CHAPTER 1

Introduction

It is easy to organize a desk, a notebook or even a garage. But how easy is it to organize your life? Where do you start? How do you know what is important to you? In this program, I will give you three steps to organizing your life. The Priorities, Roles, and Goals (PRG) program is the "Gateway" to helping you in many areas of your life. Establishing your priorities is the first step. Knowing your roles is the second step. Setting your goals is the third step. After completing the three steps, you will be able to identify areas of your life that you are not paying enough attention to. Certain priorities or roles may need to get dropped if you are overcrowding your life. People of all ages drift through life without direction and they do not realize the untapped potential that they may have. They do not have a sense of purpose or they lack direction about what is important to them. They do not realize that what they do now will affect their future. This plan is designed to help guide young teens and adults toward a more organized life.

My intent with PRG is for you to establish the direction you want your life to go and get you on a pathway to a productive life. Whether you are 15, 50, or any age; the priorities, roles and goals you select are based on your inner core principles and values.

Connect Your PRGs

Establish your priorities, know your roles, and set your goals. Your priorities, roles and goals all must mesh together based on the principles and values that you set for yourself. In this program, you will establish your priorities first. Think about the areas of your life that are most important to you. Once you have established your priorities, you will then take a look at what roles you play in each of your priorities. Ask yourself: What role do I take on in each of my priorities? Who am I? Once you have established your roles, you move to setting goals for each role that you play. This will make your roles and priorities successful. All

PRG will give you an overall outlook on your life; you will still need to posses other characteristics to be a successful person. Passion is the key for success. Passion is the burning desire to do something within you. Setting up your program will give you the confidence to go forward and have a clear understanding of what is important to you. Having confidence in yourself and what you are doing is a key ingredient to being successful.

Spiritual, Mental, and Physical Health

When setting up your PRG program, you must encompass your spiritual, mental and physical health. A weekly spiritual goal for someone of the Christian faith may be to memorize one Bible verse and attend church on a weekly basis. Mental goals are taking time for yourself to relax and clear your head. It could be meditating or reading a book or even going on a vacation. Physical goals could include working out, jogging or anything that will elevate your blood pressure to relieve everyday stress. When you first set up your program, integrate these three essential ingredients. Without having spiritual, mental and physical health, you will not be able to effectively fulfill your priorities, roles or goals. Make sure that you schedule time for each of these on your calendar.

Organizing your PRGs into Your Schedule

When you set up your daily, weekly or monthly schedule, it is essential that you make sure you schedule your time around your priorities, roles and goals. It is important that you see where your PRGs are scheduled. Check to see if you are giving enough time to your main priorities or if you are drifting off course. Setting your schedule and sticking to it is one way to monitor how you are doing with what is important to you.

Being Flexible

Being flexible means that you are able to drop what you are doing and focus your attention elsewhere. If an emergency situation comes up, be prepared to shift gears, even if it is not an item on your priority list. If a friend or a family member encounters a crisis situation, be ready to help and serve in that situation. As a teacher, when a tragic event happens that may affect your students, it would be a time to be flexible and to discuss that situation with your students. When crisis situations arise, you may have to adopt new roles, sometimes unfamiliar, as the situation demand. Crisis situations demand times of flexibility. You may have to temporarily stray from your PRG's.

Finding Your Niche

Answering these questions will help you find your niche in life. Constructing your PRG Program will help you identify your niche. In life, it is imperative that you take a look at yourself and ask what you are good at, what you like to do and where your best potential lay? Think about the talents that you posses. Do you know what they are? Sometimes it takes a long time to figure it out and it may require several re-evaluations of yourself. What you need to understand is that when you do figure out what you want to do with yourself; you have already set yourself up to be able to do that thing. Some students go through high school not sure as to what they want to be, so they do not take their education seriously. By the time they are seniors and decide that they want to go to college, they may have closed the doors on a lot of opportunities because they had not studied hard enough or had not received adequate grades throughout their high school career. Even if you do not know what you want to do, continue to work hard so that when you do figure it out, you will have a huge list of opportunities you may choose from. Do not limit your opportunities.

Reviewing Your PRG's

Reviewing your PRGs is going to be essential to maintaining your program. Some of your PRGs are going to change periodically. The priorities that you establish may not change unless you have an event in your life that dictates otherwise, such as a new job, graduating or other adventures that you need to devote more time to. Your roles will change on occasion but may still fit under your priorities. Roles will get adjusted from time to time and there will be constant re-evaluation around what is really important and what is really necessary. Goals will change based on short term and long term goals. Some goals are set for the rest of your life, but some short term goals could last for less than a week depending on what the goal is. Thus, you constantly think about how you may improve your PRG's.

Contacts

Going through life, hopefully, you will understand how essential it is to make contacts and to get to know people. You have often heard the saying "It's not what you know, but who you know." If this is true, getting to know people and establishing contacts will help you. The reverse is also true, as people may reach out to you for help and you could be a valuable contact for them! Create a resource file with names, how you know them, and how to contact them. A resource file or address book may be used as a reference when you run into trouble or need to contact a friend or an associate.

Let's Get Started

In the blank area below write down 1. What is important to you? 2. Who are you? 3. What do you want in life?

CHAPTER 2

Priorities

Definition

n. pl. pri·or·i·ties

1 Precedence, especially established by order of importance or urgency.

2 a. An established right to precedence.

b. An authoritative rating that establishes such precedence

3 A preceding or coming earlier in time.

4 Something afforded or deserving prior attention.

http://ahdictionary.com/

The first step to your program is to establish your priorities. When you establish your priorities, you figure out what is most important and meaningful to you. These are the people and activities that you consider the most important in your life. When you decide what your top seven priorities are, you may spend at least 95% of your waking day in those priorities. Priorities set the tone for the rest of this program. On certain days, more time may be devoted to one priority than to another. Flexibility enters here, some priorities may receive different amounts of daily attention.

Again, your priorities encompass your spiritual, mental, and physical health. Keep in consideration your general well-being.

Types of Priorities

Priorities are areas of topics in your life that are important to you: e.g. Spirituality, Family, Work, Friends, Finances, Education, Health, Leisure, Shopping, Cooking, Cleaning, Yourself, Coaching, Athletics, etc.

Establishing Your Priorities

Think about the areas of your life where you spend a lot of time or areas where you should or would like to focus your time. Three things should influence your priorities: 1. how important it is to you, 2. how much time are you willing to spend and 3. how much money are you willing to invest.

* Your first priority will be the most important, an overriding force in your life. This must be very important to you. What do you center your life around? Or how do you spend your time?

* Your most important priorities will be at the top of the list.

* Some priorities may merge together or become roles. We will see this as we establish some of our priorities and develop your program. This process will take time and different scenarios until you are comfortable with your program.

Some Things to Think About... ..

Set priorities and stick to them as often as possible, but be flexible because different events in your life will change your priorities. For example, these situations will change your priorities: marriage, death, crises situation, etc. Also realize that some priorities are permanent and some are temporary. School should definitely be a top priority, but after you graduate and become part of the work force, it may drop low on your list unless you decide to further your education.

From Priorities to Roles

In the next section we will move from priorities to roles. In each of your priorities, you will list several roles that will fulfill your priorities.

CHAPTER 3

Roles

Definition

n. rol

1 The characteristic and expected social behavior of an individual.

http://ahdictionary.com/

The second part of your program is to know your personal roles. The roles you take on are derived from your priorities. This section will focus on the different roles and responsibilities that you take on. A role or a responsibility is the expected social behavior and position that you take. For example, what is expected of you if you are a parent, coach, organization leader, or a student? What do people see when they look at you? What is the expected social behavior? Do you agree with it? The role you take and how you act in your role may affect other people. You must take care and understand your role and what is expected of you in that role. How can you be successful in that particular role? Well, by observing and learning. I believe you can learn from anybody or anything on this planet. Take a look at positive and successful people. Think about what makes them positive and successful. What types of Positive Principles, Quality Characteristics, and Ethical Values do they posses? I also believe you can look at the opposite and learn from that as well. You may take the worst person in the world and learn from that person. What you may learn is what not to do or how that person has negatively affected other people's lives. Focus on behaviors that you desire. Keep in mind that your behavior does affect other people. Your roles may change with different events in your life. For example, you may get a new job, promotion, new child, etc.

If one of your priorities is family, you may have several roles to fulfill to make that priority successful. The roles that you may have are father, mother, husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, and other such roles used for maintaining a stable living environment, such as doing house chores, managing money, etc.

One of our main roles in life is to serve others and that may be why we were placed on this earth. If you have the concept of "what can I do for others?" then you may be on your way to a pleasing life. There are several ways in which we may be useful to others, whether it be financially, time, physical labor, or even counseling, among other ways of being a help.

Fulfilling roles may take a lot of leadership on your part and it may involve teamwork with others. You may not be able to be successful by yourself. Be willing to reach out to others and make sure that others are able to reach out to you, as well.

Be aware of positive and negative roles. Do not get caught up in negative roles such as a person who is not willing to help, who gossips, etc. Usually, you do not assign yourself to these roles, but others may. They count also.

Defining Your Roles

What are the roles you that play in your life? When people look at you, what do they see? Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Coach, Teacher, Boss, President, Doctor, Nurse, Mechanic, Student, Player, Leader, etc. In your family are you looked upon to do finances, chores, etc. These are responsibilities that are found in some priorities

Think about everything that you do in a week or a months' time. List all of the different roles that you play. Do not leave out any role, as small as it may be, or even if it is an infrequent role. List all of the roles that pertain to you. Keep in mind the different roles that you have associated with from your priority list. Very important – ask yourself "How do these roles fit in with my priorities?"

Positive Principles, Quality Characteristics, and Ethical Values

Positive Principles are what you believe; they are the guiding force for which you base your decisions. You base your Positive Principles on a moral compass. If you base your principles on other people, they may let you down. If you base your principles on money, it may let you down. If you base your principles on any material object, it may let you down. The same is true for any material possessions that you think is important. If you need a nice car, a nice house, and other material objects to feel good about yourself, you are setting yourself up for failure and will neglect other important parts of your life. What would happen if one day you lost everything that you have? Would you be unable to move on? That is why you base your principles on nonmaterial concepts that cannot be taken away from you.

Honesty is an important principle to have. Are you confident enough to have courage of your convictions? Are you able to tell the truth no matter what the consequences are? Being loyal is another positive principle. Being a loyal person means that you will go to war or stand up for certain people or groups. You will do whatever you may need to do in order to support their needs. Being respectful and courteous are other positive principles to posses. Having the courage to stand up for what you believe will also shape who you are. Are you willing to lay it on the line for your beliefs? These words are easy to say, but how do you really implement these principles in your life?

Quality Characteristics is who you are. To be successful in these roles, we need to have certain types of Quality Characteristics that are positive and productive in order to fulfill these roles. You can actually see these characteristics displayed in people. Think of the influential people in your life. Maybe you know someone who you may have grown up with that you felt was a very caring or helpful person and that person made you feel special. Maybe you had a coach that was a great leader and teacher. These are the types of quality characteristics that you may strive to have. Some examples of the roles of those people that are successful may be that they are leaders, listeners, humble, able to solve problems, etc. If you want to be a good student or co-worker, you will need to have several Quality Characteristics such as being a good listener, researcher, studious, and willing to behave in a certain way. Take a look at other students or people who are successful. What do they have that helps them to be successful?