How To Map Out and Reach Your Ultimate Goals This Year
If you check through your experience, you will most likely have a year you feel is the best among the rest. Nonetheless, you can always have a year that can be better than the previous one.

In fact, you can make this year the best ever! How? It all depends on your plans and how you execute them. Note that it’s not all about having a fantastic plan.

Many people have great plans that peter out as the year goes on. So, executing the plan is the most important thing.

This guide will provide you with the information you need to map out the year to have awesome experiences.

Your plan is like a strategy that guides the way you go through the year. If you are in the military, you don’t make plans when you get to the enemy’s zone.

The plan to execute when the initial one isn’t working is plan B, which is still a plan. It’s only on rare occasions that a militant group has to come up with a strategy on the forefront...

Read on by downloading the eBook below!

Strategic Planning Is What Will Catapult Your Success

One of the worst things you can do to yourself as an entrepreneur is to proceed without a proper plan in place. Many people wrongly assume that as an entrepreneur, you can just sort of do whatever you feel like doing, flying by the seat of your pants.

If you choose to do that, what will inevitably happen is you get off track from where you want to end up, and eventually spiral out of control and end up dissatisfied with how your business has turned out.

Planning has many different levels that you should be familiar with. First, there are long term goals - things that you only expect to achieve after years of putting in the work. This could be anything from owning your own location and office to owning a house of a certain size using the profits made from your business.

These goals are important because they give you something to work towards, which at least gives you a destination. Next, there are short term goals, which you could hope to achieve in a few weeks or with a few months of work.

This might be something like receiving your first paycheck from your own business, or making your first big sale. These goals are also important, because if you’re only working toward far off, long term goals, then you’ll feel stuck after awhile of not reaching them.

Closer, more easily attainable goals can help you feel as though you’re making good progress. Finally, you should have milestones that you can reach, leading you toward your long term goals.

These milestones help you keep track of progress, and can range from the number of clients you’re working with to a certain salary that you’re making. These can be good indicators of when you’re moving in the right direction.

As long as you’re continuing to achieve your milestones, you’re getting closer to those long term goals. Having strategic plans doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have every moment of every day scheduled.

Many people can get overwhelmed when they have to map out every little thing that they’re going to do, and if something goes wrong, they’re going to have their whole schedule thrown off.

By having a slightly more general plan, while still having it be well structured, you can remain flexible in the face of adversity, while keeping yourself on track as the weeks go by. Don’t hesitate to really plan out your entire pathway to your long term goals and check in on them as time progresses.

How Personal Development Leads to Success

The thing that is most exciting about the possibilities with crafting a personal development plan for yourself is the role that personal development plays in the level of success you can achieve in all areas of your life, physical, cognitive, and social-emotional.

The fact is, anyone who can passionlessly observe where they are compared to where they want to be while identifying steps and assembling a plan that is truly doable to reach (and even exceed) the goals you’ve set for life literally cannot lose. Even if you slightly miss the mark or change your mind as you go – you still succeeded.

You’ll Become More Self Aware

Being self-aware allows you to look to yourself, the only person you have any control over, for the change that is needed to reach the success you desire. For example, if you realize that you are prickly around criticism during your self-study do you just say, “Don’t critique me because I cannot handle it!” No, instead you teach yourself with the help of books, courses, classes, counselors or coaches (or all the above) to learn to handle criticism better.

You’ll Develop a Better Sense of Direction

When you really know who you are, who you want to be, and you know how to get it you’re going to have a much better idea of where you’re going from here than the average person. Knowing what you want to get out of life is an important aspect of what helps you set your own course. You also learn not to overwhelm yourself trying to do too much at once because you know that when you set your goals right you will achieve them.

You’ll Become More Focused & Effective

One of the things that you want most from personal development is clarity. Developing SMART goals for your life in all areas of your life is one way to develop that clarity. Once you have it you can become more and more focused on doing the right steps to get there that you will also become more effective at realizing each success. You’ll be able to toss away roadblocks, obstacles, and threats because you’re doing it with a plan.

You’ll be Much More Motivated

Motivation can be hard to come by for some people. However, with experience and success, comes motivation. Think about how motivated you feel if you earn a few bucks from an affiliate offer you posted about six months ago. Think about how motivated you feel any time you get good news about an action you took that turned out positive. That’s why you will become more motivated. You’ll have more experience with success due to following your personal development plan.

You’ll Become More Resilient

When you are sure of yourself and where you’re going, something happens along the way. You’ll feel good about the things you’re doing, too. You become a much stronger person. One of the first things you may notice is that you can bounce back faster from issues and roadblocks.

When you know how to plan using actionable steps, to get to where you want to go, there seems to be fewer problems, issues, and roadblocks, simply because you know you’re capable and know what to do. You will have tools, crafted from the development of your personal plan, to help you overcome issues that would ordinarily delayed your progress. There is no way to control the negativity around you; however, you will have more control your actions and reactions.

You’ll Be a Better Friend, Spouse, Parent, Etc.

One of the things you will learn very well as you work on your personal development plan is that you have full control over your own actions. It’s true that you cannot control sometimes how you feel but you can control how you react. It can be hard to realize it but once you fully accept it your relationships will improve dramatically.

The role personal develop plays in your level of success in all areas of your life is clear. People who spend time developing themselves tend to experience life more fully, make more money, have better and more fulfilling relationships, and are more satisfied with their place in the world. The reason is that you cannot get to where you want to go without taking small daily actions to get there. Your personal development plan will be the map that guides you to where you want to go.

The Purpose of a Personal Development Plan

Personal development is a process that you will work on for your entire life. It will help you assess your skills, qualities, and will help you build the lifestyle and life that you envision that you desire for happiness and a high quality of life. The personal development plan can help you with all aspects of your life and help you become more self-aware at home and at work.

Perform a SWOT on Your Life

A well-designed personal development plan will address your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and roadblocks or threats in all areas of your life that you develop. Your plan will identify your strengths so that you can improve them, your weaknesses are so that you can make up for them, and new opportunities, so you know when a door (or window) is open, as well as noting any roadblocks or threats along the way.

Recognize Development Areas

When you perform your SWOT in each area of your life, you will discover internal and external things that are blocking your success. For example, you may hold the belief you’ll never have enough money to save for the future. Because of that, when you do get “extra” money, you tend to blow it right away on all the things you feel you missed out on before. This is a limiting belief about money that a lot of people have because most people think money is a finite resource when it’s not. It’s manmade. Therefore, we can make more.

Identify Your Resources

You may do some work that helps you look at the resource you have available to do a specific task. For example, if you decide you want to start a coaching business, what resources do you have to start it. What things do you need, what things can you live without, what can you do yourself, what does someone else need to do. This works in every single aspect of your life. You may realize you already have all the skills inside to do exactly what you wanted to do. However, you may realize that you need to pay for additional brainpower (resources).

Build Better Relationships

One of the most shocking aspects of creating a self-development plan is how much it can help relationships. When you realize that you only control your own behavior and actions, it starts to get easier to manage relationships. Treating them how you want to be treated is an excellent start but becoming self-aware enough to go farther and realize that not everyone likes what you like so you may need to treat someone the way they like to be treated instead.

Whatever you want to work on can be done via the personal development plan. Whether you want to lose weight, start a business, change jobs, or go back to school – the goal doesn’t matter as much as developing the plan that you need to get where you want to go. Your plan will not be the same as anyone else’s because you are different. That’s why it’s so consequential and unique because it’s just for you.

Entrepreneurial Success Is for Energetic Individuals

To achieve entrepreneurial success, you need a certain level of energy. Just being aware of your need for it won’t always make it materialize. Sometimes, you may have to put forth effort to cultivate the energy that you need.

Those who do well in a niche they choose know that energy is the for getting things done and in deciding which direction to take whenever there’s a problem or choice to make.

Lacking energy can affect your business. Mental energy means you have the mindset, attitude or emotional capacity to do whatever type of mental work needs to get done - such as brainstorming an upcoming project or working on completing a design step for a product launch.

Having the physical energy that you need is important, because when you feel drained, you’re not going to want to do anything. If you do try to get tasks done, it’ll take you twice as long and you’ll use more of your physical resources.

If you’re struggling with feeling energetic, there’s something that you can do to remedy the situation. Understand that energy attracts energy. If you stay stagnant, that will create more inertia.

To overcome your lethargy, challenge yourself to do at least one thing a day that benefits your entrepreneurial endeavor. This might be something like outlining a blog post or reaching out to affiliates.

Whatever you do, just accomplish one thing each day and you’ll find that what happens is the movement, which is a form of energy, will create more energy that you will then feel and benefit from.

It can also help if you have someone that you check in with - such as an accountability partner who is also an entrepreneur. You want someone in a similar business because they’ll often have strengths in the area in which you’re struggling.

Set up a plan to text or email this person daily so that you can go over what you were able to accomplish. Then you can discuss or brainstorm ways to add to that accomplishment.

Connecting with like-minded individuals will often help to boost energy and your mood as well. Make sure that the tasks that you’re working on each day are money tasks. When you start seeing the money come in, it creates momentum.

It’s a tangible reward of the effort that you’re putting in. Your brain’s reward center will be triggered and that will further boost your energy and enthusiasm. You can develop physical energy by limiting stress, which drains you physically and also by deliberately choosing to exercise.

Exercise boosts your endorphin levels, which give you energy. Embrace other healthy habits like getting plenty of rest and eating a nutritious meal plan. If you’re not feeling energetic, put something in plan today so you don’t put off your goals.

Live By Your Goals But Learn to Be Flexible

One of the most important and helpful things you can do in order to be more successful is to set goals for yourself. These can be both short term and long term goals. They help provide you with more structure when you’re trying to figure out what you should be doing, because it at least provides you with a destination to reach.

However, one of the largest detriments that you can have with your goals is when you’re not flexible enough with them. Many people get so hard headed when they’re working towards their goals that they actually end up doing more harm than good.

A bit of stubbornness can work in your favor, since it helps you push forward through some difficult times. But sometimes, you get so belligerent with your goals that you end up stuck, unable to move past it, when a little flexibility could have helped move things along.

For example, if you were creating all of your own products and you were adamant that you would never, ever outsource to others, that can work in your favor sometimes. It might help you save money by doing it yourself, and the project might seem more cohesive.

However, if you reach a point such as designing graphics where yours end up looking pretty amateurish, then you should be a bit flexible and bend the rules to make an exception.

If you are so dead set in your ways that you’re not willing to change, some of these barriers that you encounter along the way will either stop you dead in your tracks, or they’ll force you to do something poorly that could negatively affect you later on.

In general, it’s good to be flexible, as long as you can maintain rigidity when you need to. By not being flexible, you’re actively removing options that could help you get closer to your goals.

Sometimes, you may need to take a step back in order to take three steps forward. Not everything is going to work in your favor constantly, and you can’t let that trip you up. When you’re more flexible, and something doesn’t go your way, you’re able to simply make the adjustments that you need to and continue towards your goals.

By being flexible, you’re not giving up on your goals, but rather you’re figuring out a better way of getting there by being able to avoid or overcome obstacles. Sometimes, you start out with a plan and along the way, you find a better way of doing things, so being able to adapt to necessary changes can improve your business as an entrepreneur.

Embrace Your Dreams and Become an Action Taker

Maybe you have a dream. You want to create a successful online business. Or maybe you’ve already created your business, but you dream of obtaining a level that seems far off into the future.

Dreams are wonderful and should be nurtured. But if all you do is dream about what you want, the odds that it’ll become a reality aren’t that great. Instead, what you have to do is change from just dreaming to dreaming and doing.

It’s time to step away from the sidelines and put everything into motion. Don’t look at improbabilities or what looks impossible. If you do that, you won’t have the right perspective.

Anything is achievable with hard work, even if you can’t necessarily see a way right now. Action is what will make your dreams come true. Sometimes people think that they have to take giant steps and upend their entire life to show progress toward their goals.

That’s not true. Even small steps move you forward. And many small steps will equal up to major change. If you dream of writing an eBook for your business, just writing a few hundred words a day will allow you to complete that book over the course of a few weeks.

Consistent action steps make a difference in whatever you want to see happen. Decide what your goals are involving your dream life and break them down into bite size pieces. This gives you a timeline to bring everything to fruition.

You need to establish the month or year that you want to see your dream turn into a reality. By setting a timeline, you have days and weeks to work with. You’ll know what you need to accomplish to keep moving forward.

Having this keeps you accountable. Tune out what doesn’t help. Don’t listen to people who want to tell you all the reasons why your dream won’t happen. Just because they didn’t achieve it, it doesn’t mean you won’t.

Tune in to what does matter. Read motivating stories about people who had a dream and turned that dream into a reality. Learn what you don’t know if there’s an action step you need to take, but don’t have the skills yet.

Protect your mindset. Believe that your dreams are worthy and that they will come true regardless of any circumstances that might seem contrary to that. Having the right mindset will allow you to continue taking action when something doesn’t work out the way you want it to on the journey.

Find your people. Connect with people you can learn from, people who have a dream and are excited about living it out. This will help keep you motivated and focused on achieving everything you want in life.

Learn to Be Resilient in the Face of Failure

One of the most common mistakes made - not only by entrepreneurs, but by people in general - is giving up in the face of failure. If you spend days, weeks, or even months planning out your roadmap to success as an entrepreneur, the moment something goes wrong, you’re going to panic.

You’ll start to have these wild thoughts about how everything isn’t going to work out and you’ll end up worse off than you started. However, you have to push these thoughts out and stand strong.

The only time that you can truly fail is when you give up entirely. Until then, they’re only setbacks. You should expect to have setbacks and roadblocks along your path to success.

It’s just something all entrepreneurs have to put up with. There are obviously different levels of severity when it comes to setbacks, but no matter what happens, you have to keep making forward progress if you want to succeed.

One thing you have to understand is that setbacks and failure are not always your fault. Sometimes, that’s just what happens. Even if you do nothing wrong, you can still encounter some resistance.

So be fully prepared to face that head on. In these particular situations, it can be extremely frustrating, because you may not have anything to actually learn from it, since it just happened to not work out.

Other times, your failures may be caused by one or many of your own personal mistakes. This should be seen not as a disgrace, but as a learning opportunity. If you look at what happened and what you did wrong, you should be able to understand what to do in the future by avoiding that same mistake.

This is actually how many people become successful to begin with - through failure and repetition, with adjustments made after each unsuccessful attempt. Being set back can have many negative mental repercussions, so it’s important for you to be mentally strong above all else.

If possible, you should work on that even during times when things are going well, by doing things like yoga and meditation to keep your mind strong and stable. If you’re unprepared for it when failure strikes, you’re going to be much worse off.

By preparing and anticipating failure along the way, you can significantly dampen the blow to your mental state that it will bring, allowing you to act fast and get yourself back on the right track - even stronger than ever before.

Be the Kind of Person Who Thrives with Every Challenge

Obstacles are inevitable for entrepreneurs. You’ll encounter them no matter what kind of business you have. You really only have two choices when it comes to dealing with them.

Either you allow them to cause you to shrink back in fear and self-doubt, or you embrace them, refusing to allow them to intimidate you. Believe it or not, a successful business is one that welcomes obstacles.

Being an entrepreneur will come with many ups and downs emotionally because of hindrances. You might experience fear, disappointment, anger and more. Thriving with challenge means that you don’t allow your emotions to guide you.

You recognize the challenge for what it is - just part of doing business - and you pick yourself up and get right back to focusing on moving your business forward to the next step.

If you do some research, you’ll find that businesses that see success today once faced seemingly insurmountable challenges. The only thing they did differently than the businesses that folded up shop did was that they allowed those obstacles to fuel their determination rather than defeat it.

Challenges weed out the weak and less determined. They help those who dig in their heels and see challenges for the opportunities they can be become forged in the fire that these problems bring.

In the end, they come out stronger and better than before they encountered whatever they faced. You can become the kind of person who thrives through challenges by having a winning strategy.

Make sure that you have a group of go getters you can turn to when the setbacks surface. This might be other business owners that you reach out to or successful people that you read about and you can hold onto their advice while you’re going through your challenge.

When you’re struggling with an obstacle, hold onto the reason why you wanted to start your business to begin with. Reminding yourself of your why will help you stay determined to succeed no matter what.

Make sure that your mind is set on the right things. If negativity crops up, kick that thought out and cultivate positive thoughts. If you have a negative mindset toward obstacles, overhaul that thinking and become determined to find at least one good thing about the obstacles you face.

Remember that not every obstacle will leave you the winner. When a challenge feels like it’s driven you to rock bottom, decide if it’s time to create a fork in the road in order to go around it.

For example, you may have a product that you want to launch by a certain date, but one issue after another has developed and that launch date just isn’t going to happen. Go around that obstacle by setting another launch date and using the extended time to add more to your project so that it becomes even more profitable.

31 New Year's Resolutions That Can Change Your Life

For many of us, the approach of a new year is a time for self-reflection and evaluation. It's the time when we find ourselves taking stock of the past year; what we achieved and what we failed to achieve, our brilliant successes and dismal setbacks.

More importantly, we review the resolutions we made at the beginning of the past year and assess whether we actually stuck to them. Often, the fact that we were unable to achieve all or none of them can be very depressing. That's the weird thing about New Year's resolutions.

Everybody makes them but very few of us actually see them through. If you fall into this category, welcome to the club!  

The advent of a new year always inspires and motivates us to make a lot of optimistic resolutions. But as time goes on, the majority of us forget all about them amidst the day to day distractions of a crowded, hectic life. That's a real shame because certain resolutions can change your life.

This book will provide you with a number of powerful resolutions that cover every aspect of your life. They will work to change your behavior, form positive habits and allow you to achieve your dreams.

There's only one catch - you need to stick to them. So, let your first resolution be to steadfastly stick to your resolutions! Once you see the powerful logic behind them, you will definitely make achieving them a priority.  

Now, read on (by clicking on that blue button here-below) to find out how the new year can not only be your best year ever but also transform the rest of your life!