What does Tomorrow Hold for You?

“If you want tomorrow to be different than today, then you need to stop doing things the way you did them yesterday. Every choice carries a consequence, however you measure it; negative or positive. What choices are you making today; are they helping you stay where you are or are they powerfully moving you toward the highest vision you have for yourself?” Zane Darner

What does tomorrow hold?

You’d have to be a fortune teller to figure that one out!

Really? I don’t think so. Well, sure, on stuff like the stock market or weather or sports scores, etc. But what about turning the question inward?

“What does tomorrow hold — for you?”

If you keep making the same choices and the same decisions I GUARANTEE that you will end up with the same outcomes. You have the freedom to make any choice you want, however that freedom requires the responsibility and accountability to accept the consequences for your actions.

I’ve made folks angry during workshops when I told them they have the power of choice in their lives. I was heckled about the importance of paying bills, keeping a roof over our heads, being the provider, etc. All that is true. I simply stated a truth: You have the power of choice in your life. Choice is a, well, a choice. It is yours, now. However it is also tied to its own universal law.

Exercising your will in making a choice sets the universe in motion. If you don’t go to work tomorrow, which is really something you CAN do, then you also get to accept the consequence of that choice. You might loose your job. You might find that you never liked that job and that you’d rather buy a small nursery and sell flowers for a living.

Our choices are fluid and flexible… only if we keep exercising them with mental and emotional clarity. If you continue to make choices in your life because that was “the way we did things” in our parents, grand-parents, and great grand-parents time then you are asking for the life they received. And please don’t misunderstand me. I am in no way saying that their life was any worse or any better than ours right now. I am saying though that if you continue to make the same choices today as you made yesterday then your tomorrow is destined to flow before you just as today did.

Do you want change in your life? Then you must have the courage to make changes, to alter the course of your life toward an ideal, a job, a day-to-day situation that more closely resembles the highest dreams you can imagine for yourself.

A great friend once told me to not allow the world to only see my potential. You see, I had created a chronic habit of not choosing. I didn’t take the high road or the low road; I just hunkered down at the fork in the road and stayed there. I always looked longingly at the path leading off toward the top of the mountain just as I gazed over the path that flowed down into the valley. Different paths, different desires and passions, different outcomes. Not choosing became my choice and with it I received exactly what I had chosen: Indecision.

I KNEW what was in my heart, but I had made stories that solidified over the years into an untruth: That I had to wait to begin living my life in the way I truly want my life to unfold. That I had to pay my dues like every other “respectable” member of society, family, church, and relationship circles. In short I didn’t want to hurt others or hurt myself so I sold everyone short.

We all do this to some degree. I had it mastered to such a level that I had become several separate and different people. Not split personalities, but a split person. Now I am deeply entrenched in the work and love involved in extricating myself from the damaging habits of waiting until it will be okay for me to do what I most want to do in my life.

So, what does tomorrow hold?

It rests on the sum result of today’s choices. Eat differently today for a better body tomorrow. Practice self care first, THEN care for others. Yes, I know, that sounds backwards from what we were taught. “Love your neighbors,” and all that jazz. However, the real scripture read, “Love your neighbors as yourself.”

Those last two words, AS YOURSELF, changes everything. Tomorrow holds how you treat yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually today. Tomorrow you will be living the choices of today. I watched my mom die of bladder cancer that had been brought on by a life spent smoking. She had the genealogy to have lived more than the 72 years she visited here. However, she is now in a different place.

Tomorrow holds today’s choices. What are you choosing today? I’m not saying to change anything if you are happy. But let’s chat in a week or so about what being happy really means. This is the time where you get to be selfish and TOTALLY honest with yourself. If you could have anything, do anything, see anything… what would you do? Seriously, get out a pad of paper and begin to list all the things you’d like to do in your life. I wrote on my list that I wanted to see the world as a traveler instead of as a tourist. I wanted to experience different cultures and I wanted to find a way to do it somewhat simply. That was a long time ago. As I started taking an honest look at my life I began to see that what I wanted to do was a wish, barely even a dream. Because I hadn’t invested any time or energy in changing that wish into a goal I’ve stayed in the same place.

One of the quote’s I’ve listed elsewhere on this site ties directly to this:

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.” ~ Ben Franklin

The primary focus of JourneyWay.com is to help adults through the process of regaining control in their lives. From the list you’ve begun to create pick one item and spend some time with it. Start asking yourself questions and remember that now is the time to be brutally honest with yourself. This is NOT the time to pick up past the past dialog of beating yourself up. The past has passed; while you can learn from it, you can (and should) leave it in the past. Take that one thing you want to do, accomplish, achieve and write it across the top of another piece of paper. Draw a line down the center of the page creating two columns. In one column begin listing all the reasons (valid and invalid) that you’ve not accomplished your wish. In the other column begin brainstorming steps you will need to take to make this happen for you. List big things and little things. What you’re doing is beginning to create a map that will change your wish into a goal. As you create the steps you’ll need to do remember the SMART acronym. The steps you use to achieve your goal need to have the following characteristics:

• Specific
• Measureable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timeline based

Start making choices in that direction and you’ll see the thought in your head now turn in to a dream and then into reality.

For my own dream of seeing more of the world I’m walking through the same process. I will be using that process as an example on this and on another web site to help you see that accomplishing BIG dreams is possible. You’ve just got to decide whether what you want to accomplish is important enough for you to begin making changes in your life. In my case, is traveling the world more important to me than keeping my Direct TV subscription? Is it bigger than wanting a better car than I now have. More importantly, is my dream big enough to get me out of bed an hour earlier to work on it?

In taking this thought to practice in my own life I’ve changed the direction of JourneyWay.com. Those changes will be apparent in the next week or so. Ultimately, I’ve changed the structure of what I had been offering as courses. What had been courses are now going to be offered as ebooks that will be even more affordable (like more than 50% affordable!) There will be courses, but they will now be focused on teaching JourneyWay’s 3-Step Process to regaining control in your life. The ebooks will support the courses. There are a few back-end steps that need to occur before that material is available but we’re in the home stretch! Stay tuned and remember, you can achieve your dreams if your dreams are important enough to make changes for. Start working on your Wish List and begin the deeper work of figuring out why you haven’t been able to begin and what steps you need to start taking.

What does tomorrow hold for you? Everything!

As always, live your best!

Zane Darner
JourneyWay Coaching, LLC

How to Use This Site

Welcome to JourneyWay.com! We are here to help you regain control in your life through affordable web courses and coaching. After working as professional life coaches for the past 6 years we saw the need for another way to offer assistance to those who were trying to get from where they were to where they most wanted to be. After spending time working with adults one-on-one, in classes at the local university, through workshops and presentations, and over the telephone we came to the conclusion that there must be a better way.

All of those avenues mentioned above have proven to be successful, but something was missing that JourneyWay.com was created to fulfill: Affordable web courses for those who wanted to work more independently. One-on-one life coaching can be an expensive endeavor, so to help those of you who are motivated and want to regain control in their lives we’ve created a method for you to take the next step.

The first step is often the most difficult however remember Lao Tsu’s words:
A Journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.

The way to begin is to download and complete our Intro Assessment. You can also download any or all of the material listed on our Free Tools page. These assessments, questionnaires, exercises, and articles will ask you tough questions and require you to take a fair and honest look at your life as it is right now. That is a tough step; we know because we work through this material regularly ourselves.

After you’ve moved through some of the free material you will reach a place where it’s time to make a decision: Whether to try to get where you most want to be by doing things the same way you’ve done them in the past or not? Of course another decision nestled there too: Whether or not to do anything at all? The simple fact that you’re here shows something that will answer that last question. Something in your life is pulling you toward positive change. Maybe you’re not happy with your current job, how you are in your relationships, or just unsure about where to go from here. Regardless, that call for something different is part of you and will continue to knock on your door until you do something about it.

That’s where the Web Courses come in. Every successful person has shared that you simply cannot reach your highest vision of who you are without the successful, step-by-step completion of goals. How are you with goal creation? And what’s all this about vision? Do you know the difference between a vision and a dream? How about the difference between planning and preparation? Do you know what your personal and professional distractions are and how they quietly keep you from moving forward? If not, look through the list of web courses and choose one that fits with your current situation.

We’re going to be covering time management from a very different point of view. You’ll learn why we believe that Attention Management is the key to letting time manage itself. We’ll give you tips and techniques you can put to use immediately.

So what’s keeping you from beginning? It can’t be the cost since the beginning involves using material that is provided without charge. And more importantly, the courses that do carry a cost do so at a level that is VERY affordable. One past client shared with us that she didn’t like web courses because she would buy them and never get around to doing them. We can help with that too through timed emails designed to help you remain accountable. And finally, if you need to talk to a real person you’ll find us available through email and through a new coaching line that will be implemented in the first quarter of 2009.

The Web Courses will be online before the end of January 2009. Until then please take advantage of the Free Tools section and begin working to regain control in your life.

You really can create the life you most want. We’ve found though that it’s impossible to do without a plan, without smart goals, without accountability partners. So join us and let us help you get from where you are to where you most want to be. We will help you create your own plan, we will help you create goals and learn how to stick with them, we will provide exercises, articles, and techniques that can improve how you experience life, and we will be your accountability partners. (We will also show you how to invite other accountability partners into your life for continued success.)

Instead of finding that you’ve fallen down again on your New Year’s Resolutions why not try something different this year? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

It’s time to begin the next phase of your own personal Journey!

As always, Life your Best!

Zane Darner,

President, JourneyWay Coaching, LLC

A Different Way Toward Happiness

JourneyWay.Com was created out of the experience gained through coaching adults over the past 6 years. I learned that most of those I worked with simply wanted a quick, achievable method to find a different way to regain control over their lives and to be happy.

I’m not trying to say that no work is needed to affect change, no way! What I am saying is that it is MUCH easier to get to a new place in your life by first understanding where you are.

Think of your life as a Journey!

You may have a vision for where you want your life to lead or you may not. You might be crystal clear on why you’re not happy or you are simply finding yourself in the same place year after year not really knowing where the time is going. Either way, if you want tomorrow to be different from today you must begin to make changes in the choices you’re making.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.” –Albert Einstein

I’ve always loved that quote because it accurately reflects how most of us are living our lives. It’s been said that success is achieving one’s goals. At the same time, most know that we have to have smart goals in order to keep us true to our values, dreams, visions, and hopes for tomorrow but few of us actually create personal or professional goals and stick to them.

Journeyway.com offers proven, affordable resources to help adults regain control in their lives. We offer our services out of knowing that it is possible to reach incredible dreams. This post is named, “A Different Way Toward Happiness” for a reason. There are many resources, self-help experts, and methods we can use to help us along our own personal journey. At the same time though, many contradict each other leaving us unsure of how to begin, much less continue onto our goals.

We will help you walk through a process of discovery that can lead to lasting change. Part of the work involves building an accountability system to help keep you true to yourself along the way. As in doing anything new, the assessments, free tools, and available courses may seem clunky or confusing at first. That’s okay!

Most of us don’t ever go to the airport and hand over our credit card to the ticket agent and say, “book me a flight going anywhere!” While this can provide adventure in your life, most of us naturally plan and prepare a bit more before booking our flight. We should be doing the same thing when it comes to planning our life journey!

The choices you made in the past and those you continue to make either move you closer to the life you most want to live, keep you rooted in one place, or continue to keep you off-track or even moving further away from your dreams. Sometimes, this has been going on for so long that we’ve begun to believe in our own failure.

We’re here to walk through this part of your journey with you. To do that we’re going to re-introduce you to the Four Rooms of your Life: Mind, Body, Heart, and Spirit. We’re going to ask you to take an honest inventory of all the areas of your life through our Free Intro Assessment, and we’re going to walk through reigniting dreams or goals you’ve put on the back burner, creating a vision for the life you most want to live.

In doing this, we’re going to remember to remain true to our own strengths and weaknesses and we’re going to focus on a vision that we CAN achieve. I will be providing an example of a part of my own life vision and will share through example on what I’m doing to achieve the life I most want to live.

I believe this life is precious and that we’re here for several important reasons. Some of those reasons are for ourselves and the work we’re here to do and some of those reasons are for how we can help and be there for those around us.

Whether you simply want to pick an exercise and eating plan that you can remain true to, want to create a better relationship with yourself and others, or you want to finally reach for that Big Dream, there is possibility for you!

But because this takes commitment we will be talking about how to finally find a way to stay motivated to how you most want to live. Because this will take effort in your life we will support you along the way and show you that positive change is not only possible, it can really happen. But through it all we will remind you of your responsibility and accountability in the process.

This is your life–your journey. Isn’t it worth giving it your all? A great place to start is to peruse the Free Tools section located in the drop down menu at the top of the web site. They will definitely begin to move you toward the all important steps of discovery and self-inventory necessary to begin to change your path. From there we can move to the in-depth web courses available online.

The official launch date for this site will be January 18, 2009. However much will be available before that date and the Free Tools are already up and available for download. Take some time and work your way through the pages and posts, comment if you’re moved to do so, and feel welcome to send me an email if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

This site is for you to help you begin to regain control in your life enabling you to create the life you most want to live.

To your best!

Zane Darner
zane@journeyway.com