How To Take Control Of The New Year!!
Intro
I don’t know about you, but every year, I get really pumped to hit the reset button. The year is done and gone.
All of my mistakes are in the past.
The lessons learned from them are learned.
It’s time to put it behind and move forward. It’s truly the perfect opportunity to change your trajectory!
However, I have come to realize that the hardest part for many is the question of, “How?”
Well, in any situation, the key to growth and progress is intentionality. You cannot simply hope to make this next year the best one yet and wait to see what happens. You have to make it happen!
The best first step is to get organized mentally. Grab a notepad and pen, and let’s do this RIGHT NOW!!!
Step 1: Let's Get Focused
Building a plan for your year is very simple, but it can take some serious time and thought to get it right. You may think this is boring or pointless. You are welcome to remain in the habit of being unintentional, but if you’re ready to make a change and live the best life you can, I suggest you start here.
This plan will come from many different things that I have learned over the years and put into practice in my own life. I encourage you to take what you learn here, mix it with knowledge gained from other content and your own personal experience, apply it all, and see what works best for you!
For me, I have mentally divided my life into 8 pillars of personal growth (in no particular order):
Intellectual
Rest/Leisure
You may have more - that’s totally fine. I would not cut out any of these 8, and I would not add so many that it becomes burdensome. It’s your life, though; do as you see fit. If you want some help better understanding these different pillars, feel free to email me at [email protected]!
You may have seen these pillars in my 4 Steps To Help You Improve Your Time Management blog. After writing out your plan for this year, I highly recommend reading this blog to help you make the most of your time in order to accomplish your goals!
Now, I want you to determine the top 3 pillars you want to focus on in this next year. This does not mean the others will be ignored or are less important. It means that you have identified where you are in life right now and want to prioritize your time and effort to focus on these 3 areas.
Moving on, we need to discuss a topic that is foundational for building your plan. This is the concept of vision.
Step 2: The Vision
Many of you may already have a firm understanding of vision, but I found out that I was way off myself when I took a leadership seminar at 19.
See, I thought my vision was what I wanted to do with my life. I learned, however, that vision is being able to mentally visualize where you want to be in life. This vision gives you direction, and that direction helps you to come up with steps to get there. These steps can be considered your mission.
For example, if I have a vision for my life that I will be married with 4 children, my mission would be to find a life partner and get busy.
If I have a vision for my life that I will one day be feeding millions of starving children, my mission would be to begin collecting donations from partners and using them to purchase food.
These are silly/simple examples, but I hope you get the point.
There is so much more that goes into this concept, and if you don’t feel fully confident of your understanding of it, I suggest you continue digging into it! Have questions? Email me!
Now, the big question here is, what is your vision for your life? Do you have one? Have you ever really thought about it before?
As explained above, without vision, it is impossible for us to have direction. Without direction, we cannot take steps towards anything.
In fact, we will just coast. We will float through life, going through the motions, and lacking any sense of purpose. Sad thought, isn’t it?
I have come to find through coaching many people over the years that a large amount of us don’t have a vision for our life. A major contributing factor is due to a lack of our original concept of intentionality.
Many people simply don’t take the time to stop and think about it. To reflect on who they are, what they believe, and what they want to accomplish in their life. I know this is not you since you are reading this blog, but many people around you will continue living their life this way if nobody wakes them up.
The best way to do this is to live by example. Now, I don’t want you to get overly hung up on your vision. I’ll be honest, it took me years to discover my vision, and it is still continuously evolving as I go.
If the vision for your life is still unclear, try to narrow your focus slightly. What is the vision for your life by the end of the year that we are preparing to build a plan for? Where do you want to see yourself?
To help you, mentally divide your life into my 8 pillars. Start with one - let’s say, financial. Where do you want to be financially by the end of the year? Is saving money your focus? Paying off debts? Investing? Where do you want to see yourself? Write it out in paragraph form. Describe what your life will look like because of this change. Spend some time being thorough. Be realistic, but be sure to dream big!
Do this for all of the top 3 pillars you determined were you priority for this next year in Step 1.
Once you can envision your new life and the new you living it, some steps should begin forming in your mind that would need to be taken in order to make this vision a reality.
This is your direction taking form. Another word for these steps are goals.
Step 3: Plan Out Your Goals
In each of your 3 pillars, I want you to write out 2-3 goals that, if accomplished, would allow your vision to be a reality.
For example, staying in line with our financial pillar, if my vision for this pillar of my life by the end of the upcoming year was to have a strong savings account for stability and security, I could set a goal to create and stick to a budget all year long. I could set a goal to pay off all high interest debts, such as credit cards, whose payments are draining my income each month so that I have more to set aside. I could set a number for how much I want to build my savings account to. I hope this is clear.
Need help brainstorming goals? I mean it, email me!
Once you have 2-3 goals in each of the 3 pillars that will help you to make your vision for your life a reality, we need to break down these goals in smaller bite-size goals, which I call habits.
Step 4: Identify Habits
Begin brainstorming what habits will be necessary in order to accomplish your goals.
Do I want to create a budget and stick to it all year long? A habit I could begin forming is spending 5 minutes each day making sure my budget is up-to-date.
Do I want to pay off all of my high interest debts, such as credit cards? A habit I could begin forming is using a debit card for all transactions until the credit balances are paid off.
Do I want to save a certain number of dollars by the end of the year? A habit I could begin forming is cooking for myself every day to save money on eating out (hey, this could help with your goals in the physical pillar too! 😉).
I want you to write out 1-2 habits per goal to begin working on. These habits should be simple, relatively quick, and put on a frequency (like our example of spending 5 minutes each day updating your budget). Why simple and quick? We want to stick to it! And if our habits are making us feel like we don't have enough time in the day or that it's too complicated, well, we're going to give it up. We've all been there.
Conclusion
At the end of this exercise, you should have solid number of goals for the new year, and you should have a pretty extensive list of new habits to work on.
Feeling overwhelmed yet? Good! Growth doesn’t only take intentionality; it also takes a lot of hard work!
That feeling of being overwhelmed means you are stretching yourself. It means you are pushing outside of your comfort zone. This is where you want to be! Don’t hide from it! Lean into it!
When it comes to handling all of these habits, there are two major factors that will get you through: time management and accountability.
If you need help managing your time better, please read my 4 Steps To Help You Improve Your Time Management blog! In all seriousness, the likelihood of you successfully executing on all of these new habits is low, so in this blog, I talk about how to prioritize and focus your time accordingly.
When it comes to accountability, you need to surround yourself with like-minded, motivated individuals who are also hungry for growth.
Truth is, most of our peers are just not ready for that kind of life change, but we also cannot hold ourselves back for them.
As the owner and head coach of Metanoia, my vision for this business is to lead and mentor a community of these like-minded, motivated individuals - like yourself.
While we are currently focusing on tackling the financial pillar of life through the power of financial control, we also discuss concepts, inner principles, and habits for growth in every aspect of life.
Once in our community, accountability is paramount. I will continue following up with you. I will continue supporting you. I will continue challenging you and pushing you to become the best version of yourself that you can be.
Have any more questions on the topic? You guessed it, shoot me an email - [email protected]!
Did you enjoy the blog? Let us know! Share it with a friend! Spread the word! Now go and kill this new year!!!
If you are ready to finally take control of your money and begin maximizing your cash flow, I invite you to book a 1:1 Strategy Call with me. Here's what we'll cover:
1. Your current situation and goals
2. I will dig in to identify specific problems that I believe are holding you back from those goals based on my years of coaching and dozens of unique situations that I've worked with
3. Provide key strategies or mindset shifts that you can begin applying right away to see progress
4. If I feel like you'd be a good fit for our coaching program and, of course, you'd like to hear more about how we can help, we can discuss it then as well.
At the end of the day, I'd love to be able to help you make this change in your life. If my coaching is not a good fit, no problem. This FREE 1:1 call will be a powerful game-changer for you to get your journey started!
