Blending both brain & heart to make your Dreams & Goals a Reality!

I’m SO excited to share my BEST YEAR YET Planning Series with you! It’s a simple, yet super effective 6 step process that will help you plan out your upcoming year to reach your goals and dreams with ease, joy and massive progress without burnout!

Whether or not you’re a passionate planner like me, this process is made to be simple, approachable and to bring together both the brain, planning & goal-setting side of you with your more intuitive, creative and emotional, dreaming side.

Head & Heart = Best of Friends!

I’ve found that the two approaches blended together make for the best outcome!

All brain and no heart leaves it passion-less and can end up feeling more like you’re adding a bunch of “shoulds” to your to-do list without enough soul to keep you inspired.

And all heart but no planning can leave you feeling up in the clouds without any specific way to bring your dreams into reality.

This uniquely blended combo of approaches is more likely to result in you actually making progress and achieving your goals for the year and your life overall, than other approaches that focus on one side or the other separately.

This approach is what I used to:

• plan for and complete my MBA (without an undergrad degree)
  
• find and marry my dream man, Paul!
• I’ve also used this approach with building my coaching business, creating more time for friends & family, health and creativity!
• With ease, flow and magic (most of the time!)

This BEST YEAR YET Planning approach is the first step in my signature Exhale & Thrive Strategy for leadership & lifestyle mastery that I teach my 1:1 clients and is the foundation of my Lifestyle Mastery for Leaders program.

This is what guides you in setting up your life and work schedules, priorities, action steps and approaches to managing your time & energy.

Without this big-picture vision, the rest can lose its meaning and leave you feeling unfulfilled and like your life is being lived for someone else’s goals.

Without having clarity on your purpose, dreams & goals for the year, your time and energy aren’t optimized, you end up doing things that don’t support your dreams, you are unfocused and scattered. This can leave you feeling like you didn’t make as much progress as you would have liked or that you are stuck without any momentum at all!

But before I get into the details of the 6 steps of this process, I’d like to share more about...

How can you stay on track with yearly goals when life/work gets going?

One of the common challenges with yearly goals, new year’s resolutions and setting intentions is to make big goals but then drop them after the first couple of weeks when life gets hectic and other people’s agendas take over your own.

This planning series links with my quarterly, monthly & daily planning approaches so that they all work together.

First you do the big picture dreaming, thinking & planning.

Then you set up the daily/weekly/monthly systems and lifestyle to help you make them come true. :)

Why it’s SO important to include both brain/planning & heart/intention?

The “secret sauce” behind this planning: adding a perfect blend of yin and yang to the process.

This BEST YEAR YET Planning process is one that I’ve developed over multiple years to include both the brain, logic, planning & goal setting side with the softer, intuitive, heart-centered, feeling side.

I include both sides since I believe they both have strengths and when working together like yin/yang, we seem to get the best results.

Using the intuition to connect to our deeper selves, desires, emotions and inner motivations allows us to bring our dreams to the surface, increases our self-awareness which leads to greater fulfillment.

And using the planning side connects us to our brain in a way that can be a tool to support our softer sides.

When the brain leads, often times the heart gets left out, ignored or stifled. But when we lead with the heart, then the brain can support and assist where the heart wants to go.

Also, this is yin/yang balance is a key part to my entire Exhale & Thrive System that I teach in my LML program… as I’ve found that working with both sides, filling up your energy tanks through rest and self-care allows us to reconnect to our yin/heart and then gives us the energy for yang/active/planning/doing parts of our work/leadership and life.

Check out this comment from one of my lovely clients,
Shrell who is an Intuitive Eating Coach about her experience focusing on YIN/YANG activities in the Lifestyle Mastery for Leaders program:

I just wanted to touch base here. It's been a bit of a whirlwind preparing for and enjoying the holidays, but today has been one of rest and reflection. 

I'm finding that I definitely have more Yang activities in my life. It seems I tend to feel I need to get through the Yang stuff first in order to enjoy the Yin, but I must remind myself that allowing the Yin is necessary to complete the Yang! lol. 

Despite being super busy this time of year, I wanted to express that having written out my personal WHY from the first segment did help keep me from feeling completely exhausted and frustrated with the hectic schedule.

I was able to remember that what I was doing was in support of my why's, to be around family and friends, to welcome them in my home, to make them feel loved and cherished with good food and thoughtful gifts, and my attention...so every "task" I had to do was then shifted to a place of energy and love rather than a "have to" list to do....it felt really good and i ended my days with a positive feeling rather than one of drowning.

Many blessings, xoxoxo

~Shrell Dawn, Intuitive Eating Coach

 

So let's chat about how you can apply this BEST YEAR YET approach to your own life, work and business...

What is the Best Year Yet 6 step process?

I believe we can all live the life of our dreams and lead our organizations and businesses to uplift both ourselves and the world... but first it starts with envisioning it before we can then plan and grow.

Here are the 6 Steps to creating Your BEST Year YET!

• Step 1. Reflect
• Step 2. Assess
• Step 3. Align
• Step 4. Dream/Vision
• Step 5. Plan/Schedule
• Step 6. Support

You can use a similar 6 step process with your weekly, monthly and quarterly review and planning as well.

I tend to do this at least twice to three times a year, in Dec/Jan for the upcoming new calendar year, at my birthday in March for my new “birthday year” and in Aug/Sep as we gear up for the new "school" year after the summer holidays.

To help you go through each of the steps yourself, I’ve created an email course that will take you through each of the 6 steps to help you expertly plan so you can make this your BEST YEAR YET!

STEP 1 – REFLECT

What are the highlights & lessons from the year?

This step is focused reflection of the year gone by.

First, reflect on your highlights and accomplishments. What did you enjoy, achieve, remember most fondly, etc? Then review and look at what didn’t get done, what was left unfinished and why.

Next, take some time reviewing your BIG lessons for the year, what did you learn and where did you grow?

Finally, I like to give the year a theme as I reflect on it all as a whole package that sums up key lessons or energy for the year.

STEP 2 – ASSESS

What worked & what didn’t this past year?

Look for where in your work and personal life that your effort is giving the most pay off. Then build on that versus wasting your time, energy and awesomeness doing something that isn't worth your while. 

You can make this as in-depth of a process as you'd like. The more information you have, the better decisions and planning you'll be able to do for the upcoming year! (looks at reports, statistics, key performance indicators, measures and other sources of information to assess what went well, what could be improved and what you will do differently)

So now over to you.... You can make this as in-depth or simple of a process as you'd like. Though I believe that thee more information you have, the better decisions and planning you'll be able to do for 2019!

If there are things you'd like to track but aren't yet, this is a great time to set it up :)

1. What tools do you already have that you can take some time to assess for the year?
2. What would be helpful for you to assess that happened this past year?
3. How does it inform you moving forward into 2019?

STEP 3 - ALIGN

First things, First!

This is when you take what you uncovered in the REFLECT and ASSESS steps to make sure you're prioritizing what is most important to you first!

All about how to put the first things first. What's most important to you? In life and work, leadership and business?

Before emails, before your massive to-do list, before housework and overall busy-ness that life can have if you don't live and lead with intention.

Being aligned with what matters most to you (and knowing what that is, as an ever changing and evolving meaning for you) can be incredibly powerful in all aspects of your life.

When you're aligned with what matters most:

• You put your time and energy there first.
• Your passion and excitement for life gets first dibs.
• More of your life then revolves around what is most important (to YOU, not anyone else's priorities)
• Leads to greater impact and fulfillment in all that you do
• Leaves you happier, more satisfied and still with energy and time to spare!

STEP 4 – DREAM & VISION

What else is possible?

This is the fun part, where you can look at the year (or month or week) as a blank page… if you could do/be/have/experience anything without limits or fears, what would your life look like?

What would you like to accomplish, achieve, experience or learn in the year to come?

What areas are you focusing on this year?

This is my favourite step because anything is possible!

Look at the key areas in your life, both personal and professional. The key areas my dreams for this year focused around love/relationships/family, health, wealth, business, home and adventure.

For me this year, I found myself questioning what I'd planned for content to share with you all. I found myself yearning to be more open with the variety of topics I'd like to share. Up to now, I've shared much around personal excellence, scheduling, planning, etc. And there is much around that topic that I could keep talking about.

But honestly that's just the beginning. It's only the first level of everything I feel drawn to share...

While it's important to have your lifestyle and schedule set up and when the personal excellence is lacking, then your professional excellence suffers. But there are SO many more topics around leadership mastery, business, strategy and sharing some of my favourite people, books, articles, etc that I'll be sharing with you over the year!

The reason I mention it is because maybe there is something fresh and new you can bring to your work, your life or leadership?

Perhaps there is something bigger out there for you instead of just doing the same thing you've done this past year?

This is the time for you to dream!

See what else might come up if you consider what you would like to bring into your year if there weren't any limits or restrictions?

Allow yourself to think big first, then allow the way to show itself. <3

STEP 5 – PLAN & SCHEDULE

Planning Your Success  & Make Your Dreams Come True!

This step is where you make space in your life to make your dreams a reality. This is where you bring your dreams to life! By making time, money and resources available to help them come true!

Since you are able to dream it, you can make it happen... it's just a matter now of staying focused, inspired and setting up your life to bring you towards your goals & dreams!

This is when you take your dreams and add them to your calendar. But first, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you put yourself first! Fill your energy tanks up first, then use that energy to create everything you are dreaming of in your work & life:

• Start first by placing your self-care activities, then your top values items, then your other priorities in whatever time/space you have left.
• Make sure you honour your non-negotiables and energy cycles to maximize your energy & impact.
• This is my Inside-Out Scheduling approach that allows you to have MASSIVE productivity while working less and having more time & energy left at the end of each day. (you can download the Inside-Out Scheduling Guide here!)

Then, this is where you break down your dreams into details of what it will actually take to make them happen.

1. How much money/time/resources will it take? So as an example, if you want to do a honeymoon in Italy (like we did last year) this is when you figure out how many days at a hotel, flight costs, rental car, estimate food costs etc. The time we decided would be 2-3 weeks with some time after at home still on vacation before getting back into real life.
2. When will you do it? So continuing with the trip to Italy example, last year we picked the ideal weeks in the year when we would go based on weather, our work schedules and other important events. We decided to travel on our birthday weeks so we could celebrate in Italy, plus experience Easter festivities in Rome
3. Quarterly Focus? I use a seasonal focus for my more general goals like health, creating new content or projects. I’ll also separate out any new habits or starting something new into separate seasons to give time for the habit to sink in before adding another layer. Normally I break this down with one personal and one professional area of focus each season. You'll find a printout to help you do this in the worksheet in the email course... I love this approach and I think you will too! <3
4. Schedule it! This now makes your plans into reality. Schedule the activities and events into your calendar now. You can always change it if you need to. But when you commit to the regular activities that will bring you to your goal then it can actually come true!  

STEP 6 – SUPPORT

Reach your Dreams Faster!

The final key area in having your BEST Year YET! is having support, accountability partners, people to help you stay focused on what is important to you even when the ups and downs of life happen.

This is what makes the difference between struggling to do everything yourself and getting burnt out OR having a support team to help you do things with more ease.

Having a coach/mentor and support group or classes that you go to regularly will give you the regular structure to achieve something that may seem impossible!

This step keeps you focused and inspired while making the journey more fun and easier that doing it on your own.

Getting the right SUPPORT at the right time will make ALL the difference in your business results, leadership impact and personal life!

I am continuously increasing the amount of support I have in my life, from hiring coaches and experts onto my team to help out, to getting personal support with my health, mindset and daily chores... they all help to get me where I want to go faster, with less effort and more ease than I could do on my own!

Just because you CAN do it all, doesn't mean that you HAVE to. Or that you SHOULD.

The smart ones get TONS of support so that their energy can be spent where it is most valued and makes the most difference!!!

Commit to at least one area to get more support in 2019 and see the massive difference it can make!

So that completes the overview of the BEST YEAR YET steps but it is just the beginning!

If you’d like to get some support walking through each of these steps, I’ve pulled this all together an email course that will take you through each of the 6 steps to help you expertly plan so you can make this your BEST YEAR YET!

Over 2 weeks you’ll get a daily email with each step of the planning process and a downloadable workbook to guide you through each step.

After the email planning course, you will have your plan for the upcoming year that includes both connection with your inspiration, passion and heart, supported by your brain with actionable plans, a monthly/seasonal focus and clarity on what you’ll focus on each day/month to reach your goals!

Plus you’ll get behind-the-scenes access to a MASTERCLASS training video that will walk you through the steps with examples to inspire you with your own plan!

"I did the four month Lifestyle Mastery for Leaders program and it literally changed my life! I have had the best year yet and am looking forward to 2019!" ~Marie Amoto, Business Consultant and Federal Government Manager