The Road Ahead: What Will You Do Differently This Year To Celebrate and Succeed?
Changing the way things are done can bring opportunities for great celebratory success yet physical and emotional reactions to change can be scary and irrational, resulting in “failures”, a decrease in quality and a loss of production.
CHANGE CAN BE SCAREY
It’s tempting to give in to those anxieties by doing what’s always been done, however, priming the pump to have a better year always involves some form of adjustment to free up the time, money and energy to tackle new opportunities.
How do you decide what changes are the most important ones to make?
Ask yourself these questions:
- What personal and business tolerations interfered with personal and work progress? Tolerations are a good indication of issues in need of resolution.
- Were last year’s goals reached? Why or why not? How will those obstacles be addressed? Setting new goals without having evaluated the previous year’s goals can result in a cycle of substandard results.
- What fiscally responsible goal (making more money, collaborating, creating new products/services, improved marketing strategy, etc.) will also be fun? All work and no play make Jack a dull (and bored) boy, as the saying goes.
What do you need to change to celebrate a better year?
Choose passion over profit. Connect to your bigger purpose in life, work and business and the rewards will flow effortlessly. Passionate people attract success.
Higher learning. Technology changes fast. Staying on top of what’s working now is only half the battle. Discovering what’s up and coming and leveraging that knowledge is the key to an exceptional year.
Celebrate success. Acknowledging and rewarding success keeps everyone motivated. Mark those mini-milestones with celebration and recognition!
Add, don’t subtract. When repeat clients stop buying your products or services, something needs to change. Instead of cutting prices, add value instead–bundle existing services/products, add bonuses or create new offerings.
What are your blind spots?
Every driver has blind spots. That’s what rear-view mirrors are for. Blind spots in the work and business environment can be harder to identify. How does a person avert disaster in a work environment without the benefit of mirrors?
Ask around. Getting honest feedback from clients, customers and service providers can be as uncomfortable as it is invaluable. Do it anyway.
Seek professional help. Getting an objective outsiders opinion can help you see what is going well or not.
Coffee time. Chat up a colleague and encourage them to share their observations about what you are doing well and what needs improvement. Sometimes what needs to change is missed because it is so “obvious.”
Mantra Yourself: Creating a mindset of intention is key for setting the stage of routine and energetic flow. Here are some examples to get the juices flowing
Moving into the New Year doesn’t have to be a scary proposition. Having a clear sense of what’s ahead can circumvent failure and create a successful year.
Each day we make choices that influence our pace and quality of life, and often we are completely unaware of the choices we are making and how they affect our life balance. So often we are operating from habit, instinct or need. While it’s a good thing that we don’t have to think about every little choice we make, when it comes to creating a balance between our work-related activities and the rest-of-our-life activities, it is critical to be conscious and deliberate about our decisions. Otherwise, we find ourselves feeling the negative effect of our unconscious choices by feeling overwhelmed, out of control, stressed, or even sick.
Having a balanced life feels like an elusive dream for many of us and every year it is high on the list of things to change. There is no doubt that our lives are filled with demands pulling at us from many different directions, sometimes with no end in sight. But as you enter into the new year, you can choose to make small changes that can ultimately make a big difference in getting your life back into balance.
Having a balanced life feels like an elusive dream for many of us and every year it is high on the list of things to change. There is no doubt that our lives are filled with demands pulling at us from many different directions, sometimes with no end in sight. But small choices can make a big difference in getting your life back into balance.
Self care is a critical part of living a well-balanced life. But it can be a real struggle when there are more things to do in a day than there is time to do them, and if you are used to putting everyone and everything before your own needs. But in order for you to deal best with life’s demands and be energetic and available to those you love, it is important that you make time for yourself.
The first step to achieving balance is ‘awareness’. This where you tune into where you are out of balance in your life, and notice where you can start making changes to get back into balance.