What is ONE Remarkable Thing You Want to Achieve in the NEW Year?

I love the ending of one year and the beginning of another. It’s a moment in time where you can celebrate or let go of the past and welcome the future. In that moment, you feel a renewed sense of hope and intention. Your energy spikes. Your enthusiasm is high. Your effort expands. You are ready to pursue remarkable achievement.  

Or are you? We all know the intentions of the New Year can be fleeting. It might be days, weeks, or a month or two, but those intentions fall by the wayside, one by one. And you fall back into familiar routines. 

So, I’m suggesting you position your intentions differently. I want you to select only ONE remarkable thing you want to achieve in the New Year. And then I’m going to walk you through establishing focus around that one thing.  

Sam was tired of the chaos and confusion that often surrounded his business, life, and leadership. Priorities overlapped and often trumped one for another, stealing and dividing his time and attention. Why? He had too many focuses, not enough clarity, and could not build momentum toward his desired outcomes. He was frustrated and ready to give up. 

Sam needed a system. He didn’t need a complex, complicated system. He needed something that was simple and easy to execute. He needed something that would trigger actions and behaviors to keep him on the desired path.  

We met at a professional function. That was the beginning of Sam deciding to adopt a new mentality toward remarkable achievement. You can decide to adopt a new mentality about it. too. Right here. Right now.  

There's a "system" to achieve remarkable outcomes. In fact, there are many systems. The key is to find and learn a simplified system or approach that works for you. 

Right now, I want you to pick ONE thing you want to achieve in the New Year. This is your focus. However, beware! Many of you will pick a rather broad focus that will quickly become unachievable. Getting fit and losing weight must be two of the most universal focuses people pick. The problem is, they are too broad. If a broad idea like that comes to mind, start chunking it down until you can identify a manageable portion of it to be your focus.  

Also! Stopping points will derail you quickly. And yet, many are unaware of the stopping points they may encounter for an intended achievement. That's because stopping points really have nothing to do with the focus at all. They have to do with achieving the focus. But rest assured, they will block you from achieving the desired outcome. That was the case for Sam.  

Sam was focusing on the wrong thing he needed to do for remarkable achievement. Yes, he had too many focuses, too many priorities, and was being pulled in different directions. But that was not the challenge. The real challenge was that he had never backtracked to fully understand the crux of his inability to achieve.  

There are two important subsets to understanding focus. One is to summarize past behaviors and actions that either hinder you or help you succeed at accomplishing something. The other is to visualize your intention fully, including how you will tap into your strengths or eliminate the stopping points to move forward. Sam had never fully summarized his past behaviors to recognize the stopping points to his desired future.

Sam’s stopping point was planning and time management. If he didn’t improve that capability, he was always going to be stuck in chaos and confusion. He could identify a focus. He could visualize the desired outcome. But without the summarization part of focus, he would not know the real stopping point for his endeavors and would be forever spinning his wheels.  

To summarize past behaviors and actions, you must practice reflection. That requires you to stop, to pause, and to think about things that work or don’t work for you in your business, life, or leadership. You may do this on the surface, but many don’t do the deep dive required to uncover the real stopping point. When you learn to uncover the real stopping point, you gain great clarity about what you must do next; and palpable momentum begins to build when you activate the flow in the right direction with the right focus.   

Once Sam improved his planning and time management, he was able to minimize the chaos and confusion around him to start achieving at a higher level. 

So, where do you really need to focus? Yes, you want to focus on that remarkable outcome, but what is the skill or behavior you need to achieve it? Start with the underlying skill or behavior and the remarkable outcome will begin to unfold.   

Don’t chase the wrong focus. Summarize your past to uncover the real focus for your remarkable future. Yes, visualize the future you desire, but keep clearing the path with clarity about the most immediate next steps you must take or the skills you must develop to end up where you want to go. Do this in blocks of three and see how quickly your momentum shifts to accelerate your achievement in the New Year.   

It's going to be a GREAT year, especially when you achieve that ONE remarkable thing you want to achieve. Now go do it.