Path Week 8: Move forward for LYF

Congratulations on making it to Week 8!

Week 8 is a time to look back on your first seven weeks on the path to your better life.  It is a time to reflect on what you practiced and measure how you have progressed and profited from your true wealth and true worth.

The “for LYF” in the credo LRN LAF LUV LIV for LYF has a double meaning.  It means “for an elevated life” which results from doing the four deeds of goodness concurrently and consistently.  It also means “for your lifetime”.  The deeds are not one-time acts; they must be a focus and be performed throughout your life.  They must become habits.

Habits take time to build, and the time needed varies for each person.  A week was suggested for each step on the path—long enough for you to meet the objective of each step, but short enough to keep you moving forward and gaining experience in each key concept.  In this Week 8, you can determine where you need more practice to make them habits and set a plan to move forward.

Use the Week 8 template that follows.

Step 1.  Look at the template you filled in on Week 0.  This was your life’s baseline when you started on this path.  Review what you wrote.

On the Week 8 template, fill out the “Week 0 rating” column by self-rating your life on a scale from zero (0) to ten (10) for each deed of goodness, where zero means you feel you did not do that deed at all and ten means you felt you were at the highest level of achievement.  Rate for each deed of goodness, both inward (growing true wealth) and outward (giving true worth).  These are self-ratings.  There are no right or wrong answers.  Base it on your notes in the Week 0 template.  Add up the ratings in the “Week 0 rating” columns to give you totals for both true wealth and true worth and record the totals.

Step 2.  Now take a look at the templates you filled in each day of Week 7.  The Week 7 template is similar to Week 0, but you filled it out seven weeks later after practicing each of the key concepts in the Philosophy for LYF, and you filled it out each day for seven days.

Review collectively your notes on the Week 7 templates.  Fill out the “Week 7 rating” column by self-rating how you feel you lived for each deed of goodness in Week 7.  Add up the ratings in the “Week 7 rating” columns to give you totals for both true wealth and true worth and record the totals.

Step 3.  Perform a comparison of your self-ratings for each deed of goodness.  Did you make significant progress between Week 0 and Week 7?  Were you about the same?  Did you regress?  Why do think that was?  Write your observations in the “Observations” column.

Write observations for the true wealth and true worth totals as well.  Did you make significant progress overall in growing true wealth and giving true worth?  About the same?  Did your regress?  Also, which were your strongest deeds of goodness?  Which were your weakest?  Write your observations in the “Observations” column next to the “Total of ratings” for true wealth and true worth.

Step 4.  Review again the template you filled in on Week 0.  Fill in the “Week 0” column with the number of personal elevations or divine elevations you experienced in Week 0.

Similarly, review again your Week 7 template notes and fill in the “Week 7” column with the number of personal elevations or divine elevations your experienced in Week 7.

Write down any observations in the “Observations” column for elevations.  Did the number of elevations increase, stay about the same, or decrease between the baseline and Week 7?  Why do you think that was?  Did you experience elevations during Weeks 1 through 6?  If you did experience personal or divine elevations, what observations can you make from them?

Step 5.  Review again the template you filled in on Week 0.  Self-rate on a scale from zero (0) to ten (10) on being bad to yourself and missed opportunities to LRN LAF LUV LIV in the “Week 0 rating” column.  For these two ratings, a zero means you were not bad to yourself or had no missed opportunities and a ten means you were at the high end of self-infliction and that you missed all opportunities for goodness.  In these two obstacle cases, a lower self-rating is better.

Similarly, self-rate for Week 7 in the “Week 7 rating” column.

Write down any observations in the “Observations” column for obstacles.  Have you improved in reducing obstacles like being bad to yourself or missing opportunities?  If not, what are the reasons?  Did missed opportunities increase because you are now more attuned to identifying opportunities or you struggle to take action?

Step 6.  Based on your reflections and observations in Steps 1 through 5, establish a plan to work on making LRN LAF LUV LIV for LYF a habit.  Write them down on the template so that you can review and follow them every day.

Here are some suggestions to consider during your planning and in your plans.

• If your observations show that you have taken all of the concepts to heart and have made significant progress, you can take a look at what areas you feel you can still make more progress or to more balance true wealth and true worth. Redo the weeks that focused on those areas.  Then redo this Week 8 template and compare the two.
• If your observations show that no or little progress was made over the weeks, identify what the causes were and how you can overcome those obstacles. Did you not have the time to focus on living the concepts?  Were you unable to align your values to the core values of the Philosophy for LYF?  Were you in an environment that negatively affected your ability to focus and stay on track?  Document those obstacles and set a plan to remove, overcome, or limit the impact of those obstacles.  As you do so, begin with Week 1 of the path.  This Week 8 template becomes your life’s baseline.
• Share the Philosophy for LYF with others. Talking about and teaching others is one way to reinforce your knowledge of the concepts and further embed it in your life.
• Repeat Week 1 through Week 8 every eight weeks.  This gives you a focus for each week and an opportunity to improve each major concept progressively.  Benjamin Franklin did this technique with his own 13-week program to improve himself, focusing on one of thirteen virtues each week, examining himself every day and noting down his progress (in his case, he wrote down a black dot for every fault he committed against his list of virtues hoping he would have fewer black dots as the week went on), and progressively working through the list.  He wrote, “Proceeding thus to the last, I could go thro’ a course complete in thirteen weeks, and four courses in a year.”

A PDF version of the template may be downloaded by clicking here.