Every sports team has an offensive and defensive strategy they use to win. The offense gives the team options to score more points. The defense creates strategies to keep the other team from scoring.

As we work on your Peace Plan, we need to think about both offense and defense. Offense means you are intentionally working on initiatives to increase your Peace levels. Defense for you personally means creating the boundaries and systems you need to protect you, your spouse, or your family from any drama or negativity.

The final Peace Plan at the end of this chapter will help you tremendously by creating an action plan with a minimum of two or three significant changes to create higher levels of Peace and one or two minor areas for Purpose, People, Place, Personal Health, or Provision.

Getting to Your Number

At the beginning of the book, you calculated your Peace Index by giving yourself a 1 to 100% (100% being the highest) for how well you felt about each category (Purpose, People, Place, Personal Health, and Provision). You then added them up and divided them by five to reveal your Peace Index number.

After going through each chapter and working on some ways to improve, I want you to retake the test. Go back through the Peace Index in this graphic, give yourself a % number (1 to 100%, with 100% being the highest) for each category. Aggregate all the numbers and divide by five to get your updated Peace Index number.

Source Credit: Frog Orr‐Ewing, Dr. Joe Hill© Pub House

Did your Peace Index change? Did it go up or down?

Your Driver

All categories in the Peace Index are not equal. Some are more important to you than others. One of them tends to be the key driver for you, which means that category affects everything in your life. If it is off, then every number could be affected by it negatively, and conversely, if it is positive.

Which of the five categories in the Peace Index is your driver—the most essential segment that affects you more than the others?

Purpose and People tend to be drivers for most people when I survey them during my presentations.

Purpose is my driver. If my Purpose % is high, I can put up with less than exciting things. My energy tends to be high, and I am considerably easier to live with (says my wife). However, if my Purpose is off, everything will be off.

Our last year in Atlanta was excruciating. I had lost my Purpose, and I could feel it. Almost eight years earlier, my Purpose was at an all‐time high. We had just bought John Maxwell's businesses, and there I was building the Leadercast brand and growing the Catalyst conferences. We had a group of highly motivated People doing exceptional work as we were completing a turnaround. The Place was great, as we were close to mountains and the beach and we really enjoyed our house, especially the backyard. Personal Health was fine, and Provision was good even though our costs were higher in Atlanta.

All in all, my Purpose was at 92% my first year in Atlanta. Seven‐and‐a half years later, I was at 60%. Every year I began to lose more and more of my Purpose. I had let the business define me. Any loss was personal, and my stress crept up higher and higher even as we had success after success. I lost my Purpose as I became a manager rather than a creative visionary.

When my Purpose began to slide, my Peace Index dropped. I began to notice and complained about the traffic even more. It was more humid suddenly. Again, I didn't see it when my Purpose was high. The People were all fantastic but tied to the work I was starting to despise. I was losing my Purpose. My Personal Health was sliding measurably into a stress land mine. Even though the Provision was acceptable, it didn't matter as everything else was moving down.

What did I do about it? I fired myself. Truly.

I communicated to my board that it was time to find a replacement, and we hired an executive to replace me. My wife and I made a significant life change as we moved our family to London. I took three months to rest and recharge before starting our next GiANT company, GiANT Worldwide.

My Peace Index shot up immediately. My Purpose went from 60% to 93% by the end of that summer. The People were all working on the things that I was the most passionate about, Liberating People, which was high. We moved into an old manor house built in 1583 next to the River Thames on the edge of London, which made our Place majestic. My Personal Health climbed back without the amount of stress I had been experiencing for so long. The only issue was the Provision, which meant that I was paying for an expensive lifestyle and betting everything on the brand of GiANT for the future.

Steve Cockram played coach to me, and I coached him as we collectively began to build GiANT into a global business from a much healthier Peace Index. I think I climbed from 60% to an overall 93.5% that summer.

In the same way that every person has a number, they also have a driver. It is vital to understand the driver of those you live and work with, so you can help them improve their Peace Index as well.

Work on Your Lowest %

One of the Peace Index's benefits is that it tells you what area you need to focus on to improve.

If Purpose is the lowest, what can you do to reinvigorate your identity or meaning in your life and/or work?

If People are the lowest, what can you control in those key relationships to restore communication, relational trust, and alignment?

If Place is the lowest, can you move or change your home situation, living area, or office?

What can you do if Personal Health is the lowest to create a better regimen for your mind, body, and spirit?

If Provision is down, what can you control without scurrying out of fear?

I like how a client, Sophie Preston, put it: “If you're not serving the lowest indicator, it'll likely be draining the other indicators. Outflow determines inflow; take action in that area to reap the rewards.”

To act, I suggest you improve your lowest area by working on making lists. Here is how to do that well.

1. List the area (Purpose, People, Place, Personal Health, or Provision) that is the lowest % and needs the most improvement.
2. Make a list of everything that is going right in that category.
3. Now make a list of everything that isn't going well in that category.
4. What is missing or needs to be improved upon specifically?
5. Now make a list of what is confusing. What doesn't make sense?

After you brainstorm each list, you will have the information to improve the area. You will know how to boost what is going right in that category; fix what is not going well; add what is missing; and clarify what is confused.

Getting Results

Our business, GiANT, resources coaches and consultants worldwide to get results by unlocking people's potential and building better team leaders. We use over 70 tools like the Peace Index to do that. Here is one account from one of our team members, Chris Ediger, who is working inside a global company:

“I had a client who was working in an authoritarian culture at her company here in Atlanta. She was near the end of her rope when we introduced the Peace Index to the group. After the group coaching call, she sent me a spreadsheet she had created outlining her Peace Index in detail (listing out the current Peace Index scores for every significant person in her world at the time, etc.). When she compiled her scores, she was at a 48% on her overall Peace Index. Fast‐forward six months and her Peace Index jumped to a 72%! From a 48% to a 72% in six months!

“The fantastic thing is that her situation had primarily remained the same from the first time she did the inventory. She was still in the same position at the same company facing challenges. She was still dealing with the same people who brought difficulty into her life. The difference was her mindset. Because she knew herself in the areas/people/things that were negatively affecting her Peace, she led herself in a way to not be impacted by them as much. Conversely, she was intentional in how and where she spent time and energy with the things bringing her Peace.”

What Happens If You Can't Make Any Changes?

What could you control if you were working in healthcare during the pandemic? Not much. Your Purpose % could have quickly dropped while your People and Place scores had to be affected, too. All of these could have led to your Personal Health woes; all the while, any Provision increase most likely didn't make up for the loss of the other % numbers.

Several stories from numerous GiANT coaches working with healthcare clients stated that the overall Peace Index % numbers were in the low 40% range. That is dangerous. Unfortunately, reports of deep depression or worse have been rampant in the health profession as people were working to cope with the difficulties of a drop in their Purpose, People, Place, Personal Health, and Provision %.

One of the strengths of humans is adaptability and tenacity during challenging moments. We have heard dozens of stories of people beginning to build back even stronger amidst the dramatic period.

We can't control pandemics, wars, death, or personal disease, but we can control our insides (our minds and emotions). Internal Peace can exist when external chaos reigns.

In 2007, my wife and I were in an almost tragic accident as our taxi was hit by a drunk driver late at night in Cancun, Mexico, while we were in a hurricane. Talk about no control! We weren't driving but were in a taxi—in Mexico. And we were in the middle of a category 3 hurricane. My body was squashed as nine ribs snapped, my sternum expanded several inches in front of me, my intestines were severed, and I couldn't move my legs.

I had no control. And yet I was at Peace. We had just finished watching Mel Gibson in the movie Signs, giving up his faith because he lost his wife to a driving accident. As we jumped into the taxi en route to our hotel, I began to talk to myself and God with this prayer: “If anything happens to Kelly or our kids, I will trust you. I don't want to be like Mel Gibson. Oh, and if anything happens to me, I will trust you.”

It was seconds later when my wife screamed to watch out as another taxi took us out as if it were a cruise missile. There was no external Peace as I shouted a death scream and was trapped in pain in that tiny Fiat, a sardine can–like taxi. However, I was internally at Peace because I had just had the conversation with myself and God. The movie prepped me for that prayer. I had no idea I would go on and see my life flash before my eyes as I saw the answer to my prayer, “Was I your man, God? Was I a good husband? Was I a good dad?”

The ending of life was happening just like people say it does. It was like a slide presentation of pictures and moments of my life that answered these questions. And it was happening in the chaos of high winds, sideways rain, and ambulance sirens. My inside, however, was calm as the eye of the hurricane. My wife looked at me with tears and confirmed my prayer without ever hearing me state it. She said, “I want you to know that you were God's man, a great husband, and an amazing dad.” My Peace was complete. I closed my eyes and was gone.

I am still here. That story is in my first book, Leadership Is Dead. It simply points out that we can control certain things while being affected by others. Peace is an inside game, and the better we manage it, the better our lives turn out.

Peace can be found while everything crazy is around you.

Your Peace Plan

It is time for you to game plan your Peace. What will you do to improve or increase each area in the Peace Index? I would like you to review your notes in each chapter and highlight two to four items you would like to change or work on to improve your % per category:

Purpose:

• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________

People:

• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________

Place:

• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________

Personal Health:

• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________

Provision:

• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________
• ____________________________________________________

Now, take the top three or four overarching items that you will prioritize based on your findings. Examples might be,

• “To increase my Peace Index, we will consider putting our house on the market to move closer to our kid's school for a better quality of life.”
• “To increase my Peace of mind, I will add a more consistent morning workout routine to help me feel better and improve my Personal Health.”
• “To improve our Provision %, I will review if I should take on the side hustle or not.”

The Peace Index is a snapshot of a moment in your life. I want to encourage you to use the tool to set a baseline for your current reality and help you clarify your path to move toward 100%.

Year of Peace

Conquering the chaos can only occur when you trade up and build offensive systems to counter unrest. For me, it takes more than a book to make that happen. I need to start living differently, which can only occur when we begin to think differently.

If increasing your Peace is something you want to implement, consider a whole year of Peace. Imagine—365 days of restorative Peace! Here is how that can work in practical steps.

1. Finish this book and begin to implement the Peace Plan for you.
2. Share the details of your Peace Plan with someone close to you who is fighting for your highest possible good.
3. Choose a date on the calendar to start The Peace Index course.
4. Start The Peace Index course at www.thepeaceindexbook.com to give you 60 to 90 days to establish healthy habits around Purpose, People, Place, Personal Health, and Provision. This course is interactive and will allow you to track your Peace Index and a game plan your personal growth while you conquer the chaos in your life.
5. Potentially start a Peace Index group to hold yourself accountable during the process.

Let's stop the sabotage, conquer the chaos, and win the war of well‐being as we seek Peace with ourselves.

The next chapter will show you how I have kept the Peace through a daily system. This process has changed the way that I live my life. It gives me what I need to conquer the chaos in my life.