6 Tips to Making 2015 the Best Year Ever

Every year we say next year is going to be OUR year. Here’s how to make it true.

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It’s a new year soon. This is the time of year for reflection. We all sit back and reflect on the year that has past and look to the bright New Year ahead. We think about what we want the brand new year to be like. We think about our hopes and dreams for both us and our friends and family.

Do you want this next year to the best ever? Of course you do. It can be the most amazing sweetest, most wonderful kick ass year and you can meet and exceed all of your dreams and expectations. The question is how? It really is not a secret if you pay attention to what successful people do and what unsuccessful people don’t do. Here are six tips on how to have the best year ever- just be prepared because if you follow these principles cowboy, it’s going to be a great ride.

#1 Have goals– oh I know, you always meant to have them- and write them down, but you never seemed to make the time. You are too busy. Get a pen and paper, chisel and a rock or ink and bark but for god sakes man write them down! Research has shown a very small percentage of the population writes down their goals. How can you hit a target if you don’t know what it is? How do you even know you hit it? People will spend nine months planning a vacation to Disney for one week but no time planning their life. Make your life count by designing the life you want.

#2 Divide and conquer– once you have your goals in place- then it is action time. Write down (in some type of time management system) what you need to do quarterly, monthly weekly and then daily. A good practice is to write down what you need to get done at the beginning of each week and then use this as your track to run on for the entire week.

#3 Activate your RAS– There is part of your brain called the reticular activating system (RAS) which is engaged when you write something down and can see it. It allows your brain to work on it even when you aren’t. This is why writing your goals down really works- it’s actually science after all- not some new age mystery.  Get your RAS working full time for you. You may also want to activate your RAS even more by creating a vision board. A vision board is simply a poster that you create electronically or physically with pictures of all the things you want (a house, car, vacation, fit body, a jet, a spouse) and look at it every day.

#4 Eliminate the negative- if you have negative people in your life then let me be blunt get rid of them immediately! These negative energy sucking vampires (I call them ESV’s) will discourage you and drag you down with them into the abyss. They are creatures of the dark side. That is what they do. They have to go way and not be part of your life. They are heavy emotional boat anchors. Surround yourself with only loving supportive encouraging people who believe in you. People who will encourage not discourage, build you up not tear you down, say you can and not say that you can’t.

#5 Evaluate to motivate– what have you learned the last year? What do you need to do different? What do you need to start doing more? What new skills or information do you need to learn and how will you learn it? Socrates said “ the unexamined life is not worth living.” The opposite of that is “the examined life is worth living- every precious minute of it.” I’m sure Socrates would be proud.

#6 Make up your mind– just make a commitment to make it the best year ever. I believe we are the architects of our own lives- the question is this year what do you want to build? The choice is yours. As John Wayne once said “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” That says it all.

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Photo: Flickr/Brandon Jackson

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