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Half-time! How To Level Up To Crush The Rest Of 2023
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As hard as it may be to believe, we are already halfway through 2023. That blows my mind! The older I get, the faster time seems to slip through my fingers.
With half of 2023 behind us, it is worth taking a moment to take stock of things. Chances are you set goals for yourself for the year. At least, I hope you did. Because if you don’t have a clear vision for where you’re trying to take your life, and some plans for how to move towards that vision, you are drifting through life. Life is way too precious to just drift through it.
How have you progressed towards your goals for 2023? Are you happy with your progress? Or do you realize you set goals at the beginning of the year and have done almost nothing to advance on them?
Regardless of your progress (or lack of it), there is hope. Because while half of 2023 is behind us, we still have six months ahead of us. And you can accomplish a lot in six months. That is more than enough time to change the trajectory of your life if you choose to. Rather than lamenting the fact that 2023 is already half gone, choose to look through the lens of still having six months to lean into improving your life.
The first thing to do is to examine the goals that you’d set for yourself. Hopefully, you wrote them out. Evidence shows that the simple act of putting your goals into writing dramatically increases your chances of attaining the goal. Read them over and reflect on them honestly. Are you still committed to these goals? Do they still resonate with you? Sit quietly and imagine yourself doing the work required to move towards your goal; how does it make you feel? This can help you figure out if it is still a goal worth pursuing. You will feel it, deep inside, if it is the right thing for you to do.
If you feel like some of your goals have changed, that is okay! Now is a great time to refine them and commit to something else, if that is best for you. The world changes and so do you, so it is not surprising to discover your goals may need to change.
But before you drop a goal, be honest with yourself; are you giving up on it out of fear? Fear you may not achieve it? Fear of what others may think of you trying? While maybe the goal is no longer right for you, it is also possible that you are telling yourself a story and letting yourself off the hook. Make sure you aren’t just giving up because it is hard and scary, and you’ve lost confidence you can do it. That just reinforces your identity as someone that is not capable.
If you want a refresher on a process for setting goals, here is an approach I’ve used that works great for me. Since it works well for me, it might help you too.
So you now know which of the goals you’d set for yourself are still important to you. Your next step is to reflect on how you feel about the progress you’ve made so far in 2023. Have you made as much progress as you feel you should have? Have you lived up to your expectations of yourself? If you are like most people (myself included!), the answer will be a “hell, no!”.
But that is okay; don’t beat yourself up. Meaningful things take time to do, way longer than we expect or hope for. The most important thing is to keep making progress in the right direction. The next most important thing is to make regular course corrections to keep things on track.
If you’re not happy with your progress so far, consider changing things up in one or more of these key areas:
- Attention. What you focus on matters. How can you ensure you direct your attention towards your goal, even for a short time, each day? If you aren’t focusing on a goal, you aren’t likely to achieve it.
- Habits. What habit do you need to form that will move you towards your goal? Or what habit do you need to drop so that you stop moving yourself farther away from your goal? There are very few goals which are achieved through onetime activities; they almost always require consistent, systematic effort. Your habits determine your future, for good or for worse. If you need help to figure out how to use habits to achieve your goals, read this.
- Environment. How can you set things up around you to make achieving your goal more likely? Humans are lazy by default, so if you make a desired behaviour easy (or an undesired behaviour hard), you are more likely to behave in the manner you’d like to. You may also want to consider the people you spend time with; surrounding yourself with positive people who support and believe in you makes an enormous difference too.
- Time. Are you investing an appropriate amount of your time towards achieving your goal? If not, what can you change in your life to fix this? I guarantee you will not achieve your goal if you don’t invest time into working towards it. Simple math. Too busy? Read my thoughts on how to make time for what matters.
- Systems. We waste enormous amounts of time and energy on details that don’t matter. Where can you automate or systemize routine activities to free your time and mental space up to allow you to move forward?
- Energy. I listed this one last, but it is likely the MOST important area to consider. Accomplishing a goal requires you to stretch and grow, and change is hard. It requires energy. If you don’t have enough, you can’t possibly hope to accomplish your goal. Are you protecting your energy levels? Do you get enough sleep? What about playing? Increase the number of activities in your life that charge you up and reduce those that drain your energy. And do your most important work when your energy levels are highest. I guarantee just doing those two things will make a massive difference in your life.
Take some time this week to review your goals for 2023. Update them as you see fit, and commit to them. Understand that you can accomplish more than you think in six months if you make some changes to those six domains listed above.
Set yourself up to end this year feeling so proud of what you’ve accomplished. We only get so many years in life; don’t let another one slip by without having accomplished what you set out to do.
Unhappy with your career and feeling stuck? Lacking clarity about how to elevate your work, and by extension, your life? Don’t feel bad about it; do something about it!
I’ve got a proven framework and a track record of helping people craft amazing careers.
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Quotation that I have been pondering
Amy Poehler, of Saturday Night Live fame, has a great quote on the need to curate the people in our lives.
This brings three thoughts to mind:
- Who is dragging me down with negativity? And how can I reduce it?
- Where can I find others that believe in their power to accomplish incredible things?
- How do I make sure I’m not one of those that people don’t want to be around because of negativity and judgements that I may cast?
Seems worth thinking about.
Journal Prompt
If the answer is “no”, it is time to reconsider how you are structuring your life. That means ensuring you are investing your time, energy, and attention into the things which are most important to you.
Don’t wait to start living the life you are uniquely capable of living.
