7 Actions Guaranteed to Make 2018 Your Best Year Yet.
Goal setting is an interesting thing. We tend to have some accomplishments that come with relative ease and the others that have been sitting on our New Years Resolutions list for years.
So, what makes up that gap in wanting to achieve the things we want most out of our lives and ACTUALLY getting there?
In one word: Mindset. Success doesn’t come in a day. It’s planted like small seeds along your path until one day you wake up to find that you’ve made it. Failure takes the same steps. It’s you who decides if those seeds are creating your success or determining your failure. As the old adage goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”
Here are seven of the most useful tips I recommend in reaching your goals this year and creating a path to success to the person you want to be.
#1 Take ownership. The most common and important thing to consider when creating permanent change is how willing you are to be responsible for the world around you, including yourself.
We easily get caught up in thinking that the things that go on in our lives are caused by outside factors, that we cannot change the world, and that bad things just happen sometimes. It makes life simple.
While it can seem more difficult to take ownership, refusing to do so can guarantee a life of feeling defeated. Yes, things can happen that we didn’t cause, plan for, or have little control over. However, when we pass these things off as someone else’s responsibility or outside of our control, we immediately put up a white flag and become a victim.
Understand that you have the power to make any situation yours and control the ultimate outcome or at the very least the way you react to the way it turns out.
#2 Question the things that make you less than ecstatic. The job you have? The friendship you are maintaining? The lifestyle that makes you miserable? We tend to feel the need to continue dedicating time and energy to these things because the struggle makes you stronger and somehow putting up with them/it makes you noble.
However, the impact of a negative atmosphere, comment, or overall energy can easily knock you off track when it comes to fulfilling your goals.
Consider the last time you were ecstatic about something — an idea, plan, movie, event, etc. and you decided to share your excitement with a close friend or family member.
If their response was less than equally ecstatic, how did that affect you and your view of that topic? It probably brought your excitement down a notch, something most people call bringing you “back down to earth”.
But what if you were talking about YOUR dream and just a small comment tore you down? Or the slums of where you work made you feel like you could never achieve something bigger?
The truth is, no one can visualize your dream exactly the way you do and surrounding yourself with anything other than positivity and encouragement can keep you in the rut that you’ve been in your entire life unless you are highly conscious of it or avoid it all together. Not only does this hinder you, it restricts how much you are able to help others.
#3 Spend more time thinking about what you do want and less time thinking about what you don’t have.
This one is simple in theory. Where your mind spends the most time is where your life will end up.
Are you thinking more about the money you don’t currently have in order to pay your bills or how you are thinking more about your abilities to bring in financial security? It’s a thin line between the two thought processes, but the difference will create a completely different, more hopeful, positive mindset.
The same applies to relationships, living situations, careers, and accomplishments. We often focus so much on what we don’t have that we fail to realize the potential of where we could be.
#4 Take action. Stop acting like you can do it tomorrow. As a teenage procrastinator, one of the most effective habits that I have incorporated in my own life is acting on ideas immediately.
I find that, personally, my enthusiasm for great ideas has a short lifespan, especially if I spend time overanalyzing or sharing them with others (see #2 above).
Sometimes, that means waking up at 3am and writing a blog or keeping a running detailed log of ideas. In addition, I also created a rule where if a task takes less than 3 minutes, I act on it without hesitation. Not only has this made me a much more effective person, I find that my goals are always more attainable when I am actively pursuing even the tiniest of tasks.
#5 Find a mentor(s). This is a tricky one.
It is so important to find someone who is living the life, creating the career, or succeeding at the level where you want to be and learn their tricks of the trade. It doesn’t matter if it’s someone you know personally, someone you follow online, or a person of the past. Study them. Learn all that you can.
However, the most important thing that graduate school taught me (if anything) is to hack 99% of your dream and then using your amazing individuality and creativity to create the last 1%. The trick is to not start losing your own path in the process of visualizing or studying your mentor.
It is incredibly easy to admire someone to the point that you start to become more of them and less of you. Keep your own vision and find the ability to look at your mentor as an equal. Have a firm idea of who you are, what you want, and what fits inside your vision.
#6 Network. I grew up as a pretty introverted, yet friendly kid. Fortunately for me, I was raised in a smaller town surrounded by a bigger city and stayed in the same area for almost two decades. I came to know people in my area and if I needed something -anything — I knew that help was only a phone call away. As they say, it was easy to be a big fish in a small(ish) pond.
As I grew older, this came to mean knowing many people in businesses and services — and even more so, as I started my first business, I found that I knew people in all walks of life career wise — marketing, web design, entrepreneurship, and so on. These were all just people that at one time I knew and became friends or at least took the time to have coffee or share some conversation throughout the years.
Seems easy enough, but when I first moved to another city, I lost all of my local contacts and had to relearn how to make friends, not to mention a professional impact on the city around me. I started taking every chance to making conversation at coffee shops, visiting meet-ups in cities that I didn’t even live in, and finding mentoring groups.
I encourage you, no matter where you are or how far you have to go to network as much as possible. I had no idea that my study partner from my freshman macroeconomics class would turn out to be one of my greatest business partners and inspirations. I say this to emphasize how even everyday conversation can benefit both parties in the long term.
Be present, be open, and do your best to always lend a smile.
#7 Be grateful. When looking towards a better life for ourselves, focusing our energy on progress, and spending day and night visualizing where we want to be, it is very easy to forget the good things that we encounter daily. We come to live in a constant state of lacking.
While it is a very thin line, we have to understand to be grateful in moments of little triumphs, the support that we have, and even the ability and freedom we have to be able to think beyond being trapped in our small minded ideas, careers, and relationships.
Let’s recap.
#1 Take ownership.
#2 Question the things that make you less than ecstatic.
#3 Spend more time thinking about what you do want and less time thinking about what you don’t have.
#4 Take action. Stop acting like you can do it tomorrow.
#5 Find a mentor(s)
#6 Network.
#7 Be grateful.
Finally, know above all else that what you think, believe, and speak is absolutely 100% where you will end up. As cliche as it sounds, only YOU hold the power to guarantee that 2018 is your best year yet.