Setting Yourself Up for Success in 2016

As we approach the New Year, I’m finding myself both reflecting on this year and anticipating the next. My thoughts are turning to how I can make this 2016 even better than 2015.

(And 2015 wasn’t half bad!)

That’s the beauty of this season, isn’t it? It’s the reason we all proudly proclaim our New Year’s Resolutions on December 31st. Even though we have the power to set and progress toward and achieve new goals at any time of the year, the end of one year and beginning of another offer the perfect opportunity to reflect and refresh in every area of our lives.

I don’t imagine it comes as a surprise to many that I love a good plan.

And it’s why I love goal-setting, too—because a goal isn’t worth much without the plan to achieve it. A plan, unlike a resolution, maps out a realistic process that you design and implement into your life to help you reach a specific goal. So goals and processes work together—a well-planned and executed system will help you reach your goals (even and especially as they evolve) whatever they may be.

Let’s say you want to break six figures in your business in 2016. You might spend this last month of the year setting up financial processes that streamline your invoicing and payments. Or if you want to write a book, you could set up a realistic daily writing and editing schedule.

So, how do you do set up yourself up for success; creating a plan and a system that supports the goals you want to reach in your life and in your business?

If I’m being completely transparent—and this is my blog, after all, so I always am :)—I use my own Well-Designed Year Life Planning System to plan out my goals and set up individual processes to ensure that my well-intentioned resolutions aren’t forgotten by February (as they often so easily are). In the Well-Designed Year, we help you turn to-do lists into goals and offer the accountability to turn those goals into actionable, systemic plans.

Here’s how I do that (and how you can, too):

Define Your Core: This is where I take stock (seriously, it’s a deep dive) of my unique talents, skills, and beliefs. Instead of setting goals based on who I think I should be or how I think I should feel, I approach the design and the growth of my life and my business from an authentic perspective.
Heart Goals: In the Well-Designed Year, I outline the process of setting what I call Heart Goals—it’s a flexible framework (you might do it every quarter or you might just do it once a year), focused on different life segments such as “Helping Yourself”, “Attitude & Academics”, and “Resources”, among others. This framework helps me set balanced goals—in every segment of my life—that I can actually achieve.
Alignment & Action And lastly, I set up and implement the individual systems that will help me start working toward my goals today, and keep working toward them until I’ve achieved them—or until they’ve evolved into a goal that works even better for me. I do this by aligning my goals with the actual, individual tasks it will take to reach them

Setting goals is great, especially when they’re truly aligned with who you really are. And having a plan to achieve them is even better. But neither on their own is enough.

You have to realistically implement that plan into your life—and you do that by starting and by setting up systems that will help you maintain your progress. It’s these systems that will help you (and me!) make next year even better than the last. And I use the Well-Designed Year to set them up.