Hello lovelies,
How are you all today? I hope you have had the best xmas and New Year break, that you are fully rested, recharged, reenergised and ready to start the year with a bang.
So this, of course, is the time of year we all like to set our intentions and make our plans and resolutions for the year – even if we have done it before countless times and never successfully followed through…we still love to imagine that we are going to become the better version of ourselves right away as soon as the New Year starts, and that we are going to have the best year ever.
And I will admit – I kind of do love that fresh start feeling – whether it comes from it turning into January, or Monday, or a new offer, or plan. It fires me up, it remotivates me and it kicks me into gear, always.
So whilst we don’t always want to be waiting for that new start, to make a change – if our business or life isn’t as we want it to be, coz there is only so many Mondays and New Year new start opportunities – and there are several things that do not work about making an ambitious New Year New You plan and a million resolutions…I do think that we should capitalise on the times when we are naturally inspired, motivated, excited, in flow and ready to get going.
So in this episode I want to take you through a process to help you plan for your best year yet – just in case you haven’t finalised yours yet. Or you had a seriously indulgent xmas break and you haven’t spent a moment thinking about the New Year plan at all yet.
But before I take you through the steps, there are four things that I want you to consider, remember and keep in mind BEFORE you plan your best year yet.
Number 1 – This process is based on me, how I think, and work, and the things that work best for me. It may not be the best process for you. And I don’t want you thinking just because I am doing it this way, that this is the RIGHT way to plan your year. Similarly, I don’t want you to think any business coach or guru teaching you their process has the ONE RIGHT way to plan your year either. Just as there is no ONE right strategy for your business, or no ONE right offer or niche that will make you an overnight success, there is no ONE right way to plan the year. And so – although I will give reasons for why this process works for me and why I think it’s a useful framework to follow, make sure the steps make sense for you. And give yourself the self respect and self trust you deserve by allowing yourself to admit what isn’t working for you in this year planning process, and tweaking it to find something that feels better, until you find something that works
Number 2 – The plan is there to support you, not spin you out. So make sure it is supporting you, and helping you. If you have created a plan that feels like a prison right off the bat. Or stifling in some way. Or that feels unaligned. Or that brings up a strong resistance in you right at the start. Or that overwhelms you completely or just makes you feel like it’s going to be an awful lot of work…Then you need to tweak the plan to one that feels better. That excites you. That motivates you to take action. That feels aligned and realistic and doable.
Number 3 – You have to believe that the plan is going to take you to what you want. Whatever you are aiming for. The destination at the end of the year. The outcome you are after. Now if you don’t believe that it will get you there – don’t immediately change the plan – particularly if your tendency is one of overworking, and hustling, and fitting in more. But certainly do the work to explore if it could be possible to get the result you want from your plan. If there is any evidence that exists that it might work. And then if there is, get coaching to get your brain on board with the plan you have. And if you don’t know where to start with coaching, send me a message on IG – at KirstyKnightCoaching – to say you are curious about how coaching can help you – and we can have a conversation about it.
Number 4 – “Even a shit plan is better than no plan”. One of my sales mentors got this from one of her mentors and it stuck with me. I love thinking this. Because I think too often we are either afraid to make a plan, commit to a plan, or we spend too long trying to perfect the plan before we take action, because we think we have to come up with the perfect plan. But the truth is, the point of the plan is that it gives you something to aim towards, something to do, somewhere to focus your energy and attention, and something that you can evaluate and learn from – in order to make a better plan next time. You have to remember that you can always tweak your plan and change it at any time.
Ok – so with that in mind. Here are the steps I recommend you go through, if you have no clue where to start or how to go about planning your year and setting yourself up for it to be if not your best, then a good one.
Step number 1 – Is to do the End of Year Review exercise I gave you two episodes ago – if you haven’t already done it.
Now I think this is one of the most important exercises you can do before you dive into planning for the next year. Because you will want to learn from the past year. Even if it went well, you want to take what worked into the new year with you. And if the last year didn’t go as well as you’d hoped, then it is doubly important to process any negative emotions you have around that, figure out what challenges you had and why, and ensure you have either solved for them, or you have a plan to solve for them.
It might have been that time was an issue last year – which is why your strategy didn’t quite create what you wanted – and so this year, you need to have a plan in place that involves being better at making time for certain things in your business.
Or it might be that some limiting beliefs got in the way. Some mindset sh*t that kept you stuck, or second guessing yourself for too long.
Or it might be that you lacked a skillset that you really need to achieve the results you are after.
If you aren’t aware of what these things are, you haven’t addressed them, or you haven’t got a plan in place to overcome the same challenges, then don’t expect that this year will be much different from the last.
So that is step number 1. Do the End of Year Review exercise from this podcast, to ensure your new plan for the year incorporates the lessons and plans to overcome the challenges you had last year.
Step number 2 – Is to take a moment to visualise what you want. What you want your life to look like one year from now. And don’t make it one dimensional. Think about all areas of your life. The danger of just thinking about your business and your money goal, is that you might end up neglecting your health or sacrificing your time off in order to create it. And what you want to do instead, is come up with a plan that balances both – the needs of your business for creating what you want, and the needs of your soul – for having a life outside of your business. So take a few quiet minutes, think about it with a coffee and a journal, or take a walk outside to get some fresh air, and ponder over what you really want – if I could wave a magic wand and ensure you get where you want to go in one year’s time, what would it look like?
Why is this so important? Because if you don’t have a final destination in mind, there is about a 99% chance that you won’t arrive there. If you actually know where you are aiming for, you are giving yourself a much higher chance of actually getting there. Because you will know when to make corrections.
Step number 3 – Imagine stepping into that person’s shoes for a minute. That future you – in one years’ time. How does she feel about what she has achieved? Who she is? How she shows up? How does her typical day go? What is she doing on a daily basis? What is she believing about herself, her success, her business?
You want to get really curious here – about all aspects of what she is thinking, feeling, doing, not doing, and why.
And you want to do this, because this is how you can access some internal wisdom about how you can actually get to where she is. You are trying to find out, who do you need to be – who do you need to show up as, in order to create that? Because it isn’t that she created that success and then suddenly started showing up as a different version of herself. She started showing up differently, and that is what helped her create it.
Now I get that sometimes this can be challenging to understand, it can feel a little bit out-there – and that is why I often do this exercise with clients in a meditative hypnosis trance, instead of just sitting down there with our hyper critical mind questioning what we are doing. But as I don’t have you in front of me, just go with me on this – play pretend – play with your imagination – that you could fast forward to that day one year from now, see what you have successfully created, and step into yourself then to experience how you are thinking and feeling from that side.
Step number 4 – Is to spot the difference. To find the gap between where you are now, and where you want to be. How you are thinking and feeling and showing up now. Compared to our future self who created what she was aiming for. Because once you are brutally honest about the differences, it will be obvious to see what core projects or steps need to be worked on to take you from where you are to where you need to be.
So these might be actual changes you need to make in your business and life and schedule. Or they might be mindset shifts you need to have. Core limiting beliefs you have that are creating doubt and fear – and getting in your way of you taking the action you need to take to create what you want, that need to be shifted.
You want to create a roadmap of changes you need to make in your thinking, your feeling and your behaviours and actions – that take you from where you are to where you want to be in one year’s time. And this is how you do it. Spotting the difference between where you are and where you want to be. And then, of course, deciding to hire a coach to help you make these changes.
Step number 5 – Is to first look at those changes, the things you need to work on, the sessions you need to have with your coach and put them in order of priority. What needs to be worked on first? What would be the easiest and quickest thing to work on that would have the highest impact or make the biggest difference? That should be number 1 on the list. Then what is the next easiest and quickest thing that would have the next biggest impact…and so on.
Once you have an order, I want you to then think about breaking the year into the four quarters. And then look at the list you have – and make a split as to which things you need to be working on in each quarter.
Now some of those things will be one off things, one off projects, one off beliefs that you need to work on and do the work on once, in one chunk.
And some of those things will be recurring things.
Like maybe the thing that has to happen this year to get you to the success you want at the end of the year, is consistent marketing. Well this means right throughout the year, you are going to be marketing. So this will have to be put into each quarter. But for the one-off things, maybe like working on your fears around being visible – you can see this needs to go in just one of the quarters – and probably the first quarter.
The reason you are doing this is because it is easy to overestimate what you can achieve in a year. When you break it into four smaller chunks, it becomes much easier to see if what you are aiming to pack in, is doable – without killing yourself over it.
Step number 6 – will be then to take the first quarter and plan it out in more detail. What will you need to be focused on in each month? Then in each month, what needs to be worked on in each of the four weeks. What are the core priorities in each week?
Step number 7 – is to make sure, again, that you aren’t being overly ambitious with your plan. So to do that you want a realistic and visual representation of how much time you actually have in each week, and how much time you have left to allocate to your plan for creating our vision.
So just as I teach with time blocking (if you haven’t got the guide – you can download it for free at the end of this episode), you need to first plan out your weekly recurring tasks and commitments. Start with things that you need as a human in order to function – i.e. sleep, eat, rest. Then your family and household commitments, e.g. taking kids to school, other activities, food shopping, cleaning..etc. And then you want to add in the recurring activities that will take you closer to your vision, and then the one-off projects you said you’d divide across the month.
Step number 8 – is to then do a quick check. Does this feel realistic, achievable, doable? If not, why not? Can it be adjusted? Can you get the same outcome you are working towards, in fewer steps, or less time? If the answer is no – then you maybe have to extend your timeline because you don’t want to be pursuing something at the expense of yourself – putting yourself at risk from burning out. If the answer is yes, then you tweak the plan – and pop it in to the weeks accordingly.
Step number 9 – is to ask what obstacles are likely to get in the way, even if it looks achievable right now? If something could go wrong with this plan, what would it likely be? And once you have brainstormed some ideas, what strategy can you put in place to either prevent that thing from happening, or dealing with it if it does?
And you are doing this to increase your chances of succeeding with your plan.
For example – let’s say your best year involves you putting out a podcast episode weekly for the whole year as part of your consistent marketing plan. What might happen, is that you might get sick one week, and not be able to record it. So strategies you might consider to solve for this happening, could be first deciding to eat healthily in an attempt to stop getting sick in the first place, and then second, in case you still get sick, decide to batch create a couple of weeks ahead each time, so you have a bigger run way of time before you need to record the next one.
And then lastly, step number 10 to your planning process for your best year yet – is to decide ahead of time what intention you are going to have as you head into each week, and how you are going to treat yourself and support yourself, if things don’t go quite according to plan.
Because this will determine whether or not you throw the plan out the window as soon as it gets tough, or you become the person who is able to create the reality they want – even if it isn’t quite as smooth sailing as they would have liked, and even if it takes slightly longer to get there. Being kind to yourself as you commit to your plan, and have things go wrong, and having to readjust and go again, will be one of the determining factors as to how successful you will be with your goal, and will, of course, determine how enjoyable the journey is to getting there.
So that’s it peeps – your ten step process to planning your best year yet.
If you have any trouble with it, or if you can already see some mindset or time challenges popping up that will get in the way of you achieving what you want this year, and you want some support – simply send me a message on IG, and we can have a conversation about what the next steps are.
Happy planning.
See you next time.
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