To reach your goals and create the life you want in the New Year, forget about resolutions. Instead, start with upgrading your attitude and making your-self the priority. Here are 17 radical personal commitments to make 2021 your best year yet!
Download a free copy of my new book, The 60 Second Sales Coach!
With the dramatic changes, challenges, fears, and uncertainties we’ve experienced in 2020, it’s no wonder that many of us are asking ourselves, “Now what do I do?” while looking for more order and certainty in an uncertain world.
Creating goals brings the opportunity for change. For many us, goal setting is a chance to think of what we can do better. Often these goals are the same ones that we make or the ones we only stick to for a few weeks.
If it’s ever been a struggle to create what you want most in life, consider that your goals and the strategy to achieve them may not serve you best. Below is a list of 17 commitments you can make to help you achieve what matters most to you, today and how you can make it part of your lifestyle every day.
1. Quit Tolerating
To attract new and better opportunities and results, first clear out the proverbial, physical, and mental clutter that’s clogging up your life to create the space for the things you want most in your life. Otherwise known as tolerations, make a list of what you’re tolerating today. That is, the things you’re putting up with that drag you down, limit productivity, cause stress, and waste time, money, peace of mind, and energy. Then determine what needs to happen to eliminate these tolerances. If you no longer accept being dragged down by unwanted events, problems, or other people’s behavior, you’ll stop wasting time managing situations that shouldn’t be in your life in the first place.
2. Play Your Game
The best game to play is the one where you make up your own rules. If you’re encountering resistance in reaching some goals, chances are it’s either something you really don’t want to be doing, an old goal that may not serve you or you’re operating from someone else’s agenda! Take the time to discover what YOU truly want by aligning your goals with your core values, personal vision, and the priorities in your life rather than the “Shoulds.”
3. Create A Living Daily Routine
Busy with tasks that consume you? Feel that you’re fighting the clock? Design a weekly routine that complements your goals so you can focus on the activities that support your objectives and create the lifestyle you want today. This includes planning for the unplanned as well. Develop a healthier relationship with time by underpromising on personal/professional deadlines so that time becomes your ally instead of your adversary. You may feel that blocking time out for every specific and measurable activity you engage in throughout the day sounds rigid and inflexible. Counterintuitively, by focusing each moment of your time on the activities that honor your core values, and goals, you actually have more flexibility and time to do the things that matter most to you, while avoiding the things that aren’t aligned with your goals and the priorities you don’t want to compromise.
4. Identify Your Superpower
2021 taught us anything is possible. So, what’s going to be your superpower that will help you rise up in the face of adversity, break through all challenges and roadblocks, and help you achieve your precious goals? I’m not referring to being able to fly or time-travel, but what is the gift you have, that may be underutilized or laying dormant, that you can let out, refine, expand and express so that it becomes your catalyst to your success this year? It’s this superpower that’s going to be the fuel that keeps your momentum going.
5. Make Fun
Let’s face it; this isn’t our practice life! Are you doing the things that bring you the most joy? Find time every day that’s yours. Shift your binoculars around to magnify your achievements rather than what you didn’t do. Focus on the things, activities, people, results, and daily miracles that bring you joy, and be intentional around honoring them daily. Otherwise, when’s the big payoff?
6. Deepen Your Learning
Here are two competing universal laws. We attract what we need to learn. However, we also resist what we need to learn the most! If similar problems keep reappearing, you’re probably missing or resisting the lesson. To accelerate success, learn from every experience and person in order to grow and move onto a new and better path. What if you embraced that everyone around you is your teacher, to teach you something, possibly about yourself that you need to learn?
7. Expand and Write Down Your Personal Life’s Vision
What does your ideal life look like? The fact is, we never grow past what we feel is possible. Let go of your current perceptions that are inhibiting your ability to explore greater possibilities and achieve more. Clarify what success looks like in every area of your life (career, relationships, health, environment, spirituality, finances, family, etc.). It’s a lot easier to create what you want most when you know exactly what you’re looking for, since what you focus on, grows. Besides, it’s your canvass. What masterpiece do you want to create?
8. Transcend Your Beliefs
The Korean memorial says, “Freedom is not free.” This holds true for our thoughts as well. Old limiting beliefs often keep us, prisoner, preventing us from creating greater successes. Your outlook determines your outcome. So if you believe, “The past is responsible for the quality of my life today,” “Success requires sacrifice,” or “This is as good as it gets,” consider challenging these assumptions and replacing them with healthier ones that would better serve you. Upgrade and direct your beliefs without them controlling you. (Otherwise, we’d still believe that our flat Earth is the center of the universe.).
9. Do Complete Work
You don’t have to achieve every goal at once. Instead of stopping and starting something, pick one thing you want to change, create, or finish and commit to seeing it through to completion. Then move on to the next project. Otherwise, consider that you may be an adrenaline junkie and love the rush associated when working on overdrive. To prevent sporadic results and a pile of unfinished projects, get off the adrenaline train, and start creating the momentum that produces consistent long-lasting results.
10. Focus On the Present
Although goal setting is productive, during our quest to achieve more we often lose sight of what is occurring today, preventing us from enjoying the hidden gifts or treasures that are already present in our lives. Keep focused on what is occurring now as opposed to what happened yesterday or what will be in the future. Live for today while planning for tomorrow.
11. Fear-less
Much of life’s decisions are governed by fear. We always want more but fear prevents us from taking risks, so we continually produce similar results. We resist what we need to learn the most, preventing growth by staying within what’s familiar and safe. Resisting the fear of the unknown paralyzes our efforts to create greater opportunities for ourselves. Realize that you cannot fail, you can only produce unexpected results; results that you can grow from in order to create new possibilities. Only personal and professional profitability can evolve from new possibilities. To accelerate your evolution, embrace fear. Since fear is the negative assumption of the outcome, shift your focus towards the positive outcome or what you DO want to manifest, instead of what you are looking to avoid.
12. Amplify Your Awareness
Our society is recognizing more and more that there is greater pleasure in simplifying one’s life, as opposed to filling it with chaos, to-do lists, goal setting, or trying to keep up with overloaded schedules that result in keeping us buried in trivial tasks. We want less clutter and more clarity to see the magnificence life offers right in front of us. To become more, desire less in your life. Awareness is evolutionary since it’s derived from a deeper connection to truth and our authentic self, and the truth is the gateway to inner peace. When you have the ability to tap into this higher level of awareness, then and only then can you live a richer and rewarding life without struggle, resistance, or sacrifice. Growing back to where we came, to a more simplistic form, (a child) will re-ignite and amplify our senses and our passion to explore the wonders within our lives.
13. Choose to Be Fully Accountable – For Everything!
It’s simple. Either you’re making excuses or your making changes for the better. There’s no time to avoid personal accountability. If you own it, then the benefit is, you have the CHOICE to do something about it and make positive change. Otherwise, you’ll feel confined or powerless to make changes, allowing situations, circumstances and other people to influence you and the outcome. Choosing to become fully accountable for what you draw into and manifest in your life creates the space for our personal evolution to occur. If you own it, then you can change it.
14. Express Your Authenticity
The two fundamental parts to each person, the Self, and Ego, battle for the driver’s seat in our life. The ego makes choices concerned with the external; the outside world and achievements, defining who we are by what we have done, achieved, or our personal possessions. The ego looks to find how we’re better or different from others. The self makes choices based on your values, strengths, and passions. It is your higher self that looks for the similarities between us to connect at a deeper, more meaningful level. The ego can be the elusive thief of your true identity. The self is the authentic reflection of who we are and what we really want. It is the self that is satisfied in the present, without being attached to future accomplishments the ego needs to make their life worthwhile or held back by past events/regrets in our life. When we authentically express who we are, (not who we think we are) we can share ourselves with others, without the fear of being vulnerable. You’ll notice how much deeper and more meaninffful your connection with other people becomes when you shift the focus away from yourself and onto others. And you’ll add value to people’s lives naturally, without effort or sacrifice, often a result of the ego’s self-serving agenda. To evolve and live a richer, more fulfilling life, focus more on who you are, rather than what you do.
15. Identify and Honor Your Non-Negotiables
What are you willing to give up in pursuit of your dreams and goals? Most importantly, what are you not willing to sacrifice? The non-negotiables in your life. What are they? Be intentional. Take the time to write out your list of non-negotiables that you’re not willing to compromise, ever. Whether it’s a goal, personal value, priority, and more specifically, your health, time with family, and the things that make your life worth living. If 2020 taught us one thing, is that nothing is guaranteed, predictable, and lasts forever.
And to make sure you honor these, remember, if you don’t have the appointment, you don’t have the commitment. Schedule these things into your daily routine. That includes time with family and your self-care regiment. This includes your physical and mental health, attitude, and state of mind. Take a daily walk, get back to nature, meditate, try yoga, take the time for self-reflection, read, maintain a regular sleep pattern, and exercise program. This moves you away from the stress and overwhelm, helps you relax, and reconnects you to the present, your priorities and to yourself. Besides, if you don’t take care of yourself, then how can you take care of others?
16. Be Selfless
My mentor and friend, Zig Ziglar said it best. “You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”
Everyone is going through something.
Help others in need. With so many people struggling and suffering today, this is a time to help others who are less fortunate than you. Donate to a charity. Volunteer. Work at a soup kitchen, organize a food drive, and help people in your community. This also creates a deeper sense of appreciation for what you have and the value you can give to others. This is what truly creates a purposeful, meaningful life.
17. Get an Accountability Partner and Coach
When it comes to making commitments to others, we’ll do our best to honor them. However, when it comes to the commitments we make to ourselves, those are the first to be tossed aside and abandoned.
If you’re not going to hold yourself accountable, then who is? Moving into uncharted territory can be overwhelming, scary, and exhilarating. When moving into the zone of discomfort to do the things you may never have done before, it requires having the support of someone to cheer you on. Otherwise, if you don’t have someone to support and guide you on your path, it’s easy to get diverted onto the ones that are most comfortable for you.
Life works a whole lot easier when we do what we say we’re going to do. Having an accountability partner and coach in your corner builds in this kind of focused discipline and accountability that allows you to honor your commitments and what’s most important so that you can create the life you want to live today.
To get weekly updates on how to develop a highly effective routine, get organized, eliminate distractions, reduce stress, and manage your tasks in order to reach and exceed your goals subscribe to my newsletter here.
