Aimbitious: a Life of Enlightened Self-Leadership: A New Philosophy on Living a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Ultimate Fulfillment

Copyright © 2010 by Scott A. Annan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9451-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9453-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9452-8 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 01/21/2010

Contents

About the Author

Dedication

Preface

- How to Use This Book

Introduction: Leadership—Being a Leader Today

Chapter 1—Claiming Your Passion and Purpose

- What This Book Will Do For You

- The Importance of Decisions

- Awakening to Your Purpose

- The Power of This Book

Chapter 2—Life as a Mindset

- Mind-Body Connection and Making Decisions

- Resource of Preparation and Engagement

- Resource of Resolution

Chapter 3—Mindset of Opportunity—The Global Frame

- Art of Fulfillment

- Science of Achievement

- Taking Action

- Happiness as a Choice

- Begin With the End in Mind

- Setting the Game up to Win

- The Power of Goals

- Living your Purpose

Chapter 4—Life’s Golden Layers—The Pyramid of Existence

- Questions

- The Power of Meaning

- Beliefs

- Pain versus Pleasure

- Outcome

- Life’s Golden Layers Revealed

- The Two Resources of the Mindset of Opportunity

- Resource 1: Resource of Preparation and Engagement

- Resource 2: Resource of Resolution

Chapter 5—Health/Physical Body

- Creating a Ritual of Health

- The Psychology of a Healthy Body

- A Healthy Relationship with Food and Exercise

- Educate Yourself

- General Rules about Eating Healthfully

- Concluding Thoughts

- Nutrition Guide

- Proposed 7-Day Meal Plan

Chapter 6—Meaning/Emotional Intelligence

- Adapting to Different Cycles

- Creating a Life of Positive Emotion

Chapter 7—Relationships

- Meaning of Love

- Purpose of Relationships

- Applying the Resource of Resolution

- Concluding Thoughts

Chapter 8—Work/Mission/Purpose

- Students with a Purpose

- Leadership is Not in the Title

- Finding Your Purpose

- Applying the Resource of Resolution

- Concluding Thoughts

Chapter 9—Finances

- Personal Finance

- Inner Economy

- New World Economy

- The Best Investment You Can Make is in Yourself

- Applying the Resource of Resolution

- Concluding Thoughts

Chapter 10—Spirituality/Contribution/Celebration

- Finding Meaning in a Cause beyond Yourself

- Celebrate Life

- Applying the Resource of Resolution

Chapter 11—Taking Action: Putting into Practice What We’ve Learned

- Putting First Things First/Trajectory of Purpose

- Personal Mission Statement

- Goal Setting

- Bridging the Gap

- Capsule of Inspiration

Chapter 12—My Aim, My Vision

Chapter 13—Bringing It All Together

Acknowledgments

References

Notes

End Notes

About the Author

Scott Annan, social media entrepreneur, inspirational speaker, and perennial community-service volunteer, is the founder of Aimbitious.com, the Internet’s cutting edge goal-setting social network. Upon graduating from Colgate University in 2005, he began his career in New York City as a financial trader and investment banker. Scott most recently created a youth mentorship program that he leads in high schools in Manhattan. Contact him at www.aimbitious.com.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all those who have led themselves and others to make the world we live in as beautiful and as rich in opportunity as it is today. To you who will endeavor to make your life the best it can be—you have the courage and vision to leave the world a more loving and fulfilled place than it was when you entered it.

Preface

Life is not about job titles, money, magazine-cover good looks, or distinctions. It never has been and it never will be. It is not about the external world that so many of us are trying to please day in and day out before we ever think about taking ownership for ourselves. Life is about you and your outlook. It’s about your inner self and the beliefs that you have about who you are and what you are capable of being, achieving, and contributing, and the subsequent actions you take to create the life for yourself that you desire and deserve. We’re all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. We all deserve to create the best possible lives for ourselves and that power lies within each and every one of us. While our jobs, finances, relationships, and accomplishments are all important components of our lives, they are extensions and reflections of who we are. They do not define us; rather we define them.

Over the past twelve years, I have devoted my life to self-improvement and the search for inner truth. By inner truth, I mean the personal qualities within each of us that are an everlasting part of our nature. I thought that if I could endeavor to identify the qualities within myself that are the core of who I am, then I could draw important parallels between what is permanent in my own life and those qualities that are permanent in the fabric of human nature. I wanted to find out what makes people most fulfilled based not on the latest fad or technology, but on the eternal spirit of one’s soul.

In looking within myself, I also wanted to identify the rituals and patterns of success. I sought to learn from champion athletes and coaches, entrepreneurs, and innovators to find out what they did to achieve their success and fulfillment. During that time, I attended numerous life and personal finance seminars in which I studied with some of the world’s most dynamic and inspirational leaders and speakers. In my years training for and playing Division-1 hockey, I read volumes of health and exercise books, worked with some of the leading fitness and sports-specific trainers in the country, and consulted with professional nutritionists. I conducted my own study of how to maximize energy through nutrition and perform optimally on the athletic field. During my time in the financial services industry, I worked with extremely talented financial traders and analysts to learn about markets, investing, and the psychology of wealth. I met with spiritual leaders and studied meditative practices to learn principles of calmness and arriving at inner peace. I also met with relationship coaches to identify the common traits of both the healthiest and most destructive relationships, and I supplemented those discussions with my own readings and learned from my own personal relationships.

I chose to focus on the areas of life that I feel are the core of who we are—both as a part of society and independent of it. I wanted to examine the areas of life that are most fundamental to existing on our own, such as health and fitness, and then those areas such as relationships, careers, and finances that are important in the scope of the communities of which we are a part. Over the last twelve years I tested each of the most fundamental areas of life for myself and also modeled the lives of extremely successful people that achieved highly in each of those important areas to try to find the truth about how to live a happy and fulfilling life. After reading nearly a hundred books on nutrition and exercise, relationships, finances, spirituality, and speaking with an equal number of successful people in each of those areas, I have arrived at what I think is a truly fulfilling way to live and experience ultimate joy and fulfillment. Success can be achieved by modeling other successful people, but fulfillment has to come from your own soul, which comes from the love that you develop for yourself, and which also translates to your love for humanity. Ultimate fulfillment comes in realizing that life is not a standalone endeavor; we are put on this planet to work together to share in the wonders of life as we grow ourselves and contribute meaningfully to the lives of others. We do this not because we are expecting a favor in return for our generosity, but because we believe in the spirit of humanity and want to support it in whatever way we can.

This book is about self-leadership. The contents of this book are meant to be a philosophy, an outlook, a way of life that you can continue to turn to because its principles are grounded not in a fad or trend, but in the fabric of humanity. These findings have been substantiated by real results of supremely successful and fulfilled people. Self-leadership is a philosophy that punctuates what it means to live a life on your terms while also improving the lives of those around you. It’s about getting educated about what you want to improve upon for yourself and then about taking action and making positive changes to fulfill your vision for the world and your place in it. It’s about learning why you are where you are and understanding how to change to make your life the best it can be by leading yourself to create the life that you envision. It’s not passive. It’s a life of action; and it’s living life on your own terms and creating rituals for yourself that will bring you success, happiness, and ultimate fulfillment.

I encourage you to think about your education in reading this book—or any other self-development book for that matter—as a two-step process: the first part is the theory in which you will intellectually learn new skills, and the second is application in which you will take what you learn and apply it to real-life situations. Knowledge without action is powerless, but when you act upon what you learn and gain experience, that is the source of life’s richness.

In reading this book, you will learn what it means to take ownership for yourself in all areas of your life—both psychologically and physically. We often focus so much on our physical bodies because the way we look on the outside is easily measurable, but we have to focus on conditioning our psychological health too. The quality of our lives is about the balance of our minds and bodies and the way we use each to complement the other. We use our minds to think about a desired state and an action we can take, and then we use our physical bodies to act those thoughts out. You will learn how to create a foundation of positive psychology that will transform the physical areas of your life by taking consistent action. You will increase your health, improve your relationships, find your purpose in your work, grow your finances, and learn to celebrate life by contributing meaningfully to the lives of those around you.

Generally speaking, we start out in life with a selfish view of the world. We think that the world is about us and that our concerns are the most important. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time when this view serves us well and is in fact a necessary stage of our development. As we mature, grow, and learn more about our place in the world, we come to realize that life isn’t so much about the proverbial me as it is about the collective we. In order for you to have that realization, you have to take care of you first. You have to know what it means to lead your own life and then lead others in the spirit of your direction. The good news is that—no matter how far off track we think we are—we’re really not that far away from a place of self-actualization,[1] but it does take a consistent commitment to improvement every day, and we will learn how to make that decision by creating a mindset of abundance and empowerment that will make life not overwhelming and burdensome, but rather rewarding and fun.

This book is meant to bring you closer to your true self so you can ultimately be in a place of confidence to take action on what you believe in and to give back to others and share with them the wonderful gifts of life that you have cultivated. It’s about creating and participating in a global community that brings people closer together and creates compassion and understanding among cultures, and bridges the gaps between ideological divides because at the core of life, we are all living together and sharing the same planet with the same needs, fears, and desires. We are all so much more alike than we think and we need to work together to help each other conceptualize and act upon that realization. It happens on the local level—within you. When you take ownership of your life and understand what you can contribute to the local communities you are a part of, you can then galvanize those communities to serve a larger global community of which we are all a part. It starts with a belief about what you are capable of creating and the determination to follow through on that belief. We are moving in a direction—as individuals, communities, a nation, and a world—of collaboration in creating very positive change for ourselves, so we must be the change [we] wish to see in the world, i and the world will follow our lead.

How to Use This Book

This book is meant to be a heartfelt addition to the literature currently available on how to live a life of passion, action, and purpose. It is my hope that you will find it both inspirational and instructional. I hope that it inspires you to see the life you can create for yourself, and that you use it as a guide through your transformation process. I’m confident that you will learn new skills to improve various areas of your life. As you learn something new that could benefit you in the real world, take the time to act on it immediately and give it some time to work out. We grow by taking massive, consistent action, so apply these concepts to your life and allow diligence and time to bring you much success in your pursuits. Persistence and patience are virtues that will pay high dividends throughout this process.

This book is organized around some of the most fundamental aspects of our lives: health, emotions and meaning, relationships, careers, finances, spirituality, and contribution. If there is an area of your life that you want to improve upon, after reading this book, perhaps return to that particular section and reread it. You might have a new perspective on that area of your life after reading the book in its entirety; honing in on that one chapter could give you keener insight into an area that you strive to improve upon most. If anything, this book is meant to inspire you to take ownership for your life and to take action for what you want. Take the time to complete the provided exercises—which you can find at www.aimbitious.com—for they are designed to help you create a new psychology that will serve to enhance your interactions with the physical world. It is also meant to inspire you to take ownership for your education. Refer to the References section to learn about other books to supplement your reading and increase your knowledge of yourself and your place in the world. We can always be more insightful and thoughtful. Education is about stacking experience with knowledge and continuing to delve deeper into the curiosities that we develop as we live life in the present and share it with others.

A note on how to read this book: it is filled with quotations, information, and insights that might prove useful to you. I recommend using a marker to highlight those excerpts that resonate best with you, and then to use page markers so you can easily find the passages that are most relevant to you and from which you could benefit in referring to again. Upon finishing the book, I advise you to go back through the book and type out on your computer, or write on a notepad, all of the sentences that you highlighted so you have a compendium of quotations and excerpts that resonated most with you. This is active learning. You will be able to recall the information that much better when you write it out for yourself, and it will make the most important aspects of the book that much more memorable and accessible as you work on making the changes to which you commit.

There are a few instances in this book where I reference my friends and their personal stories. In these cases, I have given them aliases to preserve their anonymity. Additionally, in places where I refer generally to individuals, I often use the masculine he, but intend it merely to be convenient shorthand for he or she—rather than imply any type of gender bias. There are also times when I refer to God or creator. This book is not a religious one, nor do I intend to impart my own religious views. There are times when I seek to convey a message of higher meaning, and I think the terms God and creator convey sufficiently the spirit of the idea that I seek to articulate. I am not advocating a religious ideology, but rather connoting a kind of spirituality, which is relevant to the process of self-discovery and self-mastery—topics to which select parts of chapters are devoted.

Introduction: Leadership—Being a Leader Today

º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º º

Leaders don’t believe that the choice is between serving a cause or serving themselves. They choose [to serve] both.liii

—Success Built to Last

If you want to create a legacy, you need to live it first. You must become what you desire to see in others.liv

—John C. Maxwell, Put Your Dream to the Test

I have to practice what I preach. The only way that I could credibly write a book such as this is if I applied these principles to my own life and lived them every day. I have always believed that taking action is the way to create a great life and that it’s an important component in creating the life that you want. Let me share a personal experience with you about how I put my own leadership vision into action and how I believe I was able to make a positive difference in the lives of youth in my community.

From a very young age, I have always been involved in community-service programs. I always enjoyed meeting new people and working together to build something that had potential for great growth, but had not been fully realized yet. In order to graduate from my high school, we had a minimum requirement of eighty hours of community service, so it was also an activity that I was exposed to through my own educational experience. I found that among all the service projects I worked on, I enjoyed working with youth the most. When you’re dealing with kids, you get to see their creative minds at work, and they carry a great energy. I also have three younger brothers and have enjoyed working with them over the years helping them grow and mature academically, athletically, and civically. I always felt it was important to be a good role model for young kids so they could have something to aspire to beyond their own immediate school and family experiences. In college, I joined a Sidekicks program and was a mentor to an elementary-school student for a few years whose parents were divorced and had gone through a difficult period in dealing with their separation. Having been through a similar experience, I thought I could provide him with some support as he dealt with that difficult time.

Upon arriving to New York City in 2005, my firm supported a few high school mentorship programs for local youth who were looking to get involved in the finance field or who wanted overall college and career advice. I also remained actively involved with my career services department at Colgate and helped numerous juniors and seniors each year prepare for interviews, polish their resumes, and gain focus on what careers they wanted to pursue after college. Over the past twelve years, I have cultivated a resume of mentorship experiences dealing with many different kinds of situations, settings, and students. I always enjoyed teaching and working with kids so mentorship was a natural fit for me. I knew I wanted to find ways to get more involved in the high school mentorship experience in New York, but wasn’t certain how to do something that was separate from a large program. I had ideas about some of the main skills that I wanted to teach and really felt it would have been great to be able to work a bit more independently than if I had done tutoring through a large organization or formal program. I took the initiative to see how I could get involved with Manhattan high schools that might be looking for mentorship for their students.

One afternoon in February 2009, I picked up the phone and called principals at various high schools near my office in downtown Manhattan. Of those principals that I reached, I told them about my work and mentorship experience and what I was looking to offer to their school and students. I told them that I wanted to help their students write personal mission statements, go through a goal-setting process, and help them with writing resumes and the college application process. I really believed that I could offer a valuable perspective from which their students could greatly benefit. One principal that I talked to was very intrigued. He leads the Millennium High School, a public school in the financial district. Incidentally, before Robert Rhodes was the principal at Millennium, he was the principal at another Manhattan public school called School of the Future, which is where I had led another mentorship program two years prior. I could tell that this would be a good match—I just had a good feeling about it. I was right. Robert asked me to come in and meet with him the following week to discuss some of my ideas for the mentorship initiative.

When I met with Robert, I further explained my experience in working with students and how I thought I had identified a great supplement to traditional educational programs that could greatly enhance the classroom learning experience and improve students’ leadership abilities. While the traditional educational experience offers many indirect methods of helping students learn more about themselves, I didn’t feel that there was much out there that helped students address these issues head on. Regardless of how many papers students write and athletic events they compete in, it is critical to focus on introspective writing and thinking exercises to stimulate the spiritual part of the brain and develop self-worth. If you want to teach someone calculus, you don’t teach them French poetry first. There might be some skills that you can pick up from a French poetry class that could be helpful in learning or studying calculus—a disciplined study schedule, for example—but in order to learn calculus, you need to teach math.

I found that throughout my education experience and with the students that I had worked with over the years, we have been trying to teach our kids to be more reflective and introspective through other means such as English class, playing sports, or going on a wilderness adventure. It’s almost as if we’ve created a treasure hunt with no detailed map that leads students toward a discovery of their soul. I thought that if it’s important to engage students in introspective writing exercises and thought, we should not do that through English class, but through an introspective writing and thinking workshop that gets students to think about their values and the goals and vision that they have for their lives. It’s almost like trying to cook a meal from your living room. You might as well get in the kitchen and cook it from there where all the proper tools, ingredients, and instruments are located.

Upon hearing my thoughts, Robert thought it would be great for me to link up with one of the junior-year advisory classes where many of these topics would be relevant as they prepared for summer internships and upcoming college applications. Many of the writing exercises would translate very well to the personal essays that are part of just about every college application process. I thought this would be great. I could get to come in once a month or so and teach the students some of the same skills that led to one of the breakthroughs that I had two months prior that had changed my life. Little did I know what was in store for me.

I ended up getting an e-mail from an eleventh-grade advisor named Aaron who was prompted by Principal Rhodes of my interest in coming in to lead a mentorship program. Aaron was excited to have me come in and speak with him about how the curriculum could fit into the class’s schedule. We agreed to meet the following week when I could explain my ideas for the class and get Aaron’s impressions of the schedule. When we met, Aaron and I had a very productive conversation about the tone of the class, what they were focused on, and what some of their goals were for the remainder of the year. I learned that they would be traveling to Washington D.C. in the spring to represent their school as well as to speak on behalf of New York City’s public schools about needs for further funding and an increased budget. I thought that it was a great match because we could work in class on how to prepare for such an important meeting with Washington politicians who are inundated daily with requests for more money for various programs. Aaron proposed that I come in to teach class every Monday, which gave me about sixteen weeks to work with the students. I was amazed at how generous the school was being with me to have me come in with such great frequency. I have to be candid, I was thinking, Now that I’m here, I need to create more content. I was a bit nervous that I wouldn’t be able to fill the entire sixteen weeks with material. As I taught the class and became more attuned to the students’ needs, it became clearer to me what content to create and methodology to use to deliver my message as effectively as possible. Students don’t want to be lectured to; they want to be engaged and stimulated. They want to be taught with visuals and humor. I really learned how to connect with these kids—mostly because I felt I had to. I believed so intently in the material that I was teaching that I really felt I had a moral duty to make sure I was able to connect with them. I felt that I had to do whatever it took to convey the importance of these lessons because I felt they could change their lives for the better. Regardless of how well I thought the program went, the proof is in the feedback and in the results. If these kids actually make their lives and the lives of those around them better, then I will have been successful. Getting positive feedback from the students in the form of a questionnaire really proved to me that this methodology works and that it is needed in classrooms today. Let me share with you some of their comments of the program.

• I think this is a really good class. I feel that it inspires students to really search and find out what is important in their lives. I would recommend it to anyone.

• On the goal-setting process: I’ll chunk my goals down into smaller pieces. Instead of saying that I will lose twenty pounds in three months, I say I will lose two pounds a week for the next three months.

• On what goals have become more important in life: Yes, I realized that lifetime goal I want to achieve (to participate in Doctors without Borders) and now it is the focus of my life.

• On an area of life to improve and what it would improve: Stop procrastinating. This would change my life because it would help me get less stress and less stress would mean better work.

• On an area of life to improve and what it would improve: I would like to become healthier by eating better and exercising more. I think that I would have more energy and just feel better if I did these things.

• On the idea of why goals are important: Yes, because after listing them out, I decided what goals I want to achieve now and which ones I want to achieve later in life.

I tell this story because I want to use it as an example of leadership. It’s not that I’m a natural-born leader who knew that it was my mission to develop a mentorship program; it was that I felt that I had to do it because I knew that it was no longer about me. I believed that I had a certain set of skills and knowledge base that kids could really benefit from learning. Regardless of how comfortable or uncomfortable I was with the idea of teaching a class, I really didn’t feel that it was up to me to decide to do it or not. Believe me, it was quite a learning experience. There were times when I felt that I connected extremely well with the students and other times when I felt we had no rapport at all. What was important to me was the message and the fact that I was there. I felt that I had to be there because it was a calling. Leadership is sensing a need and delivering on that need to serve others. At some point, life is no longer about the singular me as it is about the collective us. We are all part of a larger community that will grow and die together and we are always in need of leaders who are willing to have the courage and conviction to step up to the plate and do what they believe in—not because they necessarily want to, but because they need to. Luckily for me, I really enjoy teaching, so it felt like a very natural fit. Even if I didn’t enjoy teaching, that’s not what matters. It’s what those kids need. Who is willing to help them see in themselves what others see in them? They need a chance to believe in themselves and that happens when you show up and show them that you care. It’s easy to do what you can, but doing what you must is another story. We all need to embrace our own leadership abilities and identify areas that need us and deliver. That’s what a lot of this process is about.

We have to start thinking that we’re all in this together. We all need to give each other support and leaders need to step up to the plate to deliver on their ability to inspire others to work on themselves and bring out their best selves. Being a leader is not about title or position. We’ve developed a misconception that title within a company, team, or any other organization determines leadership quality and ability. It is not the title that makes the leader, but the individual’s character. It is very difficult to lead someone else if you haven’t learned first to lead yourself. That’s what this whole process in this book is about. You must look deeply within yourself to discover who you are so that others can trust you. If you don’t know what you’re about and you don’t trust yourself, it will be very difficult for others to trust you, rendering you an ineffective leader, which is why leadership is not always about leading other people. At times, leadership is more of a mindset than it is a physical activity. In order to be a leader, one does not need to be physically leading people every waking second as if there were some spot at the front of the line that you must administer and give direction from. Leadership is a mentality and an attitude; it can be as much about preparation and foresight as deliberate action. Leaders know their place in the world, have a vision for what they want to lead and create, and then convert that vision into reality.

A leader must be a leader of himself before he can earn the privilege and the trust to lead others. It is through his own preparation and purposeful action that he can showcase his ability and gain the trust and respect of those who need his vision and courage. This is why in a world with so much uncertainty, challenge, and opportunity we need more potential leaders to recognize their duty and embrace the challenges within themselves to overcome their limiting beliefs and embrace their purpose—and we all possess the ability to lead ourselves. Leadership is as much about recognizing your potential for service to the world as it is about having it already, insofar as you act on that potential. By taking ownership for your