Is 2019 the Year to Rediscover Yourself?

Here Are 6 Things to Consider in Doing So

It’s barely the end of the first month of this New Year and already the gyms are beginning to become less “busy” with resolutions falling off by the day. What started out as compaction is now settling back to a normal member flow, and the machines are nearly always free and available when I want one. However, I ask this with your best interest at heart. Is 2019 the year to rediscover yourself? Your business, specifically, but you are so much the business when you’re an entrepreneur, so it almost goes without saying.

If you really want to make some positive change in your business and your life, consider doing these 6 things and come away with some real progress on reinvention and rediscovery.

1. Set Goals That You Can Achieve
2. Be Consistent While Working Toward the Intended Outcomes
3. Stick with What Works, Ditch What Doesn’t
4. Attempt New Strategies and Tactics
5. Optimize to Maximize
6. Expand Your Horizons

Setting Achievable Goals

We’re living in a world of instant gratification, of this there is no doubt. The trouble with going with the crowd is that the crowd is flitting from thing to thing, following the white light, reaching for the next shiny object. That’s no way to make positive inroads into your business or personal life. Instant gratification is this generation’s nemesis, of which there is little hope to overcome without establishing clear cut outcomes well-planned and acted upon.

Nothing is more a waste of time than doing something just for the sake of doing it. If it is important, set an achievable goal with milestones. If they’re personal goals like shedding a few pounds, set a weight reduction goal of X, and break that number down to manageable bits equal to the number of days/weeks/months you plan to reach your objective. If it’s thirty pounds for example, break that number down into three pounds a week for an achievable outcome. So it takes ten weeks (or twenty weeks) to reach it, so what? With bite-sized milestones, you don’t have to be overwhelmed at the total number 30 (yikes), you can focus on only 3 pounds for the week’s success. That’s much more tolerable.

If it’s a business goal, like increasing revenues, or acquiring new customers, clients or patients, break the overall goal into manageable milestones. Focusing on 1 new customer a week seems a whole lot more achievable than 52 new clients this year. Don’t overwhelm yourself with large numbers. Develop your work and personal habits aware of your short-term milestones and how they will impact your desired outcome. Reward yourself in little ways with each successive milestone reached.

Being Consistent

Success typically comes form habits that work for you and keep you on track toward goal attainment. If you organize your days, weeks, and months with your goals and objectives clearly in focus, you’ll automatically work closer on an organized path rather than helter-skelter. Focus breeds productivity, and productivity produces results. Steering away from the task at hand almost always creates distraction, or dis-traction. You not only lose focus, your momentum decreases as well.

Using our personal weight loss example from above, consider this. If we work out every other day all week long, then binge on double-slices of blueberry pie and huge scoops of vanilla ice cream on Friday night, how can we possibly expect to reach our weekly weight loss goal? If we’re not consistent in our efforts, whether in our personal lives or in business, we have little hope of achieving our lofty objectives we thought so diligently about all week long.

Keep What Works, Ditch the Rest

When you come upon a tactic that is working for you, maintain and even increase the level of input of this tactic for even greater success. Many of the daily routines you incorporate not only work well individually, the success they bring might even be compounded by other things you are doing. Stick with them, of this there is no doubt. However, if you discover something in your routines that don’t produce a positive outcome, or even a neutral outcome, toss it. You’ll notice the removal of even a small thing can produce noticeable improvement in outcomes.

Try New Stuff-See What Happens

Experimentation is often a key to identifying new inroads toward goal attainment, so don’t be bashful about getting rid of what might be holding you back and injecting some new tactics into your day for the sake of finding more ways to find success and reach your goals. Come across dead-end tactics? Try something else in its place. You just might surprise yourself with a twist of creativity into the norm, or experimenting with what you found online or heard from a colleague, or read in a magazine. Variety is the spice of life, so give it a try. You can always toss it if the outcome isn’t worth the experimentation.

Optimization Through the Nation

I realize I’ve been using weight loss as our personal example, but I just can’t help myself with this next bit. When you find tactics that work, optimize them. It’s like trying Betty Crocker^© cake Mix for the very first time. Once you realize that it makes the world’s best chocolate cake, optimize it for maximize it by using Betty Crocker^© Fudge Frosting (it’s the best analogy I could come up with, sorry). So, if your business tactics are showing amazing results, tweak it, test it, make it the absolute best outcome possible, and you can have your cake and eat it too (sorry again).

Why would you want to do that, you might be wondering? Well, challenging your own abilities is the best way to grow both personally and professionally. Status quo is the killer of ingenuity and innovation, as well as growth. Never settle for Okay, Satisfactory, or Acceptable. Always optimize for better results, and you will ultimately surprise yourself with your own successes.

Expand Your Horizons

They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but no one ever mentions the fertilizer and water the next door neighbor is using while you’re not looking. Those individuals that seem to constantly find success never settle for sameness. They are on a mission for growth in both their business ventures as well as their personal lives. Expand your knowledge by reading, listening to podcasts, going to conferences, even studying new industries and fields of endeavor.

Make it a habit to learn something new every month. The habits of the top 1% in this country are pretty straight-forward. They read a great deal, both contemporary pursuits as well as reading the classics. They make time for rest and family so as to stay grounded to what’s really important. They seek information from mentors, experts, coaches and industry experts. They serve as stewards to faith organizations when possible.

A person can go a long way by heeding these six recommendations for a better life. Is 2019 the year you rediscover, reinvent, refresh and restore the best you that you can be? It could be and is well within your reach…