3 Tips To Make 2015 Your Best Year Yet

Whoa! Doesn’t it seem like it was just yesterday that we were welcoming in 2014 and wondering what it would hold? 

Was this your best year ever? Did you achieve all of your goals and desires? Can you look back and see an incredible amount of improvement from where you started last January? 

If so, that’s FANTASTIC, and you’re probably primed and ready to tackle whatever the new year has in store for you… but if for any reason, your answer is different…

You might have had a year of ups and downs, or not quite made it to all the goals and dreams you had when the clock struck midnight on January 1st. 

All too often we get bogged down in our day to day lives, that perpetual routine, the endless hamster wheel of “normalcy” and within just a couple of weeks into the new year, all your hopes get put on the back burner, or worse tossed aside in your never ending daily routine. 

But why does that happen to so many of us? What’s keeping us from truly living our dreams and making lasting change in our lives? 

Part of it is habit, which is to say, we just tend to fall back into our familiar routines like putting on your shoes every day. It’s comfortable, it’s not outside the box… the status quo is a powerful thing indeed. 

But there’s something that’s just as powerful, and it LOVES the status quo, it thrives on keeping things exactly the same as they’ve always been, and it just hates change. 

What is it you ask? 

Well… it’s your subconscious. 

And it’s everywhere. It’s the bad cop in your mind stopping you at every turn from experiencing growth and success in almost every area of your life. 

Want to lose weight in the New Year? Your subconscious likes you just the way you are, thank you very much, and will do everything it can to ensure you pull into that drive-thru and grab a tasty snack. 

Want that promotion you’ve been dreaming of? Nope, your subconscious is there to put a screeching halt to that too, it likes the job you have now… you don’t want to actually have to do MORE work do you? I didn’t think so. 

It’s a tricky thing that subconscious mind and it will beat you every time… if you let it. 

But there are ways to get around all those roadblocks and actually let a little fresh air into your subconscious mind. 

Here are a few ways that you can prepare for the New Year, and actually start to make things happen! 

Tip #1. Meditate

If you don’t already know, meditation is one of THE best ways to nudge your subconscious mind in the direction of what you truly want, instead of what it thinks you want. 

You can do it any time of day, and it only takes a couple of minutes. Just find a quiet spot, sit down and start to clear your mind of negative or limiting thoughts. This is especially powerful if you have a difficult schedule and way too much to do. You might think you “don’t have time”, but that’s just your subconscious trying to persuade you not to do it. Don’t give in. 

Just a couple of minutes a day will start to get you in the habit, and soon you’ll find more and more time to do it. Meditation is such a powerful force that even traditional doctors are prescribing it to their patients these days! 

Tip #2. Try something new

This one is important! If you really want to open yourself up for change in the New Year, you have to be the change. You have to break out of your routine and do something that’s completely unscripted. 

Take a class at a local college… go explore your neighboring towns on the weekend, learn to knit, learn to cook… take your family to a museum or art gallery. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do SOMETHING. 

Not only will this open you up for new experiences, it will help your mind pull itself out of the rut you’ve been in and allow space for even more, new and better things to come in. 

Last but certainly not least… 

Tip #3. Let last year go

All too often we carry along baggage from the past into the New Year. We look back on the past year with weariness, and just think it’s going to be more of the same. 

Here’s what I want you to do: Make a list of all the negative things that might have weighed you down in the past year, the things you might regret, the things that were out of your control… and write them down on a piece of paper. 

Then say them out loud, let them out into the universe and let the weight of their existence come out of your mind and onto that paper. 

Then take that piece of paper and tear it up into little pieces and toss it in the bin. 

Tear it with glee, tear it with excitement, tear it with gratitude… that this year will be different than that and that you’re in control of your own destiny! 

Trust me here, it feels REALLY good when you actually do this little exercise. 

Let 2014 slip away and open yourself up to your BEST year ever in 2015. 

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15 Personal Development Strategy Tips

A personal development strategy begins with a simple premise: your development is your responsibility.

At heart we probably know this to be the case, yet how often do we sit back waiting for that development to be put on a plate for us. For a lucky few things might fall into place easily, but for most of us that will not be the case.

So why not decide that you’re going to make your own development a priority, rather than leaving things to chance.

Here we suggest 15 tips to help you think about your own personal development strategy. In doing so we propose that you think more widely about how you’d like to develop. Don’t limit your thinking to just the work you’re currently doing.

For a happy manager, development is much wider than job specific training, it should be about you career and about your life.

Here are 15 tips to help you develop your own personal development strategy:

1.      Make your own development your number 1 priority.

2.      Spend more time developing as a person than developing as a manager.

3.      Imagine you had to make the case to yourself regarding the development you need. What would it take to convince you to invest?

4.      Give yourself a self-appraisal. (see our article: self-performance appraisal for some useful questions to ask yourself)

5.      Choose how you want to develop, rather than conform to whatever an organization might tell you to do. In some cases they may be one and the same – but the difference is that you choose to do it!

6.      Spend much more time on getting better at what you’re good at, than struggling to improve your weaknesses.

7.      Identify some specific strengths you have and commit to getting even better at them.

8.      What do you aspire to do/be?

9.      Make the “ordinary” part of your development – what happens in your normal day’s work that can help you to develop?

10.  Choose something you do, then try to do it to the best of your ability.

11.  Take real pride in something that you do.

12.  Take on an ordinary project and find something extra-ordinary in it – try to make a real impact.

13.  Vary your learning diet. Experience bite-size learning, the small learning snacks just when you need them. But make sure you also experience the breadth of learning from a longer, more measured, “learning” meal taken regularly.

14.  Cultivate a healthy dissatisfaction with how things are. If you are to improve you need to have some dissatisfaction with your current abilities. Be careful that your motive here is to improve, not to become frustrated or cynical.

15.  Learn more about what you really enjoy doing.

Perhaps a good place to end this article is with what could be described as St Augustine’s personal development strategy:

“If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are.

For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained.

Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.”

 

 

http://www.the-happy-manager.com/tips/15-personal-development-strategy-tips/