How’s your new year going so far?
The stress of the holidays and all the fresh start pressure can be hard I know. And have we been through it the last few years or what!
Still, I’m hopeful for this new year. 2022 was a special year for me because my husband and I had our first baby girl. Our miracle. The truth is I want to be better. I want to be better for her.
I want you to be able to live a peaceful, whole life too. The best one you can live. That’s why today I want to share with you the key things I learned from Michael Hyatt’s book Your Best Year Ever. Now, confession time- I had this book sitting on my kindle the year before. Yeah, I got through a couple of chapters and quit reading. It wasn’t because the book was bad. Quite the contrary. Good stories and a great start. Just, you know…life.
But as I knew the new year was approaching I got determined to put some effort in and read the book before January and I did. I read it when I was rocking my baby girl to sleep and whenever I could. I highlighted and took notes and here are some of the key points I took away from it, though I recommend you read it for yourself. If you have Kindle Unlimited you can read it for free.
Your Best Year Ever By Michael Hyatt
Can you really change how your year goes?
Hyatt starts the book with,
Step 1: Believe the possibility.
Is it even possible to have your best year ever?
This is not a just believe in your dreams type of book. There are practical steps and applications. But the truth is that what we believe does have a big impact on how we whether we live our best year or not so he starts there. He asks us to consider what a truly breakthrough year would feel like if we could imagine the possibility.
One of my highlights,
“How does it feel to have stamina to play for hours with your kids, pursue your favorite hobbies, and have energy to spare?”
This one hit home for me as energy is something I’m working on. This momma is tired ya’ll! But I’m implementing habits that are helping and that’s what having your best year is all about.
“Imagine waking up grateful and going to bed satisfied, How does it feel to face life’s ups and downs with peace in the deepest part of your soul?”
We don’t often take a moment to imagine the possibilities. Life is hectic and maybe we’re afraid of being disappointed but there is always hope that we can create change. People do it all the time. The first part of the book gives space to dream a little. What does your best year even look like?
Next Hyatt walks you through,
Step 2: Completing the past.
I found this really helpful. It was one of my favorite parts of the book actually. I took time to look at the past year. The success, the failures. The things I wish had gone differently. It’s closure. But then he has you look at the lessons that you can take forward with you. There is opportunity even in regret and this is healing.
Live and learn and move forward in a better way.
“Whatever our past, if we can see it through the lens of gratitude we will discover that our present is full of more than we can possibly ask or imagine. Gratitude has the potential to amplify everything good in our lives.”
Step 3: Design Your Future
Don’t get lost here. This is not a visualize it and it will come to you kind of thing. This is about planning your goals for your best year, writing them down, and stretching yourself but also about creating the habits in order to actually achieve what you want to. Hyatt explains the comfort and discomfort zone and even the delusional zone and how to set yourself up for success.
“Happiness comes from growth and feeling like you are making progress…A goal is not just about what you accomplish. It’s about what you become.”
Be specific with your goals and use action verbs.
A good example he gave,
Be more consistent in blogging. That is not an actionable goal. “Write two blog posts a week, that’s actionable. It starts with the verb write, and it’s clear and directive about the action.”
This sounds simplistic but I can already see it making a huge difference for me.
Step 4: Find your way.
Without a strong purpose that you can keep coming back to, it’s not likely that you will reach your goals. I told you at the beginning of this post my strong way- our daughter. In this section, Hyatt talks about motivation and incremental wins. Also the importance of intentional relationships and accountability. “Choose your circle wisely.”
This can be one of the hardest things. Not everyone has supportive family and friends. Some even try to discourage them. But with the online world our community circle increases and we can seek out the support and resources we need.
Step 5: Make it happen.
“…detailed planning easily becomes a fancy way to procrastinate. It’s a lot easier to plan than to take action. At this stage of the game, the most important aspect of making it happen is practicing the art of the start.”
I’m a planner and I believe in planning. I enjoy digital planning and paper planning. Sharpening the axe first as they say. I think it’s super important. But I get this. We can just plan and not execute which I do have a tendency to do.
Something I liked in this section is Hyatt goes against the Eat The Frog First advice of doing your hardest task first in the day. He talks about setting goals in the Discomfort Zone but starting tasks in the Comfort Zone.
“When you start with the hardest projects first, you drain your mental and emotional energy. Now you’re lagging- and still looking at a handful of small jobs on your to-do list. Suddenly the easy looks hard. It’s a momentum killer.”
He talks about starting with easier tasks and building momentum. Just commit to the next easy action instead of worrying about how you will be successful.
What do you think about that? I would love to know in the comments.
“What if your next step feels uncertain? Don’t sweat it. Just try something and don’t worry if it’s wrong. The goal may be risky, but the next action isn’t. You’re stepping out, but not far. If it doesn’t work out, you just take another step… try something, and if you get stuck, try something else.”
For someone like myself that tends to worry if I’m doing the right thing, this is game-changing and I know it is going to help me live my best year.
The book then goes into all the practical things you need like activation triggers, conducting reviews to see how things are going, celebrating your wins, and more.
A few of my other highlights:
“Avoid limiting our goals to our current resources. Resources are never-I mean never the main challenge in achieving our dreams.”
“Your goal is the what, your strategy is the how. There’s nothing sacred about your strategy. You can change it at any time if it’s not producing results. If we’re married to our strategies and they fail us, our goals will suffer. But if we’re committed to our goals, we can confidently pivot on our strategies as often as we need to hit our targets.”
“When we skip the celebration, we cheapen our efforts. And we also shortchange our lives and the lives of those closest to us.”
Years of wisdom in this book to live your best year. Michael Hyatt rebranded to Full Focus after all. Hyatt has some nice free resources here.
I hope you will grab a copy of Your Best Year Ever and read it and not let it sit for over a year like I did the first time. What I’m reading now: The 12 Week Year by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington. Happy reading!
What is the best year of your life? Could be this one. Think about it.
You may also like: Why Smart People Keep Underperforming and How To Stop
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What is the best year in the world? Your Year.
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