Having a successful year might sound like a daunting undertaking. Planning, goal-setting, strategic thinking, and so much more. But truth is, it doesn’t have to be as overwhelming as it may seem.
A year is a long time, and when you make the right moves, there’s no doubt that you can have a successful year ahead.
So let’s talk about how to have the most successful year yet. From personal principles to daily tactics, we’ve got you covered.
How to Have a Successful Year Ahead
1. What do you define as success?
Before we can plan for a successful year, we need to first ask and answer the question: What does a successful year look like to you?
Is it travelling to the destination of your dreams? Is it doubling how much money you make? Is it being able to spend more time with your loved ones? Is it quitting a lucrative job to pursue your love of art? Is it becoming the healthiest and strongest version of yourself?
The truth is, there’s no single, blanket definition of success. Success means something different to everyone. And, the first step to having a successful year, is getting clarity on what success means to YOU.
So, how do you figure this out?
The first step to figure out what success means to you, is to define what your core values, goals, and beliefs are. In other words, it’s really getting to know your truest self. What makes you happy? What excites you? What brings you peace?
The better you get to know yourself, the deeper you can dive into what matters to you. This means putting aside the notion that you have to live the same life as everyone around you. It’s working through those limiting beliefs to say “this is who I am, and this is what I want.” Success does not equal living up to the standards of what society tells us success is.
Another way to think about this, is to remove the accolades, remove the titles, and remove the “end destination”. Instead, try measuring success not just by results, but by how those results made you feel.
Is it success if you hit the goal weight, but feel completely unwell and fatigued all the time? Is it success if you spend 80 hours a week making that massive salary, but despise every moment of your day-to-day job?
It’s important to define not only what you think is successful, but how you’ll measure that success.
Just some food for thought.
Once you have that definition, create 1-5 goals for the upcoming year. Get clear, concise, and detailed on what you want to accomplish and how you want to feel by the end of the year in order for you to consider it a successful year.
2. Alignment
Once you have clarity on what success means to you and you’ve defined your yearly goals, your next step is to align your daily actions with your view of success.
In other words, how exactly are you spending your time?
Time management is one of the most crucial factors to have a successful year and a successful life. It’s the actions we take everyday that ultimately define how our lives pan out.
This means, doing an audit of your time, and assessing whether what you’re spending your time on, actually creates a stepping stone to achieve your goal.
For example, you might have a goal to become a better dancer this year. But when you take a close look at what you do on a daily basis, you realize you spend 5 minutes dancing in the mirror, and 3 hours watching other dancers’ choreographed routines on YouTube.
This is an example of how your time is not aligned with your views of success.
Your goal is to be better dancer, but you’re spending more time watching other dancers, rather than practicing dance yourself. If anything, you should probably be working on your technique, taking lessons, and practicing for those 3 hours, and instead spend 5 or 10 minutes watching other routines.
Aligning our time with our goals is the simplest, yet most overlooked way to having a successful year.
It’s ensuring that our daily actions do in fact line up to the bigger picture. It’s taking those teeny, tiny, small, baby steps every day to eventually get to where we want to be.
People use the analogy of reaching your goals as a “journey” or a “roadmap” all the time, but sometimes we forget, that it literally is that. It’s a journey.
You are here. And your destination is there. You need to step one foot in front of the other to get there.
If you have a destination you wanted to reach on the other side of the world, you wouldn’t expect to magically transport there one day. You’d book a plane ticket, you’d take a cab to the airport, get on a flight, take a train to the city, and walk from the station to your hotel room.
In the exact same fashion, you need that daily plan. What steps, what methods, and what actions will you take to get to where you want to be?
Alignment of time to your goals is everything when it comes to the power of action.
3. Consistency
Everything worthwhile, requires consistency. That means doing the same thing over, and over, and over, and over again.
Whether that’s exercising over, and over, and over again, or, practicing your writing skills over, and over, and over again; you can’t get to where you want to be if you’re not consistent.
Once you’ve aligned your time with your goals, you need to rinse and repeat day after day to have a successful year.
And one of the fundamental ways to being consistent, is to stop relying on motivation.
Motivation comes in waves. Some days you feel on top of the world, and others, you just don’t care as much. It’s normal. Everyone feels it. So what that tells us, is that motivation itself, is inconsistent, so how can we expect motivation to help us be consistent?
So instead, lean on discipline.
Motivation versus discipline
Now when you hear the word discipline, you might think intensity. Navy seals, bootcamp, 4am runs in the rain – but honestly, it doesn’t need to be that intense.
Simply put, discipline is another word for self-control, which according to Merriam-Webster, is defined as having “restraint exercised over one’s own impulses, emotions, or desires.”
Discipline is what drives consistency. It’s getting so comfortable and in tune with yourself, that when you try to talk yourself out of the work you know you need to put in, a stronger sense of self takes over, and quiets the mind. It’s pushing past those small voices in your head saying “I don’t feel like it” and instead turning the volume up on the voice saying “My future self will thank me”.
Through discipline, we can reach consistency.
And let’s not get it twisted. Whenever you’re starting out in any endeavour, consistency does not equate to doing the absolute most. It’s actually more likely that consistency might be doing the least. As in, not overwhelming yourself with massive action that simply isn’t sustainable on a daily basis. Small action is better than no action. Little by little, day over day. That’s where you get the results.
That might mean doing 20 jumping jacks every day at lunch until you get used that new movement habit. Or, it might mean committing to writing for just 5 minutes every morning, until you start to feel it flow for longer durations.
Consistency is taking those aligned actions, and repeating them over, and over, and over, and over again.
4. Contingency
Now let’s get real here. We’re human. Meaning, despite having this monumental vision and precise daily action plan, there will be days that you slip up. That’s a guarantee.
There will be days that your mind and body simply aren’t in sync. There will be life events, family situations, and things that may derail you from your everyday plans. But the key here, is to anticipate this.
Knowing, that there will be off days or off weeks, your job is to create a contingency plan for your future self. This means, defining a simple set of practices or actions, to minimize your time off track and help you bounce back a bit faster.
For example, today, you might be FULL of energy. You’re super enthusiastic and ready to crush your goals. Before you get lost in this trance of stimulus, give yourself a bit of a reality check. As in, “I know I’m feeling really pumped up right now, but there’s a huge chance I’ll feel really demotivated a few months from now.”
Having that awareness can help you proactively create a contingency plan to minimize any “losses” you’ll experience during this downtime.
For example, maybe your goal is to get super active and fit this year. Perhaps you’ve created a daily action plan to start lifting heavy weights 3 to 4 times a week. You’ve always dreaded weightlifting, but you want to give it a second go because of the health benefits you’ve learned.
Your contingency plan might look like this:
- In the event I dip into a state where I don’t feel like weightlifting or being active, instead of forcing myself to lift weights and potentially injure myself — or instead of stopping all movement together, here’s what I’ll do:
- I’ll stop weightlifting for a few days, and instead focus on lighter and shorter movements like Yoga or Pilates. I’ll do bodyweight exercises to stay consistent in the motion of movement, but I will allow myself to feel this for a few days until I’m ready to get back to weightlifting. I will reduce my daily exercise time to 15 minutes a day just to maintain consistency while respecting my temporary aversion and feelings of “being over it” during this time.
Disclaimer, this is clearly just a high level example, it’s not the actual contingency plan you should be creating if you were in this situation. Create a contingency plan according to your goals, your general approach and past behaviours. The idea is to switch it up while still keeping your goal top of mind.
Another tip, is to avoid the “I’ll start tomorrow” trap.
We often write off a whole day, or even a whole week, when we feel like we’re off track. i.e. “I missed my workout this morning. I could go later today, but screw it.” might turn into “I missed my workout twice this week, I’ll just start fresh next week.”
Once we get into this mentality, it’s difficult to snap out of it. Instead, flip the thinking to signal that every moment is actually an opportunity to start fresh. Think about it. The year is made up of months, which is made up of weeks, which is made up of days, which is made up of hours, which is made up of minutes, which is made up of seconds.
Every second in your day, every minute – is a chance to start over. Having a successful year ahead means giving yourself an opportunity to reset by the moment. Don’t wait until tomorrow.
5. Adaptability
Once you start working on your goals every single day, and you master the art of consistency, you’re going to learn a lot. You’ll learn a lot about yourself, but also a lot about the process of how you’re reaching your goals. And what might come with that, is small pivots in your plan to be more efficient.
For example, going back to our travel anecdote. You booked that ticket, you got on the airplane, and you were going to take the train then walk to your hotel, but you just found out that there’s actually a shuttle bus from the airport that goes straight to your hotel instead, and it’s free. So naturally, you’re going to do this instead. You’ve revised the plan a little – made a small tweak, but you’re still reaching the same destination. You’re just enhancing your process to make it more efficient.
In the same manner, as you work on your goals, you are going to learn better and faster ways of doing things. And this is where the balance of being hyper-focused, but also receptive to your surroundings is really important. Because yes, you want to nail down that plan, you want to be consistent by repeating the same actions over and over again. You don’t want to get distracted by the wrong things, BUT you also want to keep that element of curiosity alive. This is where the human brain, and that creative thinking comes in.
We can systemize everything and follow protocol: process after process, day after day, plan after plan — we do want to do this, but we also want a little bit of that unknown factor to creep in, because this is where a lot of the growth comes from.
This is just plastering a layer of flexibility and self-awareness on your goals and daily action plans. It’s something to keep at the back of your mind. Carry it subconsciously and trust that you will guide yourself to pivot your plans and actions as needed.
In summary, define success. Align your daily actions with your big goals. Be consistent through discipline. Create a contingency plan, and be open to adapt as needed.
This is your blueprint on how to have a successful year ahead.
Read more:
- How to Change Your Life in 90 Days
- 7 Steps to Get Your Life Back on Track When You’re Stuck
- How to Create a Morning Routine You’ll Actually Stick To
- 10 Daily Habits to Improve Your Life Right Now
- 5 Habits That Are Making You Unproductive
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