What is MyStrategy?

Have you ever wondered what to do with all the personal development information you’ve been consuming over the years? Have you had new ideas and exciting thoughts for your life...and promptly forgotten them? Have you a build-up of journals, notes from events and workplace training courses designed to make you a better version of you, sticky notes with random ideas or powerful affirmations...? Ever suspected that, with the sheer amount of information you’ve consumed, life should be running a little bit more...well, impressively? Or, at least, a little more satisfactorily?

Sounds familiar? That’s OK! It happens to the best of us. In fact, it’s the very reason why this system was designed, so you might just have landed upon your lifelong solution.

So, what does MyStrategy give you?

• A totally private system for self-focus, self-scoring, and self-progress.
• A model for you to follow – forever, if you wish.
• A system that can help you manage your intent and activity over time, across all areas of life.
• Short videos and/or voice recordings with each section, to kick-start your thinking.
• Self-determined rating scales to aid, and prove, your development over time
• Space for summary thoughts and conclusions; the opportunity to self-rate and spot areas for growth
• The opportunity to watch your story build over time.

This system, in short, is a springboard to action. Well-chosen action.

This annually-renewing system was designed to be used in the longer-term, so that you have an online life-hub and can watch your progress over time. If you are not willing to focus for at least 1 whole year to get the reflection, self-coaching and activity started, then this may not be for you.

The system contains sections based on Davina’s 7-step Personal Strategy Model, developed and utilised in a more manual form during years of private coaching. Once you join, you have access to all sections – it is not a training course, it is a forward-rolling system. There are no rules, there is no order in which you must do the work – you can go anywhere you want on any given day. In time, it will all add up - regardless of your chosen route.

It is not a system requiring daily use. Take questions away and think about them - make notes, have a bit of an internal debate with yourself! - then come back with your conclusions. In year 1, make sure you have at least a couple of hours per month to dedicate to this, so that you are clearing out old thoughts promptly, and embedding newer desires and ideas.

This is a private system. In a world of online community and information-sharing (including both positive and negative debate and commentary), this is your quiet place, your calm space. This is where you make decisions for you. Nobody else can see or comment.

• Dig out all the old notes you’ve kept from events, books, random thoughts and moments of inspiration, etc.
• Join MyStrategy.
• Use the in-system Site Map to understand where the information should be placed – or just play around for a while until you get used to letting the colours guide you.
• Buy a new notebook to help you brainstorm and process the questions in the system. Put all the headlines from that thinking into MyStrategy, and get your goals logged and moving.
• Watch your story develop.

MyStrategy is the self-management system that never stops! Renewing annually, you are free to stop renewing at any point – or to continue forever. With never-changing questions (just changing answers from you, demonstrating your growth), there is no system-dictated stopping point.

Pace yourself, it’s not a race! There is no competition here: you’re the only one in here, so it’s all about you, what you want, and when you want it.

A course: Don’t think "Oh, I’ll sign up to this course and complete it as quickly as possible". That’s not what this is. This is an onward-rolling system, if that makes it any clearer – achieve something, maybe take a break, start something else using all the information you’ve stored here. The word ‘strategy’ is in the name, and strategy is not a short-term thing, as you know. Membership means an ongoing project – and the project is you.

Actual coaching: This system covers a huge range of general themes that people tend to want (or need) to discuss during coaching, and allows a strategy to be built and monitored around this. Video and sound files will guide you, but there is no ‘conversation’ with another person in this system. You are simply having an ongoing conversation with yourself, based on the information you will input and the decisions you will land upon. It is a living information store-room and activity planner.

A replacement for coaching, or for any other ‘talk-based therapy’: This system does not replace necessary discussion with a professional. It does, however, provide a valuable opportunity for introspection in advance, providing assistance in laying out thoughts, ideas and plans to anyone who struggles with such structure. This constitutes a hugely beneficial lead-in to any such professional conversation, allowing you to explore and narrow down a bubbling brain-full of thoughts to the point where you can seek help on a specific area requiring ‘live human’ support – resilience, communication, responsibility, action-taking...wherever you find yourself getting stuck despite a desire for progress. Alternatively, if you are already in the habit of talking to someone, MyStrategy provides valuable administrative support for ‘headline’ conclusions and actions resulting from that.

If you’re "not a talker" and are never going to go down that path, MyStrategy could be a great substitute – as long as you are relatively strong and stable and don’t have a tendency to beat yourself up if nobody is there to stop you. Likewise, if your disposable income is never really going to let you pay freely for conversations that constitute ‘supervised thinking’, start your broadest thinking here.

A community: This system is designed to avoid ‘noise’. Your life is your life, nobody else can live it for you or should tell you how to live it. By all means, refer to blogs, podcasts, books etc to help you think about the questions in MyStrategy. But please do not drown yourself in external information. Use 3 resources if you need to kickstart your thinking on a particular issue, then put down the materials and engage your own brain. Become the content. What feels right to you, for you?

A source of endless information and contact: Everything about being alive and living a decent, satisfying life has been said before. Unique thoughts are rare – Socrates, Plato et al pretty much covered it all (see MyStrategy’s social media, if in any doubt!), so there isn’t really a huge amount more to say.

You’ll see a link to several years’ worth of blog posts, generally with 1 more added each month – read them if you wish, they won’t be pushed at you. And again, be wary of consuming too much content of any kind on any topic; aim for 3 items, then look inward. You are an adult functioning in the real world: you have the ability to think and decide. Don’t let the bursting bookshelves, real or virtual, make you think you don’t.

As coaches, we credit you as being "creative, resourceful and whole". Take that compliment and run with it!