Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals
We’ve talked a lot about the importance of living life to the fullest and finding inspiration from those who are already on that journey. Just like us at Humans Being Happy, you might be ready to embark on that journey yourself, and want to dive into designing the plan that will get you there and take the first steps.
In Michael Hyatt’s book Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals, he outlines a straightforward plan for getting organized and doing just that. If you haven’t heard of Michael Hyatt, he’s a serial entrepreneur and executive leadership coach. I thought it’d be timely to compare notes with his framework since we’re still (mostly) at the beginning of the year, a perfect time to set new things in motion!
This book was an easy read and has many similar themes to other goal setting literature, so I wouldn’t hesitate to pick this up if you’re ready to make this your best year ever! I’ll pull out some of my highlights loosely structured on Hyatt’s 5-step action plan.
Believe in the Possibility
This step is all about ensuring your beliefs and belief systems are rooted to be the foundation that allows you to build success on top of. Many of us have limiting beliefs that get in the way of our own success. In my own personal life and career I’ve had so many doubts that spiral into crippling imposter syndrome, and they are all rooted in a belief that I wasn’t capable or deserving of a positive outcome.
Hyatt outlines steps to first recognize how powerful your beliefs are and the effect they have on your life, to understand and confront any limiting beliefs, and then finally to upgrade them. I love the example he gives — if Martin Luther King Jr. just accepted the status quo of the prevalent belief system of the day, that the burgeoning calls for civil rights was flawed and that American society wasn’t ready for change, he never would have created the incredible movement he did.
Complete the Past
Hyatt talks about how the US Military has become one of the most effective fighting forces in the world thanks to their After Action Review practice. After every mission, training exercise, or significant event, squads will take the time to objectively talk about all the details of the event and what went well and also what didn’t go well. They have a culture of constant learning that acknowledges the past.
If you’re coming from the tech world, you’re probably familiar with agile and running retrospectives with your teams. The ceremony might be different but the intent is the same — acknowledge what just happened, learn from the bad, and find opportunities to do better.
Hyatt recommends examining your past year, thinking deeply about these 7 questions:
How did you see the past year going?
What were your plans, your dreams, your concrete goals if you had any?
What disappointments or regrets did you experience this past year?
What did you feel you should have been acknowledged for but weren’t?
What did you accomplish this past year that you were most proud of?
What were two or three specific themes that kept recurring?
What were the major life lessons you learned this past year?
I also love that he suggests getting into the practice of showing gratitude through exercises like keeping a gratitude journal, saying prayers, and being more thankful for everything you already have. Research shows a consistent practice of gratitude is key to feeling fulfilled, and unlocking the positivity required to tackle new challenges.
Design Your Future
Now that we’re in the practice of learning from the past, it’s time to sketch out what the future looks like. Some systems rely on goal setting, while others look to habits to build towards your desired outcomes. Hyatt thinks there’s a place for both goals and habits in order to build towards your vision of a fulfilling life.
For goals, many of you maybe familiar or utilized the SMART system of goal setting. Hyatt takes it to the next level with SMARTER — he suggests goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Risky, Time-keyed, Exciting, and Relevant. The last two are new for me and have an interesting intent — if the goals you set get you going in the morning (exciting) and are actually building toward your dreams (relevant) then it will increase the likelihood of completing those goals. I’m going to start trying to incorporate those in my own goal setting from now on, coupled with the other strategies that Howard’s talked about before.
Habits form the backbone of your daily rituals, and these rituals are the operations behind helping you succeed in achieving your goals. If you have a system of habits that allows your to spend time on your goals, and consequently don’t let things get in the way of achieving them, your probability of success skyrockets.
Find Your Why
This is probably the hardest one, and I know it is for me, but to really connect all the dots for your best year ever, you need to understand your own intrinsic motivators. Hyatt suggests a few exercises to do so, and just as important, to prioritize them. Once you have a list you can constantly review to see if the activities in your life are connected to your motivations.
People lose their way when they lose their why.
The second part of this is to build your team — a concept that we’ve talked about a lot! Surrounding yourself with like-minded people, and sharing your goals and motivations with them is like building a micro-community in which you can all cheer each other on and share in lessons and wins.
Make It Happen
The last part is to ensure all of this planning is not just a thought exercise, and you build an execution plan around it. Like other successful frameworks, Hyatt suggests breaking down bigger goals into smaller actionable steps, and focus on gaining momentum by picking easy tasks. Then use that momentum to tackle some of the tougher challenges ahead.
Visibility helps you see your progress and keep you motivated. I love the idea of having a wall full of sticky notes being moved from in-progress to done. Build up a consistent review process — weekly, quarterly, yearly. Share it with your community so that you’re celebrating wins together!
Starting on My Best Year Ever
You’ll probably notice that we’ve talked about many of these concepts before. This book is a nice compendium of a lot of successful strategies and lays it out nicely with great tips that Hyatt’s seen success with. I’m excited to incorporate some of these new exercises to make this year my best year ever!
