The new year is upon us! Given how round a number “20” is, we are all filled with more hope and enthusiasm than a typical start to a new year. At the beginning of the year it is a nice time to do a little more than the typical quarterly goal setting.
Below is a list of exercises that my partner and I went through to get us going in the right direction. I hope you will give one or more of them a try 🙂
- Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.
- Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.
- For each week, jot down on the pad any people or activities or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions for that month. Put them in their respective columns.
- Once you’ve gone through the past year, look at your notepad list and ask, “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?”
- Based on the answers, take your “positive” leaders and schedule more of them in the new year. Get them on the calendar now! Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work. It’s not real until it’s in the calendar. That’s step one. Step two is to take your “negative” leaders, put “NOT-TO-DO LIST” at the top, and put them somewhere you can see them each morning for the first few weeks of 2019. These are the people and things you *know* make you miserable, so don’t put them on your calendar out of obligation, guilt, FOMO, or other nonsense.
Gratitude Exercise:
- 3 amazing people in my life are:
- 3 great things about my home are
- 3 great things about where I work are:
- 3 great gifts/talent/skills I have are:
- 3 great experiences i have had are
Go Deep:
- Character Section of “The Path” (more to come on this)
Zoom Out:
- Who do you want to be five years from now? Define very specifically your future character, lifestyle, career, health, relationships, and finances.
Zoom In:
- What is your most important goal for 2020? Set it in the goal setting canvas: Goal Setting Canvas
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