Is creating your best year ever something that regular people can achieve? Yes!
It means actively pursuing your goals. Not goals your family wants. And not the goals your boss or co-workers want.
It is making a plan and actively doing things that move you closer to your goals.
And your best year ever.
This post was originally published December 28th, 2017 and has been updated to be current with new information. This post may contain affiliate links. If you click a link and make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. Full disclosure is here.
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How To Start Designing Your Best Year
My friends and family are starting to post that they are expecting big changes in the coming year. It’s time to decide if our current way of doing things is working for us.
Or whether it is time for a change of plan.
I know that the craziness of Covid-19 threw a wrench into everyone’s plans.
People understand that big changes in how we do business and where our food comes have arrived, and lot’s of people aren’t ready.
Not to mention the changes in how we work and earn a living.
Lot’s people moved home to work…and they liked it.
For anyone who can see the writing on the wall, now is the time to plan for future success.
And the best year ever.
Change scares people and that is too bad.
The best parts of life happen when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone.
I know how that feels.
Even before we were called to the meeting where they told they were “exploring cost-saving options”, I could feel the need for change in my life.
A change that would ripple through my whole life and not just my career.
A change that will help me to feel joy daily and positive about the future.
I was not sure how to achieve what I wanted. All I knew for sure was that whatever I had been doing was not giving me the results that I wanted.
If you are feeling the need for a change in your how you feel about your future, but are not sure how to get started, check below and see if any of the following resonates with you.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results
Related Post: Steps to Success
Have Your Best Year Ever
If you want success, you must plan it out. It takes time to put systems in place that will help you get where you want to go.
If you have never set goals or otherwise planned how you want your future to be, it can be daunting. I think most people get baffled by which changes to make first.
1. Just starting is huge.
What you need to know right away is that most people are in the same boat. I have talked to so many people who think that they were totally unprepared for life after high school.
No one learned budgeting, or how to write a great resume, or what to do if you don’t know what you want to do with your life.
Most of us are a bit lost in this world
Yes, a blanket statement, but legitimate none the less.
Many people I know were raised by people who were also feeling a bit unfulfilled about their lives.
And it is likely that our caregivers were also raised by people who felt a bit lost.
This is no one’s fault, it is just a by-product of the progress of the world.
As people moved away from large family homes on farms and homesteads, and into living on their own in larger urban centers, they became fragmented from their support groups.
They started making big decisions without help, and as a result, taught themselves how to live without their intuition.
As well, we did not learn how to cope with failure when we tried new things.
Making decisions became more about “feelings” and less about facts and who we are as individuals and our own personal strengths and weaknesses.
Each of us has our own specific characteristics and capabilities.
Our intuition directs us to use our skills for out own best interests.
Moving to urban centers put us in the position of having to take work in places that were not right for us, even though they offered benefits and steady pay.
Suddenly life was about a “career” and less about your own personal skill set and how it can benefit the world.
Takeaway #1:
To find ourselves we need to tap in to who we really are.
Not the person we formed ourselves into to fit in with the world in middle-school, high school, college and work, but who we were born to be.
This takes a bit of detective work, but as you move through the process, which FYI is never-ending, you will have more hope.
Try this: Consider that everyone must contribute to the world in some helpful way. You can either volunteer or create a business that helps the world and its people.
How do you want to contribute?
New businesses are being created daily, as people figure out how they can help. An example is the people who collect plastic trash from the ocean and turn it into bracelets that they sell to fund more cleanup.
Lot’s of people just start out helping and that leads them into earning a living while helping.
“Find a job you love and the money will follow”.
I never understood how to make that happen until I fell into blogging.
- I instantly knew that even if I never made a dime, blogging would make me feel good.
- It feeds a need I have to write.
- And it gives me peace of mind that I am helping in some small way.
Blogging is my way of helping, because I am sharing what I know with people who are just starting out with blogs.
When you find your niche in life, nothing is a more satisfying way to earn income.
2. We lost our cheerleaders so we have to cheer ourselves on
An important part of anyone’s life is having supportive people to cheer us on, or help us learn from defeat.
These days, defeat seems to equate to FAILURE, which in turn leads to less self-esteem.
Self-esteem is what we think about ourselves, not what others think of us.
However, without the support of people who care about us, we rely more on what random others think of us and this pushes us to fit in with this “norm”.
This does not serve us or the world.
If we are so wrapped up in what the world thinks of us, we are not focusing on what we can give the world.
We fall lock-step into line in jobs and careers that eventually make us unhappy, and we are not doing what we are meant to do.
Our lives are now based solely on survival and keeping up.
Takeaway #2:
To improve our self-esteem we must learn to love ourselves and any perceived faults (height, weight, finances, mistakes or blunders).
This also includes keeping track of our successes.
Start by writing out all of your “big wins”, like winning that fifth grade spelling bee.
Then write out your latest “small wins”, like that you got your bedroom closet organized or you got all the leaves in the backyard raked up.
Make a note to regularly write down your wins, big or small. Be your own cheering section.
From this self-love and self-care we will discover what really gets us excited about life and then we can start to look at what needs to change so that we can achieve our dreams.
Note: This can take some time to sort out. Understand that finding your success is a road map that you create from feedback.
- Every time something works or doesn’t work, you learn.
- You may learn what you like or don’t like (make note of what you like). Keep a list.
- When you discover things you don’t like, ask yourself what the opposite is and note that as a potential ‘like’. Add to your list of likes.
As you learn more about what you like and don’t like, it will make moving forward easier. Look for patterns.
Thomas Edison made thousands of unsuccessful attempts at the light bulb before successfully inventing it.
When asked about his thousand failures, Edison said that they were not failures, but 1000 steps to success! What a great way of thinking!
One thing I noticed years ago was my addiction to buying school supplies every summer. I can’t help it. I am compelled to at least pick up another pack of sticky notes.
Or more bulldog clips. And don’t get me started on my “How to write” collection of books.
Blogging is a Godsend to me, because it checks the boxes for what I really need to do in my life. My way of helping.
3. We do not understand how unique and wonderful we really are.
In this world, we are forced into little boxes that define who we are.
- Beautiful vs non-beautiful.
- Talented vs non-talented.
- Rich vs poor.
And every time we discover that we are different from the crowd, instead of cheering this and working with it, we try to change it and ourselves to “fit in”.
Trying to fit in is not good for anyone.
A quick read of the most successful people will show you that not only did they consistently believe in themselves and their dreams, but they also did not give up.
Or conform to someone else’s dreams.
Henry Ford failed so many times before he was successful with the automobile and successful with mass producing it for the public.
If he quit because no one else believed in his vision, would we have the world that we have today?
Henry Ford created a way to give his creation to as many people as possible thanks to creating an assembly line!
What Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had in common was a determination to bring their dreams into the real world.
They did not care about the many times they were not successful, because these so-called “failures” gave them valuable feedback about what didn’t work. They used that information to try again with something new.
Takeaway #3:
This is a big one. We must learn how to forgive ourselves, our past mistakes, and judgments and move forward.
It is a valuable skill to see mistakes as a learning opportunity and not a reason to believe we are failures.
Mental blocks are statements that are hard-wired into our thinking. These negative thoughts like “money doesn’t grow on trees” or “success is hard” cause us to give up too soon.
Or believe that we are incapable of succeeding. And they are not true unless you believe that they are. Using positive affirmations is one way to change them.
You can also get positive thinking subliminal mp3’s that do the work for you as you sleep.
You can also try EFT (tapping), journaling, meditating or other self-help options. It’s what they are there for.
Try any way that resonates with you do clear mental blocks that hold you back.
4. We took advice from people who did not have to live with the consequences.
So many of us who are “lost”, are lost because we took wrong advice from people that we trusted.
It is not that they are sinister in their advice-giving.
It is more about us not knowing ourselves well enough to say “Thank you, I will consider that” and then doing what we think is right for ourselves.
This is especially true of us when we were young and impressionable.
Sometimes people say nasty things because of where they are in their lives. They are unhappy, so the spread that unhappiness to us. Whatever the reason, we held that hurt inside.
Later, if someone else says something sort-of, kind-of similar we piece together that we are unworthy in some way.
This thought process undermines the positive feelings that we have about ourselves. We form the idea that we must adapt or constantly change ourselves into someone that we are not or we will be failures.
And we get caught in a loop that what other people think about us is more true than what we know about ourselves.
However, we cannot do what is right for us if we do not understand who we are deep down inside.
Takeaway #4:
We must learn to trust our own judgment and intuition, and who we really are inside so that we can take what works for us and reject what does not work.
Regardless of who gives the advice. The sooner we start to trust ourselves, the quicker we get on the path to success.
Related Post: Being The Person That You Want To Be
Conclusion
Brad Yates, from Tap With Brad, puts it: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got”.
If we want different results we must change what we are doing. Luckily you only need small changes to move in the direction you want to go.
Use the feedback that you get to propel yourself into a new, more personal future.
In the next post in this series, I will list some of the self-help processes that I have used to implement change in my own life and move me toward the life that I want.
You will find this same advice in various forms on many websites, but I am just putting together what I found that worked and more importantly, why it works. See you in part two!!
Are you ready to start your blog and/or side hustle? Now is the time to create your own future and future income. Please sign up for my weekly newsletter of tips and free stuff for bloggers, like my passive income checklists. See if a blogging “side hustle” is right for you!
Happy blogging and follow me on Pinterest!
-Irma 🙂
