What do you want to accomplish in 2018?
Are you going to hit the ground running and really pound it out this year?
Doesn’t that sound fabulous?
I talked about reflecting and looking back in last week’s post, Faster, Faster! We’ve Got to Take Back Our Lives! Now, it’s time to consider the year ahead and muster all the courage, motivation and determination to make it the best year possible. I saw that, you just rolled your eyes.
It’s a plan for disaster.
It’s self-sabotage to get all pumped up and overcommit… to yourself of all people. But, just about every other post on the subject, except this one of course, will give you the “proven” formula to 5x, 10x and even 20x your year.
It makes me shake my head saying, “Knock yourself out, overachiever.”
If there’s a point, it’s to not pile it on too high and set yourself up for spirit-numbing disappointment.
Disclosure: This post is secretly part of my evil plan to make my life easy this year and have lots of company doing it. Proceed at your own peril.
My wife Lanette and I were at a small party at a neighbor’s house this New Year’s Eve. I was having a nice conversation with one of the hosts when she hit me with the dreaded question…
What’s your resolution?
Not resolutions.” Just resolutionnnnnnn – singular. Kindly, gently, not setting the expectation to high. That was genuinely thoughtful.
Without hesitation though, I proudly popped back with, “I don’t do them.”
Then, “Oh wait, I did think of something a few days ago… What was it now? It’ll come to me.”
It turns out she was actually talking about goals, not resolutions. Resolutions are those things that make us anxious in January, but go away by February. Goals are different.
She went on to tell me about two she had in 2017.
The first one was to make a career change. Not just a job change, a full-blown career change. And she did it and is very happy with how the new gig is going.
In my book, that alone makes for a banner year.
She recognized that and even though she missed her second goal, it’s no big deal to carry it over to this year. I could tell it was still bugging her a bit because it sounded like hard-wired personality traits may have held her back. I can certainly relate… how about you?
Her just do it friends weren’t helping matters either.
I’ll admit that there are times that I wish I were able to quickly whip something up and just put it out there as the just do it Nike-gods seem to do so easily. In the same breath I’ll add, there’s an abundance of mediocrity in the world.
Getting defensive, are we?
On a similar front, I was blessed with a truly amazing 2016.
The problem with that is it’s really, really hard to top amazing. So, 2017 left me feeling that I had fallen short. I remembered a number of gems, but still don’t feel great about it.
Now I find myself thinking like the just do it crowd. I’m finished looking back. Not everything comes quickly. Most things don’t come easily.
It’s okay to just have a good year. It’s okay to have an okay year.
Year-over-year performance metrics are for big corporations… not for real humans.
A couple of simple, not profound, but powerful lessons I picked up in the past couple of years are a huge help in this regard.
The first one I learned from internet marketing guru, Jeff Walker. In addition to that marketing thing, he’s big on mindset. Here goes… (WARNING: It’s not going to knock your socks off).
Be gentle with yourself.” Or, if you prefer… “Don’t beat yourself up.”
You’re here, now, where you are today. You’ve done what you’ve done. Whether you knocked it out of the park or feel like you fell short. There’s absolutely no value in giving yourself a hard time. You get up, dust yourself off, and take the next step, then the next step, then the next.
The second one is the underlying theme of a book called Strengthsfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.
Stop trying to fix your weaknesses and focus on your strengths.”
As a big corporate refugee, every annual performance review I ever had enumerated multiple weaknesses for me to work on the following year. That’s how big companies motivate their people. And, that’s a mindset that’s hard to shake after thirty years of mental programming.
So what, if someone else does a particular thing better? Hire them to do that part for you and do the part that makes you shine.
Do what you do best and forget the rest.
You’ll crush it!
I hope you’re looking forward to 2018 as much as I am.
Here’s wishing you an awesome one…
Happy New Year!
Thanks for visiting LifeUntucked.net!
We’ll be exploring this amazing, hyper-connected world and figuring out how to live bigger lives through smaller things and simpler ways.
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