Set Your Sights On A Brave New Year

Happy New Year!

It’s hard to believe a new year is upon us. I know for me, I feel like it was a minute ago that I was bidding farewell to 2017… and yet here we are… in 2019!

As you know, I have a passion for encouraging people to live their biggest, their best and (therefore) their bravest life.

It sounds a little cliché I know. I mean, what is your ‘best’ life? Certainly it’s not one in which you spend your life living in your comfort zone and never venturing out to do and try things you’ve not done before.

Nor is your best life one in which you glide seamlessly from one victory to the next – never suffering the blow of disappointment or sting of rejection. That would deprive you of all that you need to grow and learn and become the full quota of a person you have it within you to be.

Let’s face it, as I wrote in Make Your Mark, life is not linear. It’s full of twists and turns, ups and downs and sometimes it can land us in places we never expected, much less planned for. As I know from plenty of personal experiences, sometimes our best laid plans can totally derail!

It’s why I believe that living your ‘best life’ is about living a brave life.

It’s about opening your heart wide to the full spectrum of life’s experiences and emotions.

It’s about daring to pursue the highest vision you have for your life, however daunting it may feel from where you are now.

It’s about pursuing goals that both stretch you and light you up.

It’s about lowering your mask, sharing your vulnerabilities and connecting with other people from a place of authenticity, not superficiality.

It’s about keeping faith when hope grows dim and your dreams have crashed to the ground.

It’s about saying ‘no’ to what no longer inspires you so that you can say ‘YES!’ to what does.

And it’s about daring to believe that you are here to make a mark that no one else can.

All of which takes courage. Which is why all too often people let their fear of not having what it takes to take that chance or make that change keep them living smaller lives than they have it within them to live.

It’s why one of the biggest regrets of the dying is that they lived too safe and risked too little… that they wished they’d been braver.

Perhaps you and I have met before. Perhaps we never have. Either way, what I know for sure is that you don’t want to look back one distant day and wonder ‘What if?’

What if I’d tried?
What if I’d pushed on?
What if I’d reached out?
What if I’d not cared so much what everybody else thought?
What if I’d quit?
What if I’d really trusted that deep gut feeling I had and dived in… or walked away?

I also know that there are things that tug at your heart. Things that you would love to do – or change – over the course of the year ahead.

To that end, I encourage you to put aside an hour (just one dedicated hour) in the days ahead to write out your vision for 2019. Following the advice of Stephen Covey to “Begin with the end in mind” I suggest you do it like this:

EXERCISE: Begin with the end in mind

Get out a blank piece of paper (or better still, use a blank page in a journal) and imagine you are at the end of 2019 looking back on the year that was.

Imagine writing a letter to yourself, acknowledging all that you’ve accomplished, learnt, changed and created in the previous 12 months. Think big. Let your imagination off the leash. Don’t be limited by what is imminently reasonable… go for whatever excites and inspired you the most with as much details as you can muster up. The more you bring it to life in your imagination, the more easily you’ll be able to manifest it in reality. And if fear rises up to curb your ambitions to more ‘doable’ heights, breath into it (several times if necessary), but then press on right through the middle of it. After all, we fail far more from timidity and living in the shadow of fear than we ever do from over daring and taking action in its presence.

You can use whatever wording you like. But if you need a little help to get started, you’re welcome to use the wording and prompts below (or not!).

The key thing is, you write from the place of having brought your dreams into reality… and you let inspiration guide your pen.

December 31st, 2019

Dear (insert your name)

I want to acknowledge you for the incredible year you’ve just had – for all that you’ve done, for all that you’ve overcome and most of all, for the person you’ve become along the way.

Where to begin?

Firstly…. (work, career, business, leadership)
Secondly… (key relationships)
Thirdly… (wellbeing, fitness, physical challenges)
Next… (friends, travel, hobbies, skills, learning, giving back)

Doing this exercise can be a powerful tool for setting you onto a bolder course than you would ever otherwise travel.

If you are feeling a little stuck about what you most want to accomplish in the year ahead (and with the rest of your life beyond it!) then I would love to support you through my Reset Your Life Compass online coaching program. Consisting of 7 weekly videos and worksheets, I hope you’ll check it out.

To encourage you to invest in your future, I’m offering a special Brave New Year discount off my Reset Your Life Compass course. Just enter BNY2019 at check-out to get 30% off. This offer will be valid until January 10th.

Wherever your life is at right now – whatever opportunities you see or challenges you’re wrestling with – just know that you have within you everything it takes to create an extraordinary year ahead. A year that you will look back up with enormous pride and gratitude.

But first, you must be willing to choose to walk the path of faith over fear and to embrace the discomfort that comes from venturing onto new ground toward new and bigger possibilities for your one and only precious life.

If I can support you in that endeavour, I would be very, very honoured.

Together we can be braver, more often, than we can ever be alone.