The Life Pact Program

Introduction

  Understanding the purpose of the program

  Having ongoing personal support

  Understanding the Life Pact Cycle

  Using the Life Pact Form

  Being familiar with other tools on this website and using them when appropriate

  Understanding and using the CLEAR method

Understanding CLEAR

The CLEAR method is about making stretches in five areas, the five "CLEAR" areas:

C = Capacity, as in increasing your time, money and skill, and removing obstacles

L = Live!, as in live your mission and happiness more fully

E = Empower others, as in helping them to help themselves

A = Add to your life-support systems at least as much as you take

R = 'Ripple Effect,' as in pass on this method to others personally

In the first area, for instance, participants don’t just do any kind of capacity-building, such as time or money management. Instead, each person chooses to work on the biggest obstacle or the greatest source of potential new capacity. The same is true for mission and fulfillment—you don’t just do an hour of anything fulfilling, you do whatever you determine to be the best action towards your mission and fulfillment. This idea of spending an hour on the best use of time carries over to all of the areas of CLEAR.

Although the other areas are understandable enough, the "A" area of CLEAR, the fourth area, needs to be properly understood. This area isn't just environmental action; it has to do with a new idea called the Golden Rule 2.0: "Put back into each of your life-support systems at least as much as you take." These life-support systems include: your body, your mind, your relationships, your community, the environment, the economy, and the political system. If you think about it, personal fulfillment and a stable world require that all these areas be addressed. But as with all the areas of CLEAR this needs to be done gradually, by making reasonable stretches.

Doing CLEAR causes several things gradually to happen together: First, you build up time, money and personal energy. This usually includes getting a support buddy to help keep you focused and motivated. It also requires that you spend quality time on your own fulfillment and happiness on a regular basis. In the "empowering others" area, you can do traditional volunteering or help others informally. The method asks you to make some personal lifestyle changes to maintain your life-support systems. Finally, you’re asked to pass on the approach to a few others, giving them personal support to learn CLEAR and then pass it on to others.

We recommend that people try to do at least five hours a week of CLEAR. While we encourage people to do as much CLEAR as they can, five hours seems doable in the long-term. At first, however, you may need to work your way up to five hours, by focusing on capacity-building until you can comfortably commit to the five hour level. 

Some practical tips on doing CLEAR well

You can choose whatever steps make sense to you, but for many the following five steps are recommended:

3.  If you keep a calendar, schedule the time to do CLEAR. Better yet, get into the habit of doing a little CLEAR at a certain time each day or week. For many people, a kind of "hour of power" approach might be easiest. That may mean spending one hour a day in each area, or some time in each of the areas each day, making sure that by the end of the week, you’ve completed an hour in all five areas. Another option is to dedicate a weekend afternoon to making these stretches. 

4.  One of the first things to do during the time you set aside for CLEAR, is to brainstorm for the best actions to do in each category. Remember, CLEAR means not just any good effort, but your best effort. Once you've picked what you think are the best actions, then put them on your calendar and begin acting. Then, each week, take some time to celebrate your efforts and accomplishments, and then brainstorm and plan your next week's CLEAR. 

If you are stuck for ideas in any of the areas, or confused about what is in each area, read the appropriate section of the CLEAR Actions Menu. This long list of actions is divided into the five areas and then further subdivided into easy-to-do tasks, longer projects, and ongoing actions.

5. In the area of  "R," ripple effect, however, we recommend that you don't invite others until you've had more personal experience with the program and are comfortable with it. At the beginning, spend your "R time" on learning more about the strategies and tools of All Around. That way, when you tell others about it, you will be knowledgeable.

Pick your favorite style of CLEAR  

There are at least three different styles of CLEAR. Each style has a different impact on how you live your life. You can use any combination you wish, but you're encouraged to try each:

"Plan and Do"  This is the simplest style. On paper or in your personal organizer, list the actions that you plan to do that are stretches for you, and do them during the week.

"Awake and Respond"  In this style, you make stretches by being aware of the people and situations around you, and you do actions that occur to you, that you wouldn’t have done otherwise. For example: "I first keep reminding myself to notice what’s going on. Then I happen to notice that someone around me did something nice. I then compliment them when ordinarily I wouldn’t have." Another example: "I remind myself to notice what’s going on.  I notice that my back and neck muscles are tight. I push myself to do some stretching exercises or yoga." The Awake and Respond style makes you more aware and responsive in your relationships with others and to your current situation.  It's more spontaneous than the Plan and Do style.

"Path Management"  In this style, you ask yourself periodically, "What is the best, most loving use of my time right now?" Then you do the action and count it as CLEAR when it's a stretch.  An important variation of this is to address the question to God and make it a prayer.  More on this subject can be found in the Path Management article.

If you want to send in a CLEAR report weekly, notice that with the last two styles, it’s important to note your actions and time spent right away, so that you don’t forget.

Additional tips for doing CLEAR

• You should be aware of your attitude toward doing CLEAR, since some attitudes are much more enjoyable than others. For instance, some people who are attracted to CLEAR because they feel it is their duty to help others and maintain the world, may approach CLEAR as a set of tasks they must accomplish or else feel guilty. In this case, doing CLEAR can become an unpleasant burden or five more commandments that you must obey. If this is your attitude, you may eventually quit because no one is really forcing you to do it.
  
  Instead of perceiving it as work, you can have the attitude that it is an art form and you are an artist. Each week you are creating a work of beauty that you "sculpt."  But instead of clay or paint, your medium is ethical action. Or you can make each week a game of self-mastery. While others may be playing games on a computer, you are challenging yourself like an athlete to develop coordination, skill, endurance and grace. You are competing against your previous efforts. It may be more like dance or a relationship, however, if you use the Path Management style, described in the previous section. This requires a deep intuitive listening and graceful response to each situation as it unfolds. Instead of doing CLEAR, you are becoming "CLEAR."
  
  We recommend that you "try on" one of the three attitudes just mentioned in order to have a much more satisfying experience of CLEAR. If it doesn't feel right, try another!  These attitudes won't take the effort out of doing CLEAR, but like the artist, the athlete or the lover, you will have a much deeper satisfaction than just being able to say that you make the world a better place.
  
  

• Besides doing the CLEAR planning and action week by week, it helps to eventually create long-range goals. For instance, ask yourself what you'd like to accomplish in a year in each of the areas of CLEAR. But since a year or longer is too hard to plan, we suggest that you break down your goal into four-month goals that are each a step toward your long-range goal. These would be summarized on your Life Pact Form.
  
  

• In general, your efforts in each of the CLEAR areas will go through a cycle of four steps: assessment, goal-setting, planning and action. There are four assessments on the website. (See below.) Goal-setting and envisioning are the second steps determining where you want to be, or the kind of lifestyle you want to have. While Capacity-building, Living your mission, Empowering others, Adding to the world's stability, and Ripple effect are presented as the five major goal areas, they aren't themselves goals. You have to choose a specific action and a specific deadline for accomplishing the action, in order to create a goal.
  
  The third step is "figuring out how to get from where you are to where you want to be," and it involves planning and action, using any of a number of methods. You can use the Goal or Dream Sheet or any other planning aid.  Of course:

• You are welcome to adapt the materials to your own situation, being careful to put time and effort into all five areas. Just as five hours a week may be arbitrary, putting equal time in each area may not be the best idea if you are very developed in some areas and underdeveloped in others.
  
  

• If needed, take short breaks or even week-long vacations from using the CLEAR method. Even if you can only average two or three weeks a month, imagine if everyone did as much!
  
  







The Steps to Making a Life Pact


Since the All Around site can be used in so many ways, we have a recommended program, the Life Pact Program. The idea is to get ongoing support to make changes that improve your life and the world.

People who are starting out can use it to simply reach a goal. More advance participants can use it to assess their lifestyles and work on personal mission. Even more advanced participants can use it to balance personal growth and goal-attainment with helping others and having a positive impact on the world. Ultimately, we'd like you to become an advanced participant but it's most important to create a Life Pact that feels right for you. For an example of how someone might begin the program, you can read Anne's Journal.

Starting Our Program and Making It Real

Most adults have had the experience of having good intentions and starting off strong, only to fizzle out. But the Life Pact Program is designed to help you get the support to follow through.

a) ATTITUDE. Have a sincere dissatisfaction either with the way the world is, or how you are. Your attitude shouldn't be "I should take action" but "I want to take action" or "I need to take action." We encourage you to have the attitude of surgeons who seek the best ways to operate, not just a better way.

b) SUPPORT. Most people have support to do things in a few areas of life. But for this program, we strongly recommend that you have support to make changes in any area of life. If you have the time and opportunity, you might want to join or start a Goal & Growth Group or a Discussion & Action Group. But for most people it will be easier and more convenient to get one-to-one support through a "Buddy system." Your buddy doesn't need to do the program to support you, but helps if they do. In any case, having ongoing personal support is probably the most important step in making this program work for you. Make sure that your Buddy is getting enough in exchange. Not only does this help keep them motivated, it shows them that you sincerely value their help. If you stop and get a Buddy right now, you can use his or her support to help you complete the process of creating a Life Pact! So, read about the Buddy System now. Then ask someone who usually follows through with commitments to be your support Buddy. c) "PAYING" FOR THE LIFE PROGRAM. The assessments, forms and methods on the public part of this website are almost free, but not free. As "payment" we require that you first read our Goodness Invitation Stories. This course takes only about 30 minutes to read, and it gives you access to a book's worth of material that took years to develop. Also, the course is 50% stories. Even those who pay for a membership to the member side of the site with its 70 additional resources are required to read the Short Course in Goodness. Thank you!

Paying for a membership will give you access to more materials, but it will also help us offer the program to more people. See our Join page.

d) ASSESSMENT. Begin the process with one or more assessment tools. Here are six to pick from: The simplest assessment is to look at your life using the CLEAR method. Ask yourself, "What have I done recently in each of the five areas?" Another good assessment is the Lifestyle Review. It's the most general, but it emphasizes personal change more than world change. Beginners will probably be satisfied with these two assessments. But you can do any of the following, in addition: The Helping Inventory helps you examine your impact on others and the world. The Well Analogy is a different kind of assessment tool, one that is more intuitive and visual. More advanced participants will benefit from the Ecological Lifestyle Assessment and the Choices Regarding the Empowerment of Others assessment.

e) GOAL-SETTING. One you have done some assessments, you will have a sense of "where you are" in different areas of your life. Goal-setting is envisioning "where you want to be" in these areas. Goal-setting can include the resolution of problems as well as the creation of relationships. A well-constructed goal usually has a deadline and a specific amount. For instance, one goal might be to be able to write 100 pages of a book within three months. Other goals that can't have exact amounts usually have "indicators." For instance, a goal to improve a relationship might be to have half as many fights by the end of two months. The number of fights doesn't define the relationship's quality, but it's an indicator.

There are usually three steps in creating good goals. In any specific area: 1. Brainstorm for possible preferred situations. 2. Compare the options to determine which you like the best. 3. Choose the one that you like best. For example, you might brainstorm for several different visions of an improved relationship: one with more quality and fun time, one with few conflicts, one with more intimate communication, etc.-And, unless you have time to work on more than one, you probably will want to choose the one goal that would be most fulfilling. That's because you might have several other goals in different areas (health, finances, service to others, etc.)

One important consideration in goal-setting has to do with making sure that you have enough resources (time, money, physical energy and skill) to accomplish the goal. Sometimes you might make this a separate goal, but in any case, it makes no sense to create goals if you don't have the resources to reach the goals.

Use the Dream and Goal Sheet one time for each goal or problem that you have. Note that the Dream or Goal Sheet combines Goal-Setting and Planning.

f) PLANNING. Planning comes after Goal-Setting. Once you have the goal or desired situation in mind, you need to come up with the plan or the steps to reach your goal. Planning can be done in four steps: 1. Brainstorm for the activities or steps that will lead to your goals. 2. Compare the various activities or paths to your goal. 3. Choose the best combination of activities and put them in the right order. This is your plan. 4. Create a timetable for when you expect to accomplish each step. As mentioned, planning can be done on the Dream or Goal Sheet.

Ongoing support can be considered part of your plan. We mentioned the Buddy system much earlier because we find that it helps to have support to even begin to learn about the Life Pact process.

If your goal is very important to you, you may want to create back-up plans or contingency plans, in case something goes wrong with your primary plan.

g) ACTION. Summarize your goals and support systems on the Life Pact Form. Look at it often. If you are willing to take the attitude of a surgeon, this is your purpose statement for the next four months. This is the star that you steer by to create a better you and a better world. If you want to be zealous: breathe it, live it, put it under your pillow at night.

If you don't use a calendar, daily do-list or PDA, it helps to make mini-goals from your Life Pact or from your collection of Dream and Goal Sheets on a weekly basis. Each week, you can put these on a copy of CLEAR form (PDF version) and carry it around with you, referring to it daily or as needed.

h) EVALUATION/LEARNING/RE-ASSESSMENT. Toward the end of your Life Pact, you will want to evaluation and look back over your efforts. Thinking about what you did and how you felt as you did it is a way to celebrate your success, solidify your learning, and learn from your mistakes. Notice that evaluation is practically the same as assessment. So evaluation can be considered both the end of one Life Pact Cycle and the beginning of the next cycle.