New Year, Fresh Start?

Every new year we get to ‘reset’ our life and feel rebirth. Such refreshing hope of light also usually come with new energy and determination on how to live to our ideal version of the life.

Interestingly, there is some information that shows online search for certain keywords such as ‘⚖️ weight loss’, ‘🏋️‍♀️gym’, ‘🧘‍♂️yoga’, ‘🥊 fitness center’, ‘save money 💵’, ‘investmen📈t’ actually would see a spike in the search traffic during the end of December to the month of January. This suggests there are many of us who actually share the same desire to make an improvement in a new year.

🥇Prioritize What Are Important

Setting resolutions or goals, ought to be realistic and smart. We have to understand that time is one of the universal constraints that we all have to deal with, therefore it is important for us to draw up our new year goals based on what’s really important to us and have a proper prioritization in place.

🎯Set Our Goals With A Comprehensive Perspective On Life 

Life has a wide array of components and the ‘fulfillment’ and ‘satisfaction’ of each area collectively add up to determine if we have a great life or a life that is less satisfactory. When we review our past year and plan on a new year, we can ‘slice’ it up to a few areas:

• Relationship

• Family

• Financial

• Health / Physical

• Career / Work / Business

• Spiritual / Mental

When we set our new year resolution or new year goals with a comprehensive perspective, we will guide ourselves towards a more fulfilling life.

🔥 Follow Through Determine Your Success
There is also a trend that kind of shows when we have set our new year resolutions, perhaps at the end of the first month or somewhere in between to the second quarter, most of the items in the checklists are already long gone and no longer command a place in our brain. This is also an interesting observation. Why do we spend time, and in certain cases money (such as for the gym membership or purchase of certain items) to list down some goals, only to give up on them so soon?

🪓 Break Down To Smaller Sub-Goals
After we have identified our goals, we ought to take time to come out with a plan on how the goal can be achieved, and how we can take action to fill up the baby steps. A series of small steps and achievements, when there are added up will become a milestone. Starting first is more important than how you started it. Start by setting your sights on the next 3 months and set the small bite-size goal that we aim to achieve during this 3 months period. A quadruplet of 3 months success, will give us success in this particular area.

If your goal is to save RM 12,000 in a year, common sense may suggest to you to save RM 1,000 monthly, and you shall have RM 12,000 at the end of month 12th. What about, considering the alternative whereby we set a goal of say, RM 2,000 for the first 3 months, and work towards that goal first. This allows a person to start small and easier, then later make an adjustment to increase depending on the cash flow position and the events that happen in between. Or you may have a particular season where you expect to have additional expenses, hence for that period of time you may not be saving up RM 1,000 a month, so you allow yourself the flexibility to catch up in other months.

Many times, people stop halfway due to the fact that they seem to be off-track when they conduct a review, so much so they just tell themselves that there is no point to pursue this goal because it has ‘failed’ and has no reasonable reason to believe that the target can be achieved anymore.

🔭 Plan Beyond A Year
It also is important that we should try to set goals beyond 12 months and have a good picture of where we see ourselves in perhaps 3 years to 5 years from where we currently stand. Then each year becomes a bite-size goal for the 3 years or 5 years plan, and each quarter becomes a mini bite-size goal for the overall plans, when each of the sub-goals is on-track, the grand plan will be on-track too. Setting goal beyond just a short-term period allows us to think in a more strategic mindset and able to steer our life towards the direction that would make it worth recalling when we are old enough in the future.

If you are determined to create a life that is ideal and fulfilled, you should not wait but start taking charge Now. If you are unsure where to begin,we can have a chat.