How To Make this A Great Year

The following tips are extremely effective tools to help you create the life you want. They are useful both when you are navigating a difficult time, and when you want to make a good year great. You can use only the ones that appeal to you or all of them – but even using one will make a difference in your life.

Check out the story you are telling yourself.

Someone once said to me, “I am an experiential psychologist. That means that I don’t believe we experience the life we live. I believe we experience the story we tell ourselves about the life we live.” For example, if you try to play golf, and you get terrible results, you can say to yourself, “Man, am I very lousy at golf.” That, by the way, almost guarantees that you always will be. Or, you can tell yourself you “I’m going to take some lessons and figure out how to get the ball to go straight.” You will have a very different experience, depending on which story you tell yourself. You will still have had a bad game of golf – but in one case you are hopeless, while in the other you are hopeful.

Think about one thing that would make
this a great year for you.

It doesn’t have to be something big. Then imagine it happening. Once you can see it, write it down, as if it has already happened – that’s called an affirmation. (Being able to visualize it and writing it down make it 8 times more likely to happen.) For example, if you want more joy in your life, you could write, “I feel joy every time I see the beauty in my surroundings and in the people around me.” If you repeat that to yourself as you visualize it every night before you go to sleep, and every morning before you wake up, I guarantee it will work. That’s because your subconscious will be looking for opportunities to make it true.

What one action could I take?

At the beginning of every month, consider what you could do in the next 2 weeks that will make a difference in your personal and professional life - and do it. You will become more effective each time you do this.

Develop a daily spiritual practice, if you don’t already have one.

There is scientific evidence from Dr. Herbert Benson, a medical doctor and researcher at Harvard Medical School, that 20 minutes a day of repetitive prayer or meditation evokes the relaxation response, which is the opposite of the flight or fight response. That is, it results in decreased metabolism, slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, and slower rate of breathing, as well as slower brain waves. The relaxation response has so much research behind it that it is taught in over 60% of medical schools, and is used to treat hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias, chronic pain, insomnia; anxiety and mild and moderate depression, premenstrual syndrome, and infertility.

Recognize the blessings you already have. I gave a group I worked with homework before we met. I told them that for one week, every night before they fell asleep, they should think of at least 5 blessings that they already have, and experience real thankfulness for them. On waking up, they should briefly write in a gratitude journal anything they felt thankful for at that moment. They told me that their outlook totally changed, and they were much more open and aware of their blessings.

You can be grateful for big things, like your family or your livelihood, or small things, like the lady who smiled at you when you were feeling down.

I once had the opportunity to spend a day with a Tibetan Llama. One of the things he said was,

Move your toes. Think how lucky you are that your legs support you. Now move you fingers, and realize what miracles they can perform. Think about how lucky we are to have our senses – we can see and hear. Too many people focus on what they don’t have, and what they are not. There is nothing sadder than being rich and making yourself poor.

Personally, I feel like the luckiest woman alive, and I am always counting my blessings.

Stretch your comfort zone.

When you’re a baby, your comfort zone is only as big as your mother’s arms. As you grow, it gets bigger every year – until you’re an adult. Then, if you don’t do something to continually expand it, it starts to shrink. So try something that’s healthy but a little bit risky. Grow or develop in some way, whether it’s learning a new language, or how to make a better ski turn, or how to meditate. You get a real sense of accomplishment when you’ve tried something that wasn’t so easy for you, or mastered something you’ve been working on for a while. It will keep you –and your brain – from feeling old or stale.

Make a difference in someone’s life – every day if possible.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s helping a child see their own potential, giving someone reassurance, kindness, or a helping hand, volunteering your time, or donating something of value to you. People who are focused on others are generally happier with themselves, more enjoyable to be around, have stronger immune systems, and do better professionally. So practice random acts of kindness – it will make your day – and your year.

If you use them, the preceding 7 tools will help you create the life you want, and make this as great a year for you as it could possibly be. The more of them you use, the better and faster the results. But even if you use just one, your life will begin to change.