Do you want to make This year your Best Year Yet?

These famous lines speak to me deeply:

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way….Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

-WH Murray, The Scottish Himalaya Expedition (1951)

Why shouldn’t this year be your best year yet? What stops you?

  • Is it that last year was a miserable year for you and others, so this one might be more of the same?
  • Is it that you have tried changing things in your life for years, and you haven’t managed to do it?
  • Is it because of your husband/wife/child/elderly parent/being a single mum or dad?

Could it be because you don’t believe in yourself?

Where are you in your journey of development to having a fulfilling life and happiness?  To what extent have you realised that the key ingredient is you? You determine, to quite a large extent, what happens to you in the future and, much more importantly, how you make meaning of what happens to you in the future.

Build a new identity that is capable of changing, growing and learning

Your current life is simply a reflection of your current sense of identity. How you live now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously).

To enable change to happen more easily, you need to start believing new things about yourself.

The key to stepping up to the mark and doing things differently in your life is to change your sense of who you are. You will only do things that you truly believe are possible, so make sure you have an identity in which your dreams are possible!  If you change your identity (the type of person that you believe you are), then it’s easier to change what you are doing with your life.

Changing your view of who you are

Changing your beliefs about yourself isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There are two steps.

  1. Decide the type of person you want to be.
  2. Prove it to yourself with small wins.

Start with incredibly small steps – this is key to creating new behaviours and new actions in your life. The goal is not to achieve results to start with. The goal is to become the type of person who can achieve those things.

Become the sort of person who could get these results. For example, I want to feel more confident as a writer so I can write my Life Talent book “Success from the inside out”. The small win I have committed to is to publish a “micro blog” of 100 words or more on Facebook every day,  and a long blog (like this one) once a week. I have been doing it since December and I am really enjoying writing! I feel like a writer! Funnily enough, I am already a published author, but the habit of writing was never truly established in my identity.

To keep myself motivated to microblog on Facebook everyday, I reward myself in a tiny way: I have downloaded a free one page 2015 calendar in a Word document from the internet and every time I publish a micro-blog, I give the date fluorescent yellow shading. Now when I open the calendar, the amount of bright yellow shading in January jumps out at me and I feel proud.

To create a new habit that proves to you that you are the sort of person who can grow and change, find a very small step that takes less than two minutes. Why not get an enormous wall calendar and put smiley faces on it every day you act in the new way? Any habit that you create and maintain for more than 30 days in a row is likely to stick. The secret is to make the habit so small that you can do it without thinking about it.

Supposing you want to get more opportunities to at work to be involved in things that express your passion.  Instead of waiting until you have the courage to give a dramatic presentation on it, come up with a short sentence which can be inserted into everyday conversation. For me it could be “I love helping people have great lives”; or “I came from a difficult family background, so I had to find myself, and I love helping other people make sense of their lives”. Wouldn’t it be fun to communicate your passion to someone every day this week at work? And guess what, one of these days, someone will pick up on it and suggest that you get more involved in a project that lets you use your passion.  I was best man at a wedding in China and talked to my friend’s wife about what I love, which is this work. I now make six trips a year to teach it in China. I would never have guessed it, but If I hadn’t been talking about what I love, it would never have happened.

How can you be more of the person you want to be today?

Imagine the sort of person you want to be, make sure this is the sort of person who loves to learn and grow, who, like all of us, may fall flat on their face, but promptly picks themselves up again. Create a little video of this in your mind. Now, what would be a tiny action that you could repeat every day that would take you one tiny step closer to it? An action that would start to prove to you that you could be this person. If you have an identity that is capable of growing and developing and having the life you want, then change becomes much easier.

You may find it helpful to attend our workshop, the Personal Transformation Intensive to help you revitalise yourself, increase your confidence, improve the way you deal with difficulty, and turn what held you back in the past into resources for your future.

Should you want to go even deeper and really look at your psychological resources and your strengths; to build a new identity of someone who is developing and growing; and to reveal and heal the impact of anything that is disempowering in your life, then the Life Talent Programme is for you.

So, make THIS the year you decide to get a step-change in how you view yourself and your life.

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