Have Your Best Year Yet with This Simple Tool

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This week on the SUCCESS Line we are giving you two coaches for the price of one. I brought on my friend and fellow SUCCESS coach, Russ, to share his insights and help entrepreneurs plan for the year to come. 

Often, entrepreneurs are so caught up in the moment, in the day-to-day of their business, that they forget to look ahead. But putting out small fires every day is not how we build momentum. We have to be intentional with our goals, actions and strategies. If you want to set yourself and your business up for success in 2022, read on. 

Change your thinking.

Limiting beliefs are the biggest reason most entrepreneurs never reach their potential. They fear failures, so they don’t even allow themselves to say their big, scary dreams out loud. They stay small and in their comfort zones, where they know they won’t fail. 

I’ll give you an example. A mentor once asked me to write down the most money I’ve ever made in a year. At the time, I was proud of this number—I had worked hard and made a good living. But my mentor challenged me, asking, “Who do you have to become and what do you have to start thinking about in order to become the person who makes that much money in a month?” 

I was shocked. It hadn’t even occurred to me that that might be possible. I had gotten comfortable and complacent where I was. I had stopped dreaming of more. 

I needed to dream bigger, and so do you. 

George Bernard Shaw once said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.” Get unreasonable about your goals for 2022. Set goals so big that you can’t yet see exactly how you will get there. Stop asking what if I don’t hit my goal and start asking, what if I do? Allow yourself to dream, and then take massive action.

Know where you’re starting from. 

Before we can plan and execute an amazing 2022, we have to know where we are starting from. In what areas of my life am I winning? And more importantly, where am I losing? 

One way to assess this is to use the SUCCESS Wheel. The SUCCESS wheel takes you through an audit of the five major areas of your life— business, purpose, wellness, relationships and social—and then it goes one step further by asking you to look at the specific subsets within each of those areas. 

As you go through the wheel, take an honest look at how you are performing in each category. If there is a raging fire in one area of your life but your business is doing great, the unfortunate truth is that that fire will spread. Or if your relationship with your family has gone out the window or your physical well-being is suffering, then you have to consider what our success is truly worth. 

What would it look like to be a 10/10 in all categories? What would you need to change, add or give up? 

We can’t win the race until we know where our starting line is. Download the SUCCESS Wheel, go through the exercise and then chart the course forward.

Build your business around what matters. 

You’ve set big goals and you’ve figured out where you’re starting from. So now, how do you actually find the time to accomplish it all? 

Many entrepreneurs think that the only way to accomplish more is to fill every hour of the day with their work. They put business first and then fill in life around it.  But they have it backwards. We don’t live to work, we work to live. 

Consider this, what happens to your business the week before you go on vacation? You become a productivity ninja, accomplishing your tasks with laser focus. The way you accomplish more is not by working 24/7, but rather it is by being more purposeful with the time you have. Add vacation, rest, family and relationships to your calendar and then build your business around it. When you’ve slotted in a rest day or your child’s soccer tournament as non-negotiables, it will make you that much more productive with the time you do spend at work. 

We’ve all heard the maxim, “If it’s not on your calendar it doesn’t exist.” But to that we would add, “If they are not on your calendar then they do not exist.” We will always be able to work, but we will not always get a do-over with the people in our lives. Build your business around what truly matters and you will find that your time has opened up in a whole new way. 

The SUCCESS Line is no longer releasing new episodes on the SUCCESS Podcast Network, but you can still listen to the full conversation below.

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Ben Fairfield is the Managing Director of SUCCESS Coaching & a SUCCESS Certified Coach.

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