You cannot have an amazing year by doing what you have always done; you must get uncomfortable, you must struggle, you must fail, you must learn until, day by day, you find yourself climbing higher than you have ever climbed before.

Why do most New Years resolutions fall short of their mark? One reason is that most human beings have a tendency to seek relief from things they don’t like versus focus on aims that truly give them life-energy. For example, people rarely get out of bed and say, “I cannot wait to lose weight today.” Imagine instead, saying to yourself, “I am truly excited to play tag football with my kids outside, which requires me to be healthy and fit.”

This reality is aligned with the first Life-Giving Habit: Create Your Life Versus React To Reality. This is why shifting from problem-solving to creating is more likely to lead to results that matter in your life.  This habit requires some imagination skills, that help us to literally see into the future doing what we love to do. 

Once you are clear about the results you want to make happen, then you must ground it accurately in your current reality.   Creating a tension between reality and your desire future is critical for choosing life-giving actions that lead to results.  

During the One Amazing Year design process, we encourage folks to get clear on their desired future and then instead of immediately setting goals, we have you identify a theme that will allow you to experiment. So if you want to be healthy and fit as your vision, your theme might be, eating healthy tasty foods or maybe active-living every day. 

A theme is basically a little mantra that allows you to focus your efforts in positive ways. Being honest about your starting place ensures that you will take the right actions. Many people often struggle to accurately describe their current reality, making statements that just aren’t true.

For example, we will tell ourselves, we have never been good at disciplining ourselves around eating healthy foods, when in fact we have taken on diets that are unrealistic or brutal in their requirements.

So, perhaps this year, we can begin our years by identifying a vision and a theme for what we want this year to be grounded in honest statements about our starting point. Then we can try small experiments that begin to lead to the results that we most care about.

Lastly, if you haven’t downloaded my new free e-book 12 Life-Giving Habits for Life After Outward Bound, click here. You can also purchase the beautiful coffee table version of the book that contributes to the field staff and scholarship funds.

One Amazing Year

Photograph Doc Klein