Creating the Best Year of Your Life

Sopan Greene

What do I want to accomplish and who do I want to be in the coming year?

At the end of each year, and on their birthdays, many people take time to reflect and look ahead. If you're one of these people, or if you would like to start getting the benefits from a little self-reflection, then I have some great questions for you.

These questions can be looked at once a year, once a month or whenever you're looking for some direction in your life. I invite you to take a good hard look at your life more than once a year. You'll get a lot more out of your life if you're more conscious about what you're creating.

Some of the questions were developed by me, and many are from a terrific book called "Your Best Year Yet: Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever" by Jinny S. Ditzler. I highly recommend it if you want to go a little deeper.

These questions have been designed to help you to take time to complete the year and to formulate the new year from a clean slate. By working on the following questions you will complete this year powerfully so you can have the room to build a new "me" for the new year.

Looking at this past year:

What do I want to be acknowledged for?
What did I accomplish?
What did I want to accomplish that I did not accomplish? (Do I still want to do this?)
What did I say I would do that I didn't do? (Do I still want to do this?)
Who do I need to be in communication with?
What were my biggest disappointments?
What did I learn? - List 3 lessons, which will make the most difference if you remember them this year? (See them as guidelines for next year).

How do you limit yourself and how can you stop?
What do you say to yourself to explain your failures? (These are your limiting paradigms).
List your limiting paradigm.
List your new paradigm which must be personal, positive, present tense, powerfully and simply stated, pointing to an exciting future.
Read your new paradigm out loud when you awake and before going to sleep each day. Teach your subconscious that this is your paradigm.

Looking ahead:

What are your personal values? What is most import to you in your life? What drives you?
What roles do you play in your life? (List 8 or more). Then list new ones you want to incorporate into your life in the next year. Rate each role on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most important.
Where is your life out of balance? If you could put one problem behind you, once and for all, what would it be?
Which role is your major focus for next year? (In what role do you want a breakthrough performance? If you could put a check mark by one of these roles at the end of next year showing, showing that you felt good about how you are playing that role, which one would it be?)
What are your goals for each role?

The way that this works is that for at least a week or two you ask yourself the above questions. I write them down and do it in writing several different times. Then after doing that for all of the above questions you answer one final question:

What do I want to accomplish and who do I want to be in the coming year?

Remember the old saying, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." Give yourself the gift of self-reflection that will help you to create the life you really want this year. It only takes an hour or two. Don't you deserve better than settling for whatever shows up when fail to plan?...of course you do.

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