Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals

by Michael Hyatt

What’s not in your world right now that could be, must be there? What’s lacking that only you can remedy in your relationships, your health, your career, or your spiritual life? As we begin to think about designing our best year ever, we need to recognize that most of the barriers we face are imaginary. There are a million thoughts running through our heads, but we alone get to choose what we’re going to believe. And the best way to overcome limiting beliefs is to replace them with liberating truths. It’s possible to upgrade our beliefs.

Resources are never—and I mean never—the main challenge in achieving our dreams. In fact, if you already have everything you need to achieve your goal, then your goal’s probably too small.

Resources are necessary, but they’re never the precondition for success. The perceived lack of resources is often a benefit in disguise. In fact, dealing with constraints can trigger a cascade of unforeseen rewards. For one, they force us to rise to the occasion and give our best to the pursuit. Easy resources make for weak performance.

Regret forced me to own my part in the failure and correct it,

Regrets not only goad us toward corrective behavior, studies show we also tend to feel regret the strongest when the opportunity for improvement is at its greatest.

What if your greatest frustrations from the previous year were actually pointing you to some of your biggest wins in the next? What if regret isn’t reminding us of what’s impossible, but rather pointing us toward what is possible?

The first way gratitude makes us resilient is that it keeps us hopeful. Gratitude is a game of contrasts. Our circumstances look a certain way; then something happens to improve them. Gratitude happens when we take notice of the distance between the two.

Next, gratitude reminds us we have agency.

If we didn’t use our agency to receive and act on what others have done for us, we wouldn’t have benefited.

Gratitude also improves our patience.

Finally, gratitude expands our possible responses. Gratitude moves us into a place of abundance—a place where we’re more resourceful, creative, generous, optimistic, and kind.

“There is a linear relationship between the degree of goal difficulty and performance,” as goal theorists Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham say. Looking at the results of almost 400 studies, they concluded, “The performance of participants with the highest goals was over 250% higher than those with the easiest goals.”8 We rise to a challenge, but we lay back when it’s easy.

I recommend setting seven to ten goals per year—but only two or three major deadlines per quarter. Any more than that and your focus will suffer along with your results.

Fishbach says it’s fine to go ahead and set goals that feel important, but don’t compromise on pleasure entirely. ‘Don’t choose a New Year’s resolution you don’t enjoy doing.’ You’ll be setting yourself up for failure.” Instead, she says, “Tap into your intrinsic motivation.”12

When a goal is relevant to our season of life, personal values, and our other goals, we improve our odds for success.

You and I should embrace discomfort for at least three reasons, whether we deliberately choose to or it simply happens to us. First, comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It often leads to self-absorption and discontent. Second, discomfort is a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt. Third, discomfort signals progress. When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort, but there’s profit in the pain.

if you have all the financial, emotional, and physical resources you need right now to accomplish your goal—in other words, if you can easily imagine completing the challenge—it’s probably not challenging enough to be compelling.

Often, the ability to push through fear is the only thing that separates those who succeed from those who fail.

don’t overthink it. This is my biggest temptation. I want to know the entire path. I want a map to the destination. Alas, I rarely get one. But that’s okay. All you really need is clarity for the next step. When you get it, take the next step in faith, believing you will be given the light you need to take the next one.

You may think that comfort leads to happiness. It doesn’t. Happiness comes from growth and feeling like you are making progress.

Was it an instant shot to the top with no setbacks for any of them? Not usually. Obstacles, reversals, and even failures are all part of their success path. That’s true for everyone. We can’t bank on being the exception—that’s just an illusion guaranteed to derail and disappoint us even more than the problems we’re facing.

Doing is better than not doing perfectly.

Agency sees an obstacle and says, “I can overcome this,” while entitlement complains about not being done yet. If we keep our agency, we can survive the times our dreams cease being fun, fast, or easy.

the power of intrinsic motivations. These drivers come from our hopes, our values, our ambitions. External motivation comes from outside influences like society, our friends, our bosses, and so on. External motivations are rarely as long-lasting or effective as intrinsic motivation.

“People lose their way when they lose their why.”

We can know the reason why a change is good, but we won’t change unless the motivation lives in both our heads and our hearts.

Motivation is key. What is the why for all the things?

Bottom line: You’ve got to write down your motivations. And you have to connect with them, not just with your head, but with your heart.

get through the messy middle, when progress seems impossible, find your why. Look at your goals and ask yourself, “Why is this goal important to me personally? What’s at stake both positively and negatively?”

Personally is the key here. Even and especially with work goals.