Who’s on your Life Team?
All throughout history we see examples of people who excelled because of the wisdom of others. Kings had prophets and sages. Presidents have Cabinets. CEOs have advisors and boards of trustees. There’s wisdom in many voices speaking into your current and future life from years of personal experience.
Who’s speaking into your life? If you were to list a group of mentors, advisors, and confidantes for your life and decision-making paradigm, who would make your list?
Last week I shared about “New Week, New You,” how you can use select, scheduled time outside your 9-to-5 to build into a better future. If you want to create a New You, you need people who can help you learn and refine the Current You. One of the wisest decisions you could ever make is to build a Life Team to speak wisdom into your future trajectory.
What is a Life Team?
A Life Team is responsible for giving honest feedback when asked on decision opportunities, your personality growth, and reflections on your personal, business, financial, mental, spiritual, and emotional journeys.
A Life Team is not responsible for your decisions; that’s your responsibility. They do not make decisions for you; again, that’s your job. Their job is to give wise advice to best help direct the rest of your life.
A Life Team is a legacy-building supporting cast, collectively saying, “How can we help support and encourage you to make the most of the one life you have?” They take the entire breadth of your remaining life and seek to optimize your impact on the world around you.
Criteria for a life team member
There are a handful of people who are on my Life Team. It’s a very organic, messy part of my life and I regularly interact with each member throughout the year. My Life Team has given me advice on some of the biggest decisions of my life and I’m in a much better place because of their insight.
When it comes to building your own Life Team, there are three questions you should consider:
- Do you know, like, and trust them?
- Are they willing and capable of speaking absolute truth to you, even if you don’t want to hear it?
- Do they have nothing to personally gain or lose by speaking into your life?
If the answers to these three questions are all “yes,” then welcome to the team. I’d recommend keeping your Life Team to no more than five, maybe six individuals. It’s helpful if they know their role in your life and that you honor their role on your Life Team with the types of decisions and opportunities you present to them.
New Week, New You
Each week I’m posting a “New Week, New You” blog post on Sunday afternoons/evenings to give you inspiration, challenges, questions, and ideas to help kickstart your new venture. It’s a new week and you’re building a new you.
- Share your ideas, frustrations, wins, and unexpected discoveries with me via social media. Tag @writetojoncook on Twitter orInstagram and add the hashtag #NewWeekNewYou.
- Invite other people to join you with their own journey towards a better tomorrow. There’s something powerful about creating extraordinary futures together.