Do you want to have your best year ever? Maybe you are riding high after a great year and want to top it, or maybe you’ve had an awful year and want to turn everything around.
Either way, keep on reading to find out how to have your best year ever.
VISUALISE WHAT YOUR BEST YEAR EVER MEANS TO YOU
To have your best year ever you first need to get clear on what that means to you. My idea of a best year ever probably looks very different to yours and that is absolutely natural. Maybe you already are clear on what your best year ever would be like, but if you haven’t here are some things to consider:
- Where would you be living?
- How would you be spending your time?
- Who would you be spending time with?
- If you are working what type of work would you be doing?
- What activities do you do in your spare time?
- Is every day the same or are their differences depending on the day or time of the year?
- What would you like to achieve in the year?
- How do you want to feel throughout the year?
SET GOALS
Once you’ve got clear on what your best year ever would be like it is time to set some goals. The important thing is to ensure that by achieving these goals they are helping you to create your best year ever.
Michael Hyatt in this book ‘Your Best Year Ever’ (You can check out my summary of the book here ) separates goals into two types: habits and achievement. I think this is a great distinction to make, especially when trying to achieve your best year ever.
Habit goals are designed to help you create a new habit (aka something you do regularly in your life). An example would be to meditate daily.
Achievement goals are created with a clear focus on you having achieved something by a certain date. An example would be to have read 12 books by 31st December.
Thinking back to your vision think about what involves you doing something regularly and set habit goals for those aspects. Then if there was something specific you wanted to achieve create an achievement goal around that.
If you need more help on setting goals read How to set goals using the SMART method.
ENSURE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TYPE OF ACCOUNTABILITY
There is a big difference between having a set of goals and achieving your goals. Accountability plays a major role in helping you achieve your goals, but the type of accountability you require may be different from others. In the book, The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin (Book of the Month for PropelHer’s Book Club in 2021) she groups people based on how they respond to external and internal expectations. Knowing whether you are motivated by internal or external expectations can help you to choose the right type of accountability. You can find out what your tendency is by taking the quiz here.
Some common ways of adding accountability into your life are:
- Having an accountability partner
- Working with a coach
- Joining a group
- Making a public declaration
PUT YOUR HEALTH FIRST
Without knowing exactly what your version of a best year ever is, I can guarantee it involves you being in good health. Our health is often the things we think about the least until something goes wrong. Please don’t take your health for granted and ensure that no matter what goals you have set you make time to ensure you are in good health both mentally and physically. This means getting regular exercise, eating well, drinking enough water, getting enough sleep and more.
BE PURPOSEFUL WITH YOUR RESOURCES
There are 8,760 hours in a year and most people are asleep for a third of them. If you are going to have your best year ever then you need to be purposeful about how you use your time, as well as your money and energy. Think back to the vision of your best year ever and get clear about what you want to give your focus and attention to in terms of time, money and energy.
PRACTISE GRATITUDE AND CELEBRATE
If you really want this to feel like your best year ever then regardless of what actually happens you need to be practising gratitude along the way. Get into the habit of daily practising gratitude. This is as simple as naming three things you are grateful for just best you go to sleep.
Also, it is important to celebrate all of your wins big and small. Now you might have set some big goals back at the beginning of the year, but don’t wait to achieve them to celebrate. Create small milestones and celebrate the great things that happen that you hadn’t even set a goal around. When you start living a life that is full of gratitude and celebrations, you’ll automatically start to feel better and look back on the year with a more positive attitude.
There you have it! You now know how to have your best year ever.
I hope that you’ve found this blog post useful and I wish you all the best for the year ahead!
In the comments, I would love to hear what your best year ever would be like.
