your purpose, your
values, your core talents and your replenishment
cycle. It’s the “must do’s” of your life:
• Saying no to watching Jimmy Fallon could
be rooted in the higher yes of getting up
early to exercise the next morning.
• Saying no to a business dinner could be rooted in
the higher yes of being at your kid’s soccer games.
• Saying no to a requested meeting could be rooted
in the higher yes of needing “think time.”
As Hans Hoffmann said, “The ability to simplify means to
eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
When your values become clear, your decisions get simple.
Let me conclude by giving you an equation for
simplicity, and note that the order is important:
Clarity + Courage + Calendar = Simplicity.
1. Clarity = what matters to you. What are the things you
really value? What are the “must do’s” of your life?
Replenish:
Leading From a
Healthy Soul
Every leader functions on two stages-the front
stage or public world and the back stage or
private world. One cannot lead successfully
front stage when one is completely depleted
back stage. Replenish helps leaders focus on
the back stage, the interior life, in order to
remain spiritually healthy.
2. Courage = the resolve to make change.
Will you have the resolve and discipline to recalibrate
your life around that which is most important to
you? It takes courage to eliminate the nonessential.
Here are some questions to help you think
through changes you might need to make:
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