Sample Vison Board from Blastation

This week I took this cutting edge new sofware programme (developed by Allison Maslan) for a spin. After reading this review (I give you screen shots of the programme and describe the features pretty fully), take Blastation for a test drive yourself on a FREE 30-day trial http://ow.ly/KMx.

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About a year ago, I attended a course with Patrick Ryan called “Awakened Wisdom”. On that course, I set many goals for myself to achieve over the next 2 years and beyond. Now, I know that I am absolutely USELESS when it comes to keeping paper documents, so I wanted to make some sort of computer-based tracking system for myself to create my 2-year targets and then break them down into smaller chunks (monthly, weekly, daily). I used an Excel spreadsheet and put all kinds of pretty colours on it. I used a different colour for each time frame: one for “Life Dream” and one for the year, month, week and day. I called it my “15-minute focus” because I didn’t want to spend gobs of time on it every day, or I wouldn’t get any work done. Instead, I wanted to use it as a way to focus my vision on the bigger picture every day, and keep my perspective on how my daily activities were working towards that goal. Here’s a screen shot of what it looked like almost exactly 1 year ago (hahah… notice that my “Life Dream” last Christmas was that my book The Garden of the Soul sold 30 million copies… I’m still working on that one!):

Well, I have to say, it did work pretty well and kept me on target for a while. If I look back at it now, most of the things I had set out to do were all pretty much achieved, and most of those things that weren’t achieved were replaced with stuff that was even better. I found this method so useful that I even shared it with several of my coaching clients, who liked it very much.

But after a couple of months, it started to get a bit of clumsy and I tended not to use it as much as I did when I first made it. There were too many words, too much scrolling up and down, no real way to “see” visually what I had achieved. I found it took me a lot longer than 15 minutes a day, because of the way it was laid out, and it didn’t really replace my need to use a daily diary quite separately from this (which I developed on yet another spreadsheet). Sometimes I found myself forgetting where I had written things down because I needed so many different places to write them!

But lo’ and behold, only a few months ago, a woman named Allison Maslan came into my life, asking me to coach her around creating a marketing campaign for her upcoming book Blast Off!. Well, of course I was really pleased to meet such a wonderful new client, and get to work on such a fun book campaign, but the bonus surprise for me was when she showed me Blastation – an online software programme she had designed for exactly the same purpose as my 15-Minute Focus spreadsheet…

But seeing them side-by-side was like comparing an old 78 rpm gramophone to a digital surround-sound system. Blastation was everything I had wanted my spreadsheet to be, but it did it all faster, prettier and more visually. It overcame every single one of the drawbacks of my home-made goals-setting spreadsheet had. Heck, it even used a similar colour scheme as I had chosen for my 15-Minute Focus, only a lot bolder and more eye-catching. I had to laugh when I saw that. It was just too perfect.

Blastation gives you 6 major areas of life in which to set goals: career, relationships, wealth, spiritual life, health and personal fulfilment (which includes FUN!).

For each of these areas, you set your “Big Picture Vision”, your “mile steps” and then your “mini-feats.” That’s very similar to the way I had my system laid out, only more streamlined. Then, it also gives you a “sunup script” which sort of reminds me of the “morning pages” Julia Cameron uses in The Artist’s Way (which I use with a lot of my clients). It also has “rocket words” which are basically your self-pep talk (or affirmations) for the day. It allows you to upload pictures, so it’s not all words, words, words.

AND do you know what? It even has a calendar that you can integrate with Outlook. I couldn’t believe it when I saw this.

But the thing I really, really liked was the “Life-o-Meter”. It’s like a petrol gauge that shows you how much you are living up to your goals. Every time you achieve a goal on time it sends you up the gauge towards 100%. Pretty cool, yes?

It also comes with excellent tutorials and guidance on how to use it effectively. Frankly, I’m going to recommend Blastation to my clients because it really is a great way to set goals, and stay motivated as you move towards them. And for coaches, it’s a great way for you to monitor your clients’ progress.

I rarely (if ever) talk about online coaching products, but this particular one just felt so fun and so USEFUL, I really wanted to review it and let people take it for a spin. Allison offers a 30-day free trial of the software, so you can see for yourself whether you think it could help you move closer to your life dreams.

And I do think a few months’ subscription would also make a really unique Christmas gift. Check out Blastation HERE.

My rating?  5-stars for:

• usefulness
• easy-of-use
• aesthetic appearance
• originality
• and FUN!

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