Preparing for the New Year – Evaluating the Old Year
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.The best way to prepare for 2007 is to carefully consider your performance, failures and successes in 2006. Many of us will be formulating resolutions and making plans for what we want to accomplish next year. And this is excellent – the first step in achieving your goal is to know what it is. And the surest way to ensure personal development is keep focusing on it.
“Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success.” ~ Henry Ford.
Consider each area of your life
In order to know where we are going we must consider where we have been. 2006 is almost at an end and now is an apt time to do an evaluation of your year. Many news and radio programs will ‘look back at the year’. Well, you need to do the same thing for your life. I suggest you do this very systematically.
Consider the various areas of your life including:
- Health
- Career
- Family
- Personal Relationships
- Personal Development
- Finances
- Education
- Charity
Examine your progress
In each area, examine what changes have been made over the past year. Are they positive or negative changes? Do you eat healthier now? Do you now have a regular exercise routine? Do you spend the amount of time you want to spend with your family? Do you have a proper savings plan in place? Have you given up smoking/drinking? Have you conquered your procrastination? Have you advanced in your career?
Examine each area of your life carefully. Writing it down will help make it clearer. When you see what changes you have made over the year, you will begin to feel satisfied and proud or dissatisfied and ashamed of your performance in that area. This will guide you as to what goals you need to set for the New Year. In setting your goals, read the series on Achieving Your Goals. This will help to ensure that you set your goals in the most success-oriented way possible.
Consider your reasons for failure or success
Once you have looked at the changes which you have effected in each area of your life, you need to consider why you failed to achieve your goals in certain areas and why you did achieve your goals in other areas. Knowing your stumbling blocks will help you to put steps in place to avoid or overcome them next year. And knowing your catalysts will also help you to set things up to ensure success in the coming year.
If you keep doing what you have always done, you will keep getting what you have always gotten. So you need to evaluate your methods carefully and make the necessary changes to ensure success.
Preparing for the New Year
To summarise, in preparing for 2007 take the following steps:
- Consider each area of your life separately.
- List the major changes in that area over the past year.
- Itemise the major successes in that area.
- Itemise the major failures (disappointments) in that area.
- Evaluate what contributed to each success.
- Evaluate what contributed to each failure.
- List out what you can do to overcome similar stumbling blocks next year.
- List out what you can do to ensure similar success catalysts next year.
In a coming article, we will talk about how to go about setting New Year’s resolutions geared towards success.
“Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.” ~ Confucius.
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- Achieving Your Goals Part I - Goal Identification
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