If you want a better life, you must find the time to sit down for a few hours and think!
I am no guru on the matter, but if you start doing these five actions each endings year, your life will improve tremendously; trust me!
I know it is another paper about setting goals for the new year to come. I know you have had enough of this stuff year after year, repeating the same things, but, this time, I will talk about my personal way of doing it, and believe it or not, it is working!
For many years now, I have used a spreadsheet created by an old mentor of mine.
I have to write down three to five goals in different aspects of my life I want to achieve in the coming year.
Family — Personal
Money
Intellect — Spirituality
Work
Health
I’ve been doing it for more than 20 years now, and I can tell you it is stunning to see all the road travelled since the beginning. It is a completion of my personal journal.
Let’s dive in, would you?
1st. Do a good recap of this past year
Here are some questions to ask to help you think about it:
What were my best improvements each month of this past year?
What am I the proudest about this past year?
What were my worst losses this past year?
What happened and why? For each one of the above.
For each aspect of my life, as listed below, these are the questions I try to answer before setting any new goals.
Knowing where you come from is important to see where you want to go!
2nd. Adjust your goals for the new year
“A dream written down with a date becomes a GOAL. A goal broken down into steps becomes a PLAN. A plan backed by ACTION makes your dreams come true.” — Greg Reid
Adjusting your goals is to define them as clearly as possible, considering all the facts surrounding us.
For example, if you want to buy a new house in the next few months, great goal, but with the inflation and the interest rates getting up every three months, it might be a good thing to dig a bit longer to seek for all the possibilities to maximize your investment.
By that, considering moving out of the city, the price might be more affordable and sometimes, for a bigger place to live.
You must consider all the things that could interfere with your goals.
3rd. Set-up new targets
Many of us try to set new goals every year, but most fail to reach them. Why? The answer is simple: we set goals without targets.
Here is how I see it.
If you are an archer, your goal is to place your arrow as close as possible to the bulls-eye of your target, so you have to focus on the middle of the mark, but what we do not take into consideration is all you have to set-up before even make your shot.
That is what I’ve learned within the past twenty years.
In the beginning, I only focused on the big plan, and undoubtedly, many of my goals were never reached as I expected.
I’ve learned to focus more on what I have to do to get to my “bulls-eye” before even shooting an arrow, and I found something entirely unexpected; today, I don’t even look at my big goals.
I focus more on the making of than the big picture, and guess what? I reach more bulls-eyes than ever before.
By focussing on each and every part of the making of my big goal, every step is a new target, and it is also more encouraging and motivating to see how far you came to reach the end of the journey. It is a little bulls-eye every time.
4th. Draw a strategic planning
I refer you to this article because it explains quite clearly how you can use “to-do and to-be lists” when detailing what needs to be done to reach your goals.
You have to dissect your goals, and “To-dos” will help you take action in a step-by-step plan.
5th. Share with someone who can challenge you
Anyone who isn’t embarrassed by who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough! Alain de Botton