INNOVATIVE LEARNING INSTITUTE
A Winning Life Game Plan
How to discover your mission & Purpose in life?
The “FrameWork for Success” program has four categories to complete while establishing their “Winning Life Game Plan". There is no single way to complete it. You may choose to take one module and then the other. You may choose to go back and forth between the modules (recommended).
In our lives, if we have not made clear what is most important to us, the thing that is most urgent at any given moment will dictate priority. We may never get around to doing what we think might be most important. If we are to direct our lives toward our true priorities, we need to clarify what is most important. A simple yet powerful way to do this is to write a Personal Mission Statement. A mission statement is a clear, simple statement of what is really important in our lives. It states what matters most to us.
The purpose of this program is to help you create your Personal Mission Statement. As you discover your mission, you will find that your mission statement will give your life greater purpose and direction. It will empower you to lead your life instead of spending your life reacting. As you work through the “FrameWork for Success” program, you will be challenged with images, questions, and self-reflection. When you have completed the program, you will have written a working draft of your Personal Mission Statement using the following process:
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Discover your best self-who you want to be and what you want to do.
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Uncover your values.
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Organize your thoughts.
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Write a draft of your Personal Mission Statement.
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Review and evaluate your draft.
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Commit to living your Personal Mission Statement.
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How to Find Your Strengths& How to Use them?
Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them. Instead, guided by our parents, our teachers, our managers, and psychology’s fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected.
Guided by the belief that good is the opposite of bad, mankind has for centuries pursued its fixation with fault and failing. Doctors have studied diseases in order to learn about health. Psychologists have investigated sadness in order to learn about joy. Therapists have looked into the cause of divorce in order to learn about happy marriages. And in schools and workplaces around the world, each one of us has been encouraged t identify, analyze, and correct our weaknesses in order to become strong.
This advice is well-intended but misguided. Faults and failings deserve study, but they reveal little about strengths. Strengths have their own patterns.
To excel in your chosen field and to find lasting satisfaction in doing so, you will need to understand your unique patterns. You will need to become an expert at finding and describing and applying and practicing and refining your strengths.
The African American Community does not have a viable economic base. By almost every economic indicator African Americans lag far behind the majority group. We have a crisis on our hands. We must make significant changes in our financial behavior. If we don't, this problem will worsen and doom us to economic slavery for generations. We must provide our children with better financial building blocks, not additional roadblocks Discussion
All of us must play this money game. No matter what our occupations, backgrounds, race, ethnicity, personality, or present financial status may be, we are players. "We are either investing all of our wealth in today's goods and services or we are reserving a portion of it to invest in tomorrow's goods and services. We do not have the choice of whether we will play".' Just being in this world makes us players. "But we do have the choice of how we will play. The wisdom we bring to bear on these choices will have a greater influence on our financial future(s) (individually and collectively) than the actual amount of money that comes our way".2 We can be informed, players or ignorant players. It is within our power to develop the skills and knowledge needed to become informed consumers.
No matter what our race or ethnicity, being broke is a devastating experience. It is especially heartbreaking when you are old and/ or have a catastrophic illness. Most people lose "the money game" living each month from paycheck to paycheck and retiring in poverty or in what is sometimes called "financial insecurity".
According to the U. S. Census Bureau, 62% of Americans 65 or older retire on less than $5,000. For African Americans, the picture was even grimmer. Let's take a closer look:
There are many reasons why Americans, and especially African Americans, have money / financial problems. Some of the reasons are:
• Failing to develop a winning attitude
• Failing to develop a written financial plan
• Lack of knowledge
• Debt
• Bad investments •
• Procrastination
The most important of these reasons are (1) failure to develop a winning attitude, (2) failure to develop a written financial plan and (3) procrastination. These things have an even more significant impact on African Americans than most other ethnic and racial groups because of other factors which we consider in the program.
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Income
The median household income by race and ethnicity is less than that of any other racial or ethnic group identified. However, this is only part of the picture. according to Black Enterprise
