Living Forward

Daniel Harkavy: I think the benefits are having peace of mind. I think that you have more confidence and more clarity, so that the bottom-line result of having a clear life plan is that you fill your days with more proactive and intentional decisions, instead of reactive and unintentional. What that does is that enables you to, basically, live a life that is going to be more rewarding, more fulfilling, and, as I said earlier, definitely a lot more intentional.

Rachel Salaman: So tell us how you met Michael and why you decided to collaborate on writing this book.

Daniel Harkavy: I began working with Michael about 16 years ago. I worked with him for many years, as did other coaches in my firm Building Champions, and it was during that period of time where I introduced him to the Building Champions life planning process, and it rocked him. So that's how we met and, over the years, he gave away that life planning process to everybody that he could, because we encourage all of our clients to do so. And just about four or five years ago, we sat down, and he approached me, and we talked about the possibility of bringing our experiences and our perspectives on life planning together. And we began penning the book in 2012, and it just released this March. So that's basically the story.

Rachel Salaman: And it is a thoroughly useful book, called "Living Forward," as I mentioned. Who is it aimed at?

Daniel Harkavy: I love that question, because I'm really bullish, Rachel. I think the book's aimed at everybody.

I think this is a book that is an absolutely must-read for a high school graduate, for a college graduate. You know, I have, over the years, coached so many executives who are more seasoned in life, they've got more runway behind them, they're in their 50s, 60s or 70s, and when they go through the life planning process, I'm telling you, the number of times they've said to me, "I wish I had this when I was in my 20s," is astounding. So I really think that, if we can help young people in their late teens, early 20s, understand that they don't need to drift through life, that they don't need to neglect areas of their life that are most important and they can begin to develop healthy habits for how they want to lead themselves, I think they can lead much richer lives.

So, I think it's a really wonderful read for somebody on that spectrum, you know, that edge of life. And then I will take it all the way to those that are entering into their retirement years. Because there's so many people who are retiring. They're leaving corporate America, and they think the best is behind them, and that's really not true. People who are in their 60s or 70s, they still have life left, and, each and every day, they can be more intentional and add more value in the lives of other people around them.

So, as I said earlier, I think the book's for everybody. I'm saying from teens on into retirement years.

Rachel Salaman: And you mentioned "drift" there, and it appears in the subtitle of your book, "A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want." How big a problem is drift, do you think, and do we always know when we're doing it?

Daniel Harkavy: You know, I don't know how big a problem drift is. I think that needs to be answered by each of us. But I will tell you that what I've observed is that most people go through life drifting and responding to whatever crisis or opportunity comes their way. There's not a lot of intentionality. They haven't thought about where they want to arrive at in their marriage, or arrive at in their physical health, or arrive at vocationally or professionally.

Most people will spend the majority of their time putting together plans or thinking about where they want to arrive at in maybe just one or two areas of their life, maybe their career and their finances, and then they react unintentionally to all of the other ‘accounts' in their life, we like to call them, and they just kind of drift along.

I think a lot of people aren't aware of it. They're overwhelmed. They're stressed out. They don't know they're drifting. So I think there's a lot of people who could live with more intentionality.

Rachel Salaman: Well, let's talk about your life planning process now. And the first step is to think about how we want to be remembered. What are the benefits of writing our own eulogy?

Daniel Harkavy: I think this is an absolute mandatory first step, because, Rachel, one of, I think, the biggest deceivers in life is that we don't think we're going to die. Many of us live our lives like we can get to what's most important tomorrow, and there's no guarantee of tomorrow. And if we continue to put things off, if we continue to think if we could just get through this season, then we'll get to what's most important, we're really deceiving ourselves.

So what happens is, when you start off by just imagining that you're at your own funeral and you start writing out your eulogy as if it were being read today - right here, right now - and you start to imagine and write out what people are experiencing in the first few rows of your memorial service, you will come to grips with the fact that your days are numbered. You know, I love this. There's a Hebrew scripture where it says, "Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom." When you know your days are numbered, you will make wiser decisions each and every day because you know there's no guarantee of tomorrow, and you cannot put off what's truly most important because there's a chance you'll never get to it.

So I think it's huge. It engages the head and it engages the heart, so that you can build a life plan that actually has pull power instead of just creating some cerebral tool that you do one time and it doesn't have the pull power to help you to transform and to fill your days with the right activities. You just do it and put it away. But if you do the eulogy first and you engage the head and the heart, there's a good chance that that life plan is going to have the pull power, and, as you review it, you will start to fill your days with more of the right activities.

Rachel Salaman: So what should people do if they want to write their own eulogy? What's the practical process?

Daniel Harkavy: So you start off by writing out who would be there and what would they say about you if it were being read today, and think about all of the people that are closest to you. So you think about what your spouse, if you're married, or your partner, what they would say about you. If you have kids or grandkids, what would they say about you? What would your friends say about you? You do all of that. You just start writing out what you believe they would say about you, right here, right now.

That's the first step. Then the second step, which is a beautiful one, is you write out legacy statements. And these legacy statements are what you would hope people would say about you if you were to pass at some point in the future. So, Rachel, I'm 51 and I would do this exercise, and let's just say that this thing, depending upon how many days I have, is read when I'm 80 or whatever the number may be. What would I hope that those people would say about me at that time?

And the good news is that today I'm still alive, so I can affect change and I can fill my days with more of the right decisions. So that if there are any gaps between that eulogy, as if it were being read today, and those legacy statements, as I would like to have them read some 29 years later, I can do something about it.

Rachel Salaman: Do people run up against any particular challenges doing this activity, in your experience of developing life plans?

Daniel Harkavy: I think one of the biggest challenges is just carving the time out of your busy life to put a plan together for your life. Most of us won't take the time to do it. So I've told everybody, "If you're going to read my book, "Living Forward," I want you to know the book is worthless, absolutely worthless, unless you're willing to invest a full day to complete your life plan." And I think that's one of the biggest challenges.

You know, if we're talking about the challenges with the eulogy, that in itself is just scary for some people. It's daunting, it's a downer, but I think it's very, very healthy for us to understand that, at some point, things are going to change and we're not going to be here. And we have to ask ourselves what kind of a difference have we made? How have we loved? How have we lived? What value have we added to those around us? Because we are in much more control than we think.

Rachel Salaman: Right. So once people have gone through that process of writing their own eulogies, establishing how they want to be remembered, the next step is figuring out what matters most to us. And this is where you bring in the idea of life accounts, which you mentioned briefly earlier. Could you just explain what these are?

Daniel Harkavy: Yes. So I like using the word ‘accounts' because most of us understand the whole mindset of having goals for our financial accounts. Many people will meet with a financial planner and they'll put together goals for their retirement account. You know, what type of network they want to have in a specific retirement account at some point in the future. They'll have a different goal for their checkbook, and that's just to keep it in the black and not in the red.

We have different goals for these different accounts in our life on the financial side, and it's really wise for us to take that construct and then look at it in the context of all areas of our life: what kind of a balance do you want to have in your marriage account, in your health account, in your family account, in your financial account, in your professional account? When you can see where you are at versus where you want to be, it gives you the ability to adjust things because, if you've got a specific vision for each and every one of these accounts at some point in the future, and if you have some grasp of reality and you have some folks close to you who can help you really gain clarity on where you're at in current reality, you can then begin to put together the plans that will enable you to close the gap from today to where you want to be.

I think each and every one of us want to live lives to where we have success in all areas of our life. We want to make a difference in all areas. And I think it's really big because so many of us are putting so much energy into just one or two accounts. We're building equity and net worth in our career account, we're building equity in maybe our financial account or our health account, but we're ignoring those other accounts. And then what's going to happen is those other accounts are going to break and we're going to become bankrupt in accounts that are really important. And, when that takes place, it has an impact on every aspect of how we live.

Rachel Salaman: Now, it's really interesting, in your book, you and Michael don't specify or prescribe how many life accounts people should be thinking in terms of, or indeed what they should be called. So what goes into deciding how many life accounts we have and what to call them?

Daniel Harkavy: Yes. So I think that's going to be different and very common for everybody listening to us. For me, I place a high value on my health account. I have a faith account. These are areas of my life that are important. I have a vocational account or a career account, and that's important for me. And then I have my marriage account, and then I have a family account, and then accounts for each one of my kids, and then it goes on from there.

There's areas of my life - self-development, sanity and fun, charity - these are all areas of my life that I want to further develop, but I think the most powerful thing first to call them is truly what they are. So, for my wife, it's my Cherry account. And then I've got accounts for each one of my kids and they're named by their names, like Ali and Dylan etc accounts. So I think that's the way you do it. It's really not a complicated process.

Rachel Salaman: Now, the next few steps in your process are to do with the life accounts: determining the condition of each account and then prioritizing them. In the book you talk about the life assessment profile, which gives a report for each life account, looking at passion and progress, using the memorable categories lift, drift, shift, and gift. Could you tell us more about that?

Daniel Harkavy: Yes. It's a very helpful tool. It's very easy for you to take the assessment, and what it does is it just gives you a really nice visual in all of the areas of your life that are important to you - each account - and it shows you on this graph where you are. So if you're in "gift," for instance, that means that you've got progress, you're making progress, you're doing what you want to be doing in that account, you're seeing growth in that account, and you've got a lot of passion for it. Then you go to the opposite, that bottom quadrant, and if you're in "drift," it means that you don't have much passion at all, if any, and you're not making any progress.

So what it does is it gives you a nice visual, a dashboard if you will, to show you which accounts in your life are really moving well and they don't need a lot of adjustment in comparison to others that could be plotted anywhere on that graph. And then it helps you to realize where you need to put more energy, more focus. Or maybe you need to retest your vision for those accounts, so that you can begin to increase the passion as well as the progress.

Rachel Salaman: So then you suggest we put our life accounts in order of priority. So is this a case of just putting the ones that need the most work up front, or what do we need to know about prioritizing them?

Daniel Harkavy: So I think that's an interesting deal, because our life plans are dynamic. You don't create a life plan and then memorialize it, and it's set in stone. So you can adjust your life plan every single day and your priorities will shift.

There are times in life when you've got a big opportunity vocationally and you're going to put more priority for a season on your career. Maybe there's this season where one of your kids is about to get married and, over the next quarter, you're going to be putting more emphasis on that account, because you want to help that child to launch well.

I think there's some accounts that probably are never going to shift in priority, depending upon how you see the world. For folks out there who maybe faith's a big thing, maybe that's going to be number one. Or maybe they themselves are going to be number one and they're going to make sure that they have an account for their own health or their own mental wellbeing, and they know that they need to take care of themselves well first so that they can then add value to all other accounts.

So there's a few accounts that may never shift in priority, but I think the main thing for everybody to hear is that this is a dynamic tool and you can adjust it as seasons and life change, as situations change, and as priorities change.

Rachel Salaman: We need to do some action planning then for each life account. And in the book you say that this is in five sections for each of the life accounts. So could you just briefly outline what that looks like?

Daniel Harkavy: Yes. So I think the most powerful thing for us on each one of these life accounts is for us to cast a vision. What is it we would like to see?

So I've already shared on 51, for my marriage account, for Cherry, what would I like to see at the age of 75? What type of a relationship do we have? And we cast a vision that's clear and compelling. And we want it to be compelling because we want it to pull on our head and our heart. We want it to draw out emotion. Because when we pull on head and heart and we draw on emotion then what happens is it's easier for us to make changes. We make better decisions when what we see in the future fully grabs us. So a clear and compelling vision is number one.

Our purpose for the account - what role do we play? What's our purpose in saving in this account? - it's one sentence or so and it brings real clarity. I'm going to use the marriage account again, so my purpose as husband to her is to bring oneness to us. It's to lift her up. It's super clear how I am to respond, why I am here, why I am in this account, super clear.

The third is current reality. Where am I at today? Just a good, quick snapshot of where I am today. And that helps me to see if there's any gaps between current reality versus where I want to be at some point in the future. It helps me to see if I'm living out that purpose.

The fourth component of this, should you desire, is to write out an inspirational quote that means something to you, that will help you to live out the actions that you're going to identify in the fifth step. It might be an inspirational quote. It could be a scripture. It's something meaningful to you.

Then the fifth and final are the specific steps that you're going to put into your schedule so that you're proactively and intentionally adding value to that account. So I've been using the marriage account, I'm going to stay consistent with that, so it's Monday afternoon dates with her. It's 30 minutes of eye-to-eye, ear-to-ear, no TV, no interruptions, just connecting at the end of the day. It's our monthly getaways. It's the specific things that I can take from my life plan and put into my calendar because they're now a priority. They're so important that I'll schedule them so that I'm reminded of them continually and have the ability to intentionally add value to an account that is really important to me.

Rachel Salaman: Now, in this part of the book you make the case for incremental change. Can you tell us about your friend, Dr Henry Cloud's ant farm and what we can learn from that?

Daniel Harkavy: Yes, I love this story. When Henry was in college, he was in grad school, he was needing to write his thesis. He had a big project and it was overwhelming for him. And somebody had given him an ant farm. And Henry put the ant farm together and he started looking at that ant farm and he was observing. So what Henry saw was, in the beginning, these ants had built nothing. But he watched them move a grain of sand, one at a time. Grain of sand, one at a time. And over the days, over the weeks, what he saw built was a really beautiful colony.

And that's the way we build life. It's one step at a time, every single day, filling our day with the right steps, the right little decisions. Because, Rachel, what most people don't understand is that our life won't be defined by one big catalytic decision. It's all the little decisions that we make each and every day that fill our days, which fill our weeks, which fill our months, which ultimately fill our years. Those little decisions will tell the story of our life.

What we need to realize is those little decisions, they matter. Each grain of sand matters.

Rachel Salaman: So once you've gone through that whole process, you will have your life plan, which you say is a document from eight to 15 pages long. How much self-awareness is needed to create an effective plan, in your experience? Because it's easy for us to see things very differently from those around us, isn't it? Even to the extent of thinking relationships are healthy when they aren't.

Daniel Harkavy: Yes. So I think that getting outside insight on your life plan is very beneficial. What I've seen is most people can do a really good job of putting together a life plan that will add value to them. It will cause them to begin filling their days with more of the right steps. If you want to turbo-charge this thing and you want to add real horsepower to it then you share it with somebody that's close to you. And you ask them to look at it and you ask them to be very honest with you and to help you to make sure that you see it right.

So for me, that's my wife Cherry, that's a few of my close colleagues and friends. They've got copies of my life plan. I love their input. I asked my bride, Cherry, to review it with me every single year. And she knows me well. She knows how I'm doing. I've reviewed it with my kids before.

Getting that insight, it really helps, and I would challenge everybody to not be afraid of that but to welcome that. Because if you have blind spots then you really don't have the ability to make the right changes. You don't have the ability to then really affect positive change. And I think there's a level of maturity that comes when we know that we're not perfect and we don't see it all right. So we should invite that outside insight in so that we can actually be more of who we want to be.

Rachel Salaman: Now, you mentioned a little earlier that we need to dedicate a whole day to creating this document, and that's a whole day in one go. Why is that?

Daniel Harkavy: It's because, if we don't, we'll piecemeal it together. And, if we piecemeal it together, we're going to come up with some Word document that has no power. If you try to do this thing after work and in between breaks and on the weekend, two hours before the kids wake up, this thing is going to be something that you kind of retrofit into your very busy life.

You know, the average, and I'm going to go ahead and speak from this side of the pond, the average American will spend five hours researching what car to buy. The average bride will invest 39 days into planning for her five-hour wedding. And yet very few people will invest any time into putting together a plan for their life.

What I'm saying is if you'll make this a special day, you'll go somewhere, and it doesn't need to be expensive. It can be a state park. It can be to some nice little beach. It can be a library, a lodge lobby, somewhere that's nice, that just feels good for you. And if you'll invest an entire day, and you start with writing your eulogy and then you work through, identifying each and every step that you're going to take in order to become who you want to become in all areas of your life, that is going to be one of the most significant days. It's going to be memorable. And if it's memorable, you're going to walk out of there with this 10-page document. And it's not single-spaced, 10-point font, but you're going to walk out with this document where you feel good about it because you've invested a full day into putting together a plan for how you want to live forward.

And I will tell everybody, to try to cheat this and try to compromise on it, you're going to come away with a document that doesn't have the pull power and you're not going to affect the change you want because you haven't invested the time to build something that really grabs you.

Rachel Salaman: So if people don't think they have enough time to actually create their life plan, they may well think they also don't have enough time to implement it. What are your tips for carving out time for implementation, breathing rooms as you call it?

Daniel Harkavy: Yes. So what happens is, when we have a life plan, one of the most powerful things is it helps us to say no. And everybody needs to understand, you're all probably really good at saying no to bad things but you're not really good at saying no to good things. What we need to do is we need to get better at saying no to good things so that we have more time to say yes to the great things.

So what happens when you have a life plan is you start realizing what's most important to you and you say no to the things that are not as important, which ultimately gives you more time to do what matters most. Now, a very practical tip, if you want this life plan to take root, and I'm going to ask you to review it every single morning. It's going to take you five to 10 minutes. And I'm going to want you to read it every morning for 90 days - 90 days.

The more we focus on what matters most, the more our brain shuts out the stuff that's not as important. But we need a system for our mind to be focused on what matters most. So this daily review in the morning for 90 days, then weekly reviews for the remainder of our life on Sunday, Monday - Sunday evening or Monday morning - and then a nice maybe hour or so. Real good adjustment every quarter, and then one full day again at the end of the year - a life plan retreat.

By investing that time into reviewing, adjusting and editing your life plan, you're going to see that you have more time in your months and in your years because you're saying no to things that just don't matter.

Rachel Salaman: So how much should we expect our life plan to change as we do that review process? Or does it just completely depend on the individual?

Daniel Harkavy: You know, I think everyone's is going to change. I don't think I've seen anybody not make changes or edits. Maybe you put down an action when you first put together your life plan and that action wasn't realistic. Maybe you put too many of them down, or maybe three or four weeks into it, three or four months into it, you realize that you missed something that was really important.

This is a document that serves you, you don't serve it. So mark it up. Make adjustments. This thing's got to be a dynamic, real tool for you. And most of us who have been doing this for quite some time, if we were to show you the actual hard copy of our life plan, you're going to see pen marks all over them. They're continually being edited and adjusted so that they best work and they best work for the season of life that we're in.

Rachel Salaman: Now, your book also includes some tips on bringing these ideas to teams in the workplace. Could you talk us through how that might work?

Daniel Harkavy: Yes. This is something that I'm incredibly passionate about, because I believe that self-leadership always precedes team leadership. How we lead ourselves impacts how we lead others. And if we're drifting through life, if we're filling our days with unintentional decisions that impact our mindset, that impacts how we engage with others.

So leaders of organizations who have got really clear plans for their lives, it enables them to be more present and effective at work because they know they're tending to do the things that matter most in all the days of their life because they have a solid plan put together for it. So bottom line is it makes us better, more engaged, more present and creative leaders. We're there, because we're not sitting in meetings thinking, "Oh no, I've got to get out of here. I should be at Johnny's soccer game," or, "I'm behind on this." When we have a life plan filling our days with more of the right things, so it enables us to lead more effectively.

When leaders have been impacted by life planning, what we've seen is they want to give the gift away. So the book, "Living Forward," Rachel, has been purchased by so many CEOs. They've been buying it in the hundreds and in the thousands, so that they can give it to their team mates, because they want to make a positive and significant difference in the lives of those that are trading in the majority of their waking hours to be a part of their team and their company. And they know that, if they can do that, not only are they making them better team mates but they're making them better people.

Rachel Salaman: Well, you've made an excellent case for life plans. What would you say to someone hesitating about committing to beginning that process?

Daniel Harkavy: I would say give it a go. Go through the process. Everybody who's done it has said that it was one of the most impactful days of their life. It's really changed them. Yes, it takes some work and it requires you to maybe dive a little deeper than you normally would, but I would say invest the day, build the plan, and then begin reviewing it and living it.

It's not adding something to your already busy life. It's bringing clarity to your already busy life. It's going to help you to be mindful of what matters most. It's going to help you to identify the actions that you can take and the reactions that you can have when things don't go your way. And bottom line is, I think that, if you'll invest in this process, chances are you're going to live a life that has far less regrets in it when you get to the end. Your life's going to be much more intentional, much more rewarding, and you're going to feel a lot more peace because you know you've focused on what's mattered most.

Rachel Salaman: Daniel Harkavy, thanks very much for joining us today.

Daniel Harkavy: Rachel, an absolute pleasure. Thank you for allowing me to join you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Daniel's book again is "Living Forward: A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want," and it's co-authored with Michael Hyatt.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.