What will your 2016 look like?

It has become accustomed for me to write something on New Year’s eve. Around this time you begin to see your social media feeds fill up with pictures and quotes of how “2016 will be a fresh start” or “2014 was a practice, 2015 was a warm-up, 2016 is game time”, but what makes previous years different to 2016? Why do we have feelings of positivity for the new year? If I was to ask 1,000 people if they stuck to their goals this time next year, what percentage of people do you think will say “I stuck to 80% of my goals” will they even remember what their goals are? I don’t know, but there is certainly a warm hype about the coming year. I welcome it! Any form of rituals or ceremonial activity such as the one’s we carry out every year on the same day can be positive, if it’s power is truly understood… let me explain.

Let’s imagine that 2014 was a practice, and 2015 was a warm-up, if you are about to embark on any sort of serious competitive game you would actually prepare yourself and your team to create a form of confidence in your ability to achieve what you seek. As players in the game of life we must do the same thing. The best way to do is to look back at your previous years and determine what you have truly learnt from your experiences. This is important because it creates a sense of direction for your year ahead, it enhances your sensitivities to possible dangers, and even opportunities that you could now embark on due to lessons learnt from previous years. Pick your top three defining experiences of 2015 and ask yourself these questions:

• What happened?
• Was it a positive or negative experience?
• Why was it a positive or negative experience?
• What or who was in your environment?
• Why did it happen?
• How did it make you feel?
• Have you shared this experience with anyone?
• Are you grateful for the experience?
• What did or have you learnt from the experience?
• If it was a negative experience how could you prevent that from happening again?
• With your new found knowledge what would you do differently?

This opens up a new dimension of thinking, as an individual begins to unleash a power of control over their life and circumstances. If you can define your experiences via these questions, you have mastered them and can move on with life knowing you are confident in tackling or embracing those specific experiences again. Acceptance, awareness and acknowledgement is key to creating true personal empowerment! Imagine you met your former self 5 years ago, what advice would you give them on how to live a better life? Write this down.

Note: You must start the year with a journal as an extension of your thoughts, ideas and plans. This is your true power for the year and the rest of your life! It is the most important book you shall ever read and write.

Now it’s time to determine who you are as individual, not what you have or what you do, but who you are! What contributes to the being of you! Write down 5 things that you think make you who you are, and ask 5 friends to objectively do the same for you (you are not looking for positive or negative bias but honesty). Collate all your findings side by side, and tick the synonyms, underline the traits you’re confident you are, and circle the one’s identified by friends, that you weren’t aware of. The more frequent a theme or traits appear, the more likely people and yourself see you this way. The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest reflection of who you are. The one’s circled and underlined should be the traits you should focus on and strengthen for 2016, as Theodore Roosevelt said Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Make sure you look for courses, seminars or people to strengthen these traits: A person is more powerful if they practice a move 10,000 times relative to someone who practices 10,000 moves once.

The next thing to do is to establish what sort of characteristics you have? How do you react or respond in different situations? A man named Taylor Heartman developed a personality test and wrote a book called Colour Code. Some of you may know it in as the lion, dolphin, owl, and monkey chart! They say we are predominantly 2 of these character traits, and finding people who are the opposite of your character traits not only gets you both to cover each other’s weaknesses, it also enables you to build a dynamic and resilient team. There is power in understanding yourself and who are! Modern experts have developed other sophisticated ways on determining your psychology as a person, such as through the Myers & Brigg’s personality test, which are heavily used in the corporate world today! People want to know who they are working with and how they operate. They take it seriously, you should do the same for yourself.

To seal off your understanding as an individual, it is vital to distinguish what sort of thinker you are? Do you like to know the full detail? Do you like to know of the pros and cons? Do you like to know why something happens? The benefit of this is to help you understand how to you learn best! If you are a detail person wanting to know the “how”, then you know to give yourself enough ample time to feed yourself with the detail. If you are a “why” person, you know you have to go to the core root of your question. In addition if you can understand whether you are visual, audio, or an emotive person, you’ll begin to understand how you can create your environment and what triggers positive emotions in your life. The best way to determine how you understand things is by paying attention to what you say, for example a visual person will say: “I can imagine what you mean, but I see it as an opportunity to display your best moves”… catch the drift. This field of study is under the umbrella of Neurolinguistic Programming for those who want to do further reading in it.

As highlighted above I stressed the importance of keeping a journal. This is your most sacred and useful tool. Jim Rohn once said: Never rely on your brain to remember anything. Even if you do remember, what are you going to do about those thoughts, provided you have a million over things to think about? We forget about 80% of our thoughts the next day and we have on average 50,000 thoughts per day, so you have a 1 out of 50,000 chance of remembering that unique thought, and a 1 out of 4,000,000 chance of remembering it the next day… be smart and write it down! There are no rules to having a journal apart from the fact that you should write down your thoughts and ideas at the moment you think of them. The reason I say this is because the creation process of your ideas has begun coupled by the energetic enhancement of your emotional, psychological and spiritual connection towards it. Emotion more than anything else speeds up the process of you achieving your desired dream.

The next step is to learn how to pray or speak your desires outloud with genuine passion, partnered with emotion. Someone smart once said Speak what you seek until you see what you said. Learn why you want to achieve your dream in life. What is your dream? A strong “why” not a big “why” will determine how far you will go towards ascertaining that dream. A vision board is great for people who are visual thinkers because it excites their brain towards their desired goal. If you don’t know what to pray or say, write down your desires in a journal clearly and intelligently defining what it is you want and how you should get it. Better yet record yourself speaking your dreams into existence and listen to it daily. The key is in the emotion of how you write or say your desire. The Bible says ask and ye shall receive, so ask intelligently and clearly, and receive your desires accordingly. The clearer you are, the better it is for everyone, the Universe and you alike. If you want to follow a formula for this read the book Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill

The last stages are to develop a concrete accountable plan that positions you for success in your chosen field. The aim is to turn a dream into a goal of defined steps. If you are unsure how to create a plan of action, use the SMART goals method, make sure it is specific, measurable, action-orientated, realistic, and time-bound. This will keep you on the right path. Make sure you have someone, a partner, study buddy, or an objective friend who can keep you on track. If you feel you don’t have any of those, use social media to hold you accountable and let the internet know what you set out to achieve. Remember to also create calendar reminders on your phone to remind you of your tasks. The key to this is to stay organised, scheduling your tasks and activities in a calendar (digital or diary), and knowing exactly how you keep your time. This can be determined by conducting a self-audit for 2 weeks of what you do most during your days, and when you work best. This will position you to allocate the right time for your plans allowing you to conquer your goals more effectively. Daily Methods of Operation are key, tick off your tasks! There is always a good feeling about ticking something off, so get into a genuine habit of doing it.

I truly believe if you can stick to these nuggets of information up here, 2016 will truly be “Game changer”. Above everything make sure you believe whole heartedly in what you want to achieve this year and beyond. Make your beliefs a certainty increasing your potential for success, action, and desired results. This is summed up nicely in the book As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. Remember create the right environment and develop the right state through emotional triggers developed from habits you adopt! It’s important to keep your emotional state high and positive and position yourself for real prosperity.

Happy New Year and may it be one that is totally in your hands!