In the Best Year Yet® system of creating plans for success there are 5 Principles of Transformation and a sixth to “Make it all Happen”, for your life and business. Spend a few minutes today learning these principles and see how you can transform your life.
Principle One:
Appreciate Accomplishments!
We look first at last year’s successes and disappointments. In the cycle of productivity this is the last step and is often one that we skip. We focus on creating and doing and forget to appreciate what we did and learn from our accomplishments and disappointments. By staying in touch with your successes, you generate the confidence to move on to make new things happen, giving us energy and motivation that generates our success.
We often forget to recognize the things we have accomplished and focus on the things we didn’t. In the 2004 summer Olympics a track athlete won 4 out of five gold medals. In interviews with him he focused on the one medal he didn’t achieve instead of on the incredible success he had. Acknowledge your accomplishments, each year, each month, even every day. Focusing on accomplishments builds energy for moving forward, for achieving more.
Take a few moments to make a list of those things that you did well and that made you proud during the past year. Some examples might be:
“I resolved a family conflict with a win-win result.”
“Our newest product increased overall annual sales revenue by 15%.”
“I added five new customers to my business each week”
“I spent important and valuable time with my family”
Include everything you can think of, the big accomplishments and the small. Don’t edit and judge the list, just get them all down on paper. Give yourself credit for what you have done. Once you have completed the list, look over it and appreciate yourself and what you have done. I encourage my clients to do this exercise every day. Its part of what I call a Passion Journal. When you are a small business owner this exercise can keep your momentum going, can help you build needed energy for continuing your business. At the end of the year, when you look back at your accomplishments your list is pages and pages, and you are in awe of yourself!!
The second part of this step is to acknowledge your disappointments and challenges. It’s the other side of the coin. Review those things that did not turn out well because of your own actions or events beyond your control. Some examples:
“I was impatient with my mother when she needed my time.”
“Our endowment fund did not earn a satisfactory return on investment.”
“I didn’t get the new product launched”
“I spent too much time working”
“We didn’t get a vacation”
Again, make a list and write each disappointment down, without editing and judging. Whatever comes to mind get it down on paper, its part of letting them go. With both of these steps it’s great to share the list with someone you trust, reading each item. This step is designed to energize us and to clean the slate, preparing us for a new year.
Taking the time each year to acknowledge our accomplishments and disappointments is an important part of creating success and producing results. Congratulate yourself. You have taken the first step to transforming your life and creating an extraordinary new year.
Principle Two:
Learn Your Lessons!
In our annual review of the year the first principle is to look at what we did accomplish and our disappointments. The second principle is to: Learn Your Lessons. To learn your lessons it’s important to look at both the things learned from success and the lessons learned from the mistakes, disappointments and challenges that occurred.
In principle two, it’s time to look at the places where you fell short. Here is where we tell the whole truth and “nothing but the truth”. Looking at our shortfalls can be hard, but be honest with yourself. There might be a valuable lesson to be learned that will propel you forward in the upcoming year. Make a list of the things that didn’t go as planned, the places you came up short and your disappointments. Take a look at your lists of accomplishments and disappointments. Look for the themes – how did you achieve that? What caused that disappointment? We each have tremendous inner wisdom. We can learn a great deal from our selves, and from our accomplishments and disappointments.
It becomes a lesson when you turn it into a positive statement. Now, select a short, memorable and POSITIVE statement that sticks out at you – and write it as ADVICE to yourself. The statement should be meaningful so that if you followed the advice for the next year, and focused your behavior on it—it would help you avoid repeating the same disappointments as previously. Several examples of new guidelines could be:
· ASK FOR HELP
· JUST DO IT
· TRUST THE PROCESS
· ALWAYS listen to my heart!
· Follow up, follow up, follow up
Choose three guidelines for your focus for the next year. Keep them where you can see them and then use them to increase your success and accomplishments.
Taking the time to review our successes and disappointments to identify the important lessons is part of the process of transforming your life to one of extraordinary success. In these steps you essentially clean the slate and prepare for a new plan.
Principle Three:
Shift Your Paradigm
Many of us get in our own way when we set out to achieve a goal. Something stops us, blocking the success we want. When you really take the time to evaluate what is in the way it comes down to our own limiting beliefs and behaviors. Determine your barriers to success and the reasons (limiting assumptions) you believe in them. It’s about listening to that inner voice that tells you what you can and can’t do.
For business, we can get stuck in our familiar paradigm. This has happened in big businesses, such as Motorola and Nokia. Remember analog cell phone service. Motorola had the market. They were THE cell phone to own. When digital service started and digital cell phones Motorola believed that it wouldn’t go anywhere. They didn’t develop the technology. Nokia did and they took over the market. Motorola has had an uphill climb to get back in the market. They were stuck in the paradigm of analog technology. Paradigm shifts happen all the time. As business owners we need to stay clued into the paradigms we are living with and how they may be shifting. In looking at paradigms look at both your personal paradigms or stuck places and your industry paradigms. As the Internet develops we each have to continuously look at how we communicate, market, and do business. The paradigm for each of those is constantly shifting and changing.
Create a new vision, a new reality that discards the limiting assumptions and leads to positive actions and results. Keep it positive, personal, and in the present tense, “as if” it is already happening.
Limiting Paradigm:
“The softening economy is slowing our growth in sales.”
New Empowering Paradigm
“We provide quality products and outstanding customer service that lead to soaring sales.”
Staying aware of your limiting beliefs and limiting paradigms and continuing to work to shift them empowers you and your business. It creates the environment for producing results.
Principle Four:
Live Your Values!
Values are what guide our decisions. They are an integral part of who we are and how we live our lives. Being clear with yourself about your values, what’s important to you as you build your dream and vision; is vital to your overall success. Inventory your values, which are the values that make you who you are, that you just can’t live without? Complete this exercise for your business as well. How well can your business do if you are out of alignment with your values? Since values are our guides for our decisions if we are unclear about our values we can get way off track.
Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air.
You name them work, family, health, friends and spirit, and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball.
If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls---family, health, friends and spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.
Brian Dyson, CEO of Coca Cola Enterprises
Principle Five:
Set and Focus on Top Priority Goals!
Your goals are set and strategic plan developed within the context of your guidelines, your vision, and living your values. Writing down all of the goals for each of your major roles gets them all out on the table. Often goals can be combined or are repetitive. Choosing the top 10 goals gives you a powerful focus for the year. When you develop goals that are SMART they are:
· Simple
· Measurable
· Attainable
· Relevant
· Time-focused
This gives you the ability to track and measure each. When you set goals that meet the guidelines of SMART you can achieve great success.
The framework for creating and achieving your goals and Best Year Yet strategic plan is the Cycle of Productivity: 1) Create the plan; 2) Do what you plan; 3) Complete the plan; 4) Acknowledge how well you do. Because this is a cycle, you can repeat the BYY process year after year. Phase 4 of the cycle is critical to keeping the cycle going. The Five Principles of BYY focus on phases 4 and 1. The BYY system also provides techniques that ensure the success of phases 2 and 3 and implementation of your strategic plan.
Once you have identified and created your annual plan you need to strategize on how to make it happen. Implementation is often where individuals and businesses fall short.
Principle Six:
Make it all happen!
Break down your goals each month into smaller monthly goals, and even better is to break them into weekly goals. Establish a system of accountability. Most people start out the year with a great plan and great strategy and as the year moves on, they lose focus and the plan drifts. Our coaching provides you with the ongoing support and accountability to produce results.
Staying focused on goals and the things you desire is one of the greatest challenges many of us face. Perhaps you set a goal or a desire this year but in the day to day of our busy lives we lose track of it and as a result we end up abandoning it until next year.
Keeping ourselves accountable can be accomplished in a few ways. Here are our 12 tips for creating a focused and fun approach to success:
- Take the goal and break into smaller steps and review it each week and score yourself
- Make a chart to chart progress, each step of the way
- Hang signs around the house, in the car, at work with your new guidelines, empowering paradigm and top 4 values to keep you focused
- Tell family and friends about the goal and intention, when you share your goals people come forward with resources for you
- Create your own mastermind group to help you stay on track and support your ups and downs
- Partner with a friend or colleague to be an "accountability buddy", share your plan with them and talk once a week to let them know how you are doing
- Hire a coach to help you identify your goals and keep them on track all year towards extraordinary success
- Create celebrations of success; reward yourself -- gold stars, dinner out, a new something!
- Meditate each day on focused goal attainment
- Write your vision and goals down and read them everyday
- Join the Entrepreneur Success Group, and be part of a powerful group of business owners committed to achieving greater success in their business and greater balance in their lives.
- Have fun with each success and acknowledge it!
To move yourself into the success you desire spend some time now, creating your vision and focused plan for success. Building the business that you want is possible. With a focused vision, strategic plan and implementation plan you can achieve what you set out to.
Alignment
* Of personal values and goals
* Of individual and organizational goals
Empowerment
* Of individuals to attain maximum potential
* Of all levels of employees to attain a participative approach
Accountability
* By tracking weekly and monthly goals
* By measuring and assessing achievement
and
RESULTS for Your Best Year Yet!
Donna Price, M.S.; M.Ed. President of Compass Rose Consulting, LLC, provides business coaching to business owners/leaders, using her experience as a senior level manager for 18+ years and extensive background working with people to achieve their goals and her training as a coach, facilitator, Donna has a track record of helping businesses grow. Donna offers individual and group coaching and business development programs. Sign up today for a complimentary initial strategy session: dprice@compassroseconsulting.com or call 973-948-7673. http://www.CompassRoseConsulting.com; subscribe to our newsletter at: http://www.BuildYourBusinessSuccessNow.com
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