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

by Michael Hyatt

Spiritual: Your connection to God Intellectual: Your engagement with significant ideas Emotional: Your psychological health Physical: Your bodily health Marital: Your spouse or significant other Parental: Your children if you have any Social: Your friends and associates Vocational: Your profession Avocational: Your hobbies and pastime Financial: Your personal or family finances

Third, progress starts only when you get clear on where you are right now.

confidence, happiness, and life satisfaction are byproducts of personal growth.

Without a compelling reason to persist, we lose interest, get distracted, or forget what we purposed to do.

If our habits of thinking are beneficial, we tend to experience positive results, such as happiness, personal satisfaction, even material success. If our habits of thinking are counterproductive, however, we often experience the opposite: unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and the nagging feeling that the deck is somehow stacked against us.

Because our expectations shape what we believe is possible, they shape our perceptions and actions. That means they also shape the outcomes. And that means they shape our reality.

One of the biggest reasons we don’t succeed with our goals is we doubt we can.

The first key difference between an unmet goal and personal success is the belief that it can be achieved.

To accomplish anything, we have to believe we’re up to the challenge.

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.

First, recognize the limiting belief. I mentioned several giveaways in the last chapter. If a belief reflects black-and-white thinking, it might be a limiting belief. Same thing if it’s personalizing, catastrophizing, or universalizing. It could be coming from past experience, the media, or your social circle. Whatever the content of the belief, no matter how true it seems, it’s important to recognize that it’s just an opinion about reality—and there’s a good shot it’s wrong. Second, record the belief.

What were the major life lessons you learned this past year? Unless we learn from our experiences, we can’t grow.

“Don’t overthink the outcome, just do the next right thing.” Or, “I can do anything I want. I just can’t do everything I want.” I’m still not done learning that lesson!

When we focus on ourselves instead of our performance, we make it harder to address improving next time around for the simple reason that improvement isn’t the focus.

We’re all fallible, so if you believe you are a failure, you’ll never run out of proof.

If, on the other hand, you believe you fail, you can begin evaluating what’s missing in your performance and seek corrective action.

benefits of regret.

instruction,

motivation to change.

integrity. Regret can work in us like a moral compass, signaling us when we’ve veered off the path.

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.

Gratitude has the potential to amplify everything good in our lives. It’s the best remedy I know for the affliction of scarcity thinking and the best way to cultivate a mindset of abundance.

I start and end the day with prayer. Instead of bookending the day with what I failed to get—sleep or accomplishments or whatever—I try focusing on the blessings I do have and expressing them in prayer. I practice thankfulness. Before I get caught in endless comparisons, I express gratitude for the gifts I do have. I find prayer before meals gives me several natural points in the day to do this. I journal my gratitude. Journaling is useful for many things, but expressing and capturing our gratitude is certainly one. Not only do I have the in-the-moment benefit of focusing on the good, I’ve recorded it for later reflection, for those times when things don’t feel like they’re going as well as I had hoped.

Ingratitude creates instant victims in our culture of scarcity.

Great results don’t just happen. You don’t usually drift to a destination you would have chosen. Instead, you have to be intentional, force yourself to get clear on what you want and why it’s important, and then pursue a plan of action that accomplishes your objective.

it forces you to clarify what you want.

writing down goals helps you overcome resistance.

it motivates you to take action.

it filters other opportunities.

it enables you to see—and celebrate—your progress.

What the studies show is that the tougher and more specific the goal, the more likely we are to engage our focus, creativity, intellect, and persistence.

To summarize, SMARTER goals are specific, measurable, actionable, risky, time-keyed, exciting, and relevant.

Start date. This is when you intend to begin installing this habit. Habit frequency. This is how often you will observe this habit. It could be daily, specific days of the week, weekly, monthly, and so on. Time trigger. This is when you want to do the habit. It could be a specific time each day, week, and so on. This makes it easier to become consistent if you can do the habit at the same time. Streak target. This is how many times in a row you must do the habit before you can consider it installed—that is, once the activity becomes second nature. With most habit goals, you can stop focusing on them once that happens.

When it comes to meaningful achievement, comfort equals boredom and low engagement.

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.

Then, because we let the how overshadow the what, we downgrade our aspiration.

“difficult goals are far more likely to generate sustained enthusiasm and higher levels of performance.”5 In other words, we get more out if we put more in.

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.

Acknowledge the value of getting outside your Comfort Zone. It all starts with a shift in your thinking. Once you accept the value of discomfort, it’s a lot easier going forward. Lean into the experience. Most of the resistance is in our minds, but we need more than a shift in thinking. By leaning in, we’re also shifting our wills. Notice your fear. Negative emotions are sure to well up. Don’t ignore them. Instead, objectify them and compare the feelings to what you want to accomplish. Is the reward greater than the fear? Don’t overthink it. Analysis paralysis is real. But you don’t need to see the end from the beginning or know exactly how a goal will play out. All you need is clarity on your next step.

Perfectionism and self-judgment are sure to derail us.

Doing is better than not doing perfectly.

If you want to go the distance, you’ve got to find a reason that speaks powerfully and personally to you.

“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.

Next to finding your why, mastering your motivation is key for developing the necessary persistence to make it through the messy middle. I want to share four key ways to do so: finding the right reward, being realistic about the commitment, gamifying the process, and measuring your gains.

Identify your reward and begin to anticipate it. Eventually, the task itself can become its own reward this way. Recognize that installing a new habit will probably take longer than a few weeks. It might even take five or six months. Set your expectations accordingly. Gamify the process with a habit app or calendar chain. As Dan Sullivan taught me, measure the gains, not the gap. Recognize the value of incremental wins.

Setting the goal is only half the job. The other half is taking definitive action.

detailed planning easily becomes a fancy way to procrastinate. It’s a lot easier to plan than take action.

I don’t care how big the goal is—it can be accomplished if you take it one step at a time.

You’re never going to find time in the leftover hours of the day to accomplish your goals. You have to make time for it. You have to make it a priority and keep it like an appointment, just like you would keep with anyone else.