Life Movie available NOW in iTunes!

Our latest App, Life Movie has just been approved by Apple and is in the App store. This is the latest in our Life Series and complements Life Audit and Life Goals. Life Movie is a tool to help you visualise and manifest your goals. You can see some screen shots and download it from iTunes.

OVERVIEW

Life Movie allows you to make up a slide show of your dreams and goals and then watch them, accompanied by the play list that you select in the music tab. 

Slides can be either images that you have stored on your device, photos that you take with the camera or text describing your goal. You can choose from a range of transitions between slides and select how long each slide displays. 

Note that if you see an image on the web that you would like to use to visualise a goal, you can save this to your iOS device using Safari. In Safari, browse to the image you want then touch and hold the picture to save it to your Camera Roll. Once in the Camera Roll you can use it in Life Movie.

THE THEORY

What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve". 

This is the philosophy of Napoleon Hill, one of the greatest motivators of all time and author of the best selling book, "Think and Grow Rich." Regularly visualising your goals using Life Movie will cause your sub conscious mind to start working on how they may be achieved.

When you visualize, you rehearse how a problem can be overcome, how a new idea could be implemented, or what a piece of art looks, reads or sounds like. You mentally practice achieving and living your goal, which leads to the real thing. 

Mental simulation provides a window on the future by enabling you to envision possibilities and develop plans for bringing those possibilities about. In moving yourself from a current situation toward an envisioned future one, the anticipation and management of emotions and the initiation and maintenance of problem-solving activities are fundamental tasks. 

This has been demonstrated in a number of studies including Taylor, S.E., Pham, L.B., Rivkin, I.D., & Armor, D.A. (1998). Harnessing the imagination: Mental simulation, self-regulation, and coping. American Psychologist, 53. 

For best results use Life Movie at least once a day. Consider having specific movies for different areas of your life (e.g. Health, Family, Work, Money, Relationships and Travel).

Observations on Goals

New Years Resolutions

I read an interesting article in the March 2011 edition of PC and Tech Authority called "Testing your Resolve" by Joel Nation.

According to psychologists at Sydney University 50% of Australians made New Year resolutions at the end of 2010.

Apparently though only half of those who make resolutions stick to them after 6 months and this figure drops to 10% after 12 months. You would have to conclude that resolutions don't work for 90% of the population.

So what is going wrong, why is this so? I have previously spoken about my 5 reasons why New Years resolutions fail.

To make sure you are one of the 10% that stick with their resolutions - just do the opposite to the actions listed in my previous post.

Or if you need a system to help you and have an iDevice then you could download my App Life Goals from the iTunes App Store. ;-)

Read all about it at the Reefwing Software web site.

5 Reasons that New Year's Resolutions Fail!

5 Reasons That New Year Resolutions Fail and what to do about it!

As New Year's Eve rolls around we all tend to look back over the last year and score ourself on how well we did. If we met most of our goals then that reaffirms our self worth and encourages us to set new challenges for the next year.

Alternatively, if we didn't do so well in meeting our objectives, we tell ourselves that they weren't that important or we were too busy. Though you have to wonder why we would set ourself goals that were not important to us.

The good news is that there is a fool proof method to achieving your goals. Why goals are not achieved has been studied by many people and this problem has been solved. So why do so many people get to Valentines Day and they have already broken their New Years Resolution?

In my experience the following 10 things are why we don't meet our goals:

1. You didn't write them down. This has got to be the number 1 reason. There is so much going on in our life that you can't possibly hope to remember everything. Writing down our goals starts the commitment process. It is hard to fool yourself if the evidence is right in front of you. The process of writing also forces you to think about what is really important to you, which may come as a surprise. Some of you may have read "The Secret", while I don't agree with the whole premise (see next point), I do believe that clarifying what you want will open you up to opportunities to progress a goal.
2. You didn't do anything. I know "The Secret" suggests that simply focussing on a goal will cause it to be realised, however in my experience things go a lot faster if you take action. For example, one of my goals this year was to release an iPhone App and sell it on iTunes. To do that I broke the goal down and planned what steps I needed to take to get there. I needed to buy a Mac, learn objective C, XCode, Cocoa Touch, sign up for the Apple Developer Program, write code, debug, unravel the mysteries of code deployment and then negotiate the labyrinth which is iTunes Connect. I'm pretty sure if I just wrote the goal down but did nothing I wouldn't now be getting monthly deposits from Apple. So I suggest you break your goal down into tasks and start doing the tasks. It's like the old joke about how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
3. You didn't give up something else. Each day, we all only have so much time (24 hours on Earth). So unless you are near a black hole or travelling at close to the speed of light then we all have the same amount of time each day. Your days are already full so in order to meet your new goals you need to allocate some time to take action (see point 2). Not only do you need to decide what you are going to do, you need to decide what you are going to stop doing. If you aren't willing to give up something (e.g. watching 8 hours of TV a day) then you will fail. A common mistake here is to try and go cold turkey. You don't have to give up all TV, whatever you are willing to do without is time you can spend on your goals. Remember these are your goals, no-one else should determine what is important to you and if the most important thing for you is to watch 8 hours of TV a day then write it down and take action. But if it isn't then allocate some time to what is. As Stephen Covey said, "The key is not to prioritise what's on your schedule but to schedule your priorities."
4. You weren't sufficiently motivated. Related to point 3, you have to be motivated enough to give up something you are already doing. The best motivators are Pain and Pleasure, in that order. So when you write down your goals you need to link them to these motivators and if possible to both of them. To exercise you might need to get up an hour earlier in the morning. Your motivation to get up needs to be stronger than your motivation to stay in a warm bed. This might be the endorphin rush you get after exercising (Pleasure), feeling better about yourself (Pleasure) or not dying early from being overweight (Pain). Habit is your friend - get yourself motivated enough to do this 21 days in a row and it will get easier.
5. You think it will take too long. I hear people say, "I would love to do blah but it will take 5 years." Guess how much older you are going to be in five years time? That's right 5 years. The time will pass anyway so why not spend it doing something that is important to you?

The best news is that all of the above is in our hands, so by all means set your New Year's Resolutions tonight, but make sure you also take the above into account.

Warning - shameless plug follows:

Goals have always been a subject that has fascinated me, which is why my first iPhone App was Life Goals. If you are interested in a goal setting tool which embodies the philosophies above then check it out on iTunes or read more about it the Reefwing Software web site.

Life Goals iPhone App cracks top 20

Life Goals reaches 13th spot on the Aussie Charts.

My iPhone App Life Goals reached 13th spot on Sunday. It is now starting to tail off but I'm pretty stoked that it got that high with no real marketing.

I have just started on v1.1 which will add in some of the features that users have requested. The proposed development pipeline is shown on my blog at www.reefwing.com.au.

Life Goals iPhone App cracks top 50

Life Goals Hits 44th Spot in iTunes Productivity Section

Life Goals the objective / goal setting App for iPhone moved up the charts to 44th spot in the Productivity section of the Australian store.

It has also cracked top 100 in the UK, Italian, Canadian and Danish charts.

I've mentioned PositionApp before but let me again say what a great App for Developers. It is addictive watching the progress of your App around the world. The charts seem to update about every 7-8 hours.

LifeGoals Demo Video Posted

LifeGoals

Version: 1.0

[Coming Soon to the iTunes App Store]

The LifeGoals demo video is available now at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvYyX8-rqz0

This was made using:

1. 1.The Xcode simulator;
   

2. 2.SimFinger (to generate the transparent “finger” dot, add fake apps and set the carrier text);
   

3. 3.iShowU HD to record the video; and
   

4. 4.iMovie to add the titles, credits, transitions and soundtrack (music was bought from Jamendo PRO).

   
   

   Read all about LifeGoals and how to design the life you want at www.reefwing.com.au

   
   

iPhone Application - Life Goals

iPhone Application - Life Goals

It looks like Apple has accepted me (or Kintarla Pty Ltd to be precise) as a new iPhone Developer - Hurrah!

As this is my first program written in Objective C and Cocoa Touch, I'm keeping things fairly simple. The plan is to release a goal setting application before the 1st Jan 2010.

I'm finding Objective C to be quite a bit different to C#. The way that methods are handled is doing my head in but after a week or so of concentrated effort it is starting to make sense.

The Icon in the title page screen shot is a west African symbol of life transformation called SESA WO SUBAN. It means to "change or transform your character." You can learn more about these symbols at http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/graphics.htm

To get everyone in a goal setting mood for New Years, I'm collecting relevant quotes. Here are a few to get you started ...

Goal Setting Quotes

"Success is 99% failure." - Soichiro Honda

"You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream." - C.S. Lewis