New Year's Resolution Programme - Coaching Guide

A Guide to 2015

NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION PROGRAMME Coaching Guide FUNSIDEOFLIFE.NET

The Programme Make things happen Take action on your New Year’s resolution.

• Watch Derek Siver’s TEDx talk on “Keep your goals to yourself” • Follow the instruction on this guide to identify your goals and create an action plan that will take you to success

Get supported Once you have finished your action plan, it’s time to get extra help. Apply to become 1 of the 3 winners of the Fun Side of Life Coaching Programme.

We will work together to make sure that you stay on track towards achieving your 2015 goals. Click here

Live the change in you See the magic happen. As you push yourself to get out of your comfort zone, you will start experiencing the necessary changes that will allow you to achieve your goals. This personal development will translate in further success in other areas of your life.

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About this Guide There are 8 thought provoking questions in this guide. Based on design thinking processes, they have been developed with the goal of creating a framework for you to clearly plan, commit and track your progress towards achieving an exciting 2015.

Keep in mind: •

Planning takes time. The time that it will take you to go through the guide will vary on your level of experience with these questions. I recommend you to plan at least 4 hours for it but be flexible enough to take the necessary time to complete the whole guide at once.

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Create the space it deserves. Silent your phone and disconnect from the internet. Plan it in advance and tell people that you will not be reachable within this time frame.

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Jump right into it. Don’t get distracted checking messages and emails. The best is wake up, refresh and start working on it. Trust me.

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Write everything down. Take a notebook, nothing better than a blank canvas to turn your ideas into a visual action plan. In the end is not all about what you write but about the learning process you go through to develop the material. By writing it, you reinforce the information.

If you can fail at doing something you don't like, then why not try doing something you do love.

Jim Carrey

1. How do you ENVISION yourself in December 2015?

It all starts from the end. You can’t figure out what you need to if you don’t know where you want to go.

Imagine it’s 6pm on December 31st, 2015 and you just realised that you have some free time before heading out to meet your friends. As you seat on your kitchen table, you start thinking about the year that you just had. You seem proud, satisfied and more importantly very happy about the way things turned out. Why would that be?

Who have you become?

How do you see yourself?

Where in your life are you?

For example.

I’m more self-confidence than before and my communication skills have really improved. Thanks to working on my emotional intelligence, my relationships both at work and outside have deepened, making me feel more fulfilled and satisfied. It even tripled my monthly income.

Keep it as simple. One paragraph, no more than 5 main points. Just write down who you would like to be in a year’s time. Forget about constraints of money, time physical, mental, etc.

2. What are your 2015 GOALS?

Here is where you develop your list. Make sure to follow the instructions step by step. Think of all the things you want to achieve in 2015. Write them down now and don’t come back to this guide until you finish the list. It should take between 15 to 20 mins.

Chances are that you have many small goals, objectives and tasks all together. This will be confusing when it comes to planing and implementation. The task now is to organise your list by goals, objectives and tasks. You should have 5 main goals from where you will proceed to develop the rest.

Goals vs Objectives vs Tasks. The goals are bigger and less specific than objectives. Also their time frame will be bigger since you need to achieve a group of objectives to achieve a goal. The tasks are the small action steps that make you fulfil the objective.

For example.

GOALS

OBJECTIVES

TASKS Eat smaller portions

Work on my Diet

Don’t eat carbs Stop drinking cola

Have a healthier lifestyle

go running in the mornings Do more exercise

Join the gym Use the bike to go to work Save money

Go skydigving

Find somebody to do it with Book it by May

Face my fears Learn to snowboard

Goals are hard to measure, that is why it’s important that objectives are more specific.

3. Are your goals really ALIGNED with your vision?

Are you willing to take on the challenge? Are your goals really aligned with your vision? Tim Ferris explains in his book “The 4 Hour Work Week” how most of the time we try to set “realistic” goals. This pushes us to set goals that in the end are actually mediocre and; therefore, their rewards are not enough to commit to the sacrifice they require.

If you want to see a change in your life, you must push yourself out of your comfort zone. Otherwise it would be crazy to expect different results compare to 2014.

Also think that just because you don’t have the ability or the network to reach your goal now, it doesn’t mean that you will not work towards it later.

We tend to look for easy ways or tricks that will make us better at things. We are inpatient and we don’t like investing the time that succeeding at goals requires.

Being successful is not hard, what is hard is being average because that is where the competition really is.

You can’t expect to be good at speaking at public if you don’t push your self to get on the stage. Abilities take time to build in you and it’s only through your hard, constant work that you will succeed at them. Don’t be afraid to set high goals, if you really want to achieve them, you will do what is needed.

Where the magic happens

Our comfort zone

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein

4. WHERE are you now?

Now that we know where we want to go and we understand the commitments we must make to get there, we need to understand where we are.

This way, we can evaluate what kind of skills and resources do we have have that will allow us to achieve our goals and therefore, our overall vision for 2015.

You will need to do now an evaluation of your personal environment. In other words, a personal SWOT. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Commonly used in business we can easily adapt it to assess our current state and uncover opportunities or threats that may jeopardise our success.

INTERNAL

For example.

STRENGTHS ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

Responsible Reliable Creative Communication Skills Empathetic

WEAKNESES ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

THREATS

EXTERNAL

OPPORTUNITIES ✓ ✓

New job interview Network of contacts

High expenses Low income Inpatient Poor time management skills

✓ ✓

Lack of time Family responsibilities

The table: The top part, is regarding what it’s internal to you. This means all the things that you have control over. Meaning that if you want, you can take action and use them or improve them. i.e. if you are a good communicator, you should exploit this skill by taking on roles that require you to speak in public. At the same time, if you lack a skill, the idea is not to avoid it but rather push yourself to improve at it.

By doing this, you should be able to understand yourself better. Be real, there is no need to fool yourself. The idea is to find out where you are and which resources you have already.

The bottom part, is focused on the external side. This are the things that affect you or have an influence over you but, you can’t really do something about them. i.e. you can prepare as much as you can for a job but, in the end, the decision doesn’t depend on you. Or perhaps a new law that changes regulations in your industry.

Click here for more info on how to fill in your personal SWOT analysis.

5. What are your ROLES?

Maybe you are a student, for sure you are a son, perhaps you are a boyfriend or girlfriend. Maybe you are an athlete and I assume that you are a friend. All this are different roles in which you engage in your daily life.

The idea is to have a deeper look at them, this way we will be able to get a full perspective of the current reality and more importantly, allow you to visualise the ideal state to which you want to take them.

For example.

ROLE

SITUATION

IDEAL STATUS

Student

I’m currently have way through my studies and 3 semesters behind schedule.

finish with all the classes by the end of the year

Son

Since I moved away, I haven’t spoken that often with my parents except for when I need something from them.

I would like to see my parents more often.

Boyfriend

I’m very satisfied with my relationship. I feel more confident and safe. I’m committed and in love.

Already there, just make sure not to get lazy about it.

Work

I don’t really like my job but the people are nice and it’s close to home.

I enjoy the working environment so I will request to have my tasks changed.

Friend

Nothing to change here.

Keep it like it is.

Personal

Organise my time better to be I would like to do more exercise but the lack of time able to work out and learn another is really a problem. foreign language.

6. Are your ROLES really aligned with your GOALS?

It’s time to double check before we go into planning. Do your goals really make sense? Is your 2015 vision aligned with how you want things to be? Take the chance to review what you have done, your ideas, wishes and goals. Will they push you to grow out of your comfort zone? Will they push you to make other people’s life better? Is this really what you want to strive for in 2015?

Only proceed if your answer to all these questions is yes…

A dream doesn't become a reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

Colin Powell

7. How about your ACTION plan?

This is where most of us drop the towel. We always want to do many things but, then we don’t develop the strategy that will allow us to reach them. How are we going to push ourselves to achieve them if we don’t know what we need to do.

1. Make the process measurable: what is the minimum that you need to do or achieve for you to be satisfied? If one of your goals is to “lose weight,” then put down how many kilos do you want to lose. Do this for all of them.

2. Break down the goals into objectives and then further down to tasks. Make sure to write them, it doesn’t matter how simple they may be. If you need to send an email or call somebody to coordinate a meeting it should be there; as well as, the development of the meeting’s agenda. The better overview you have, the easier will be for you to stay on track and succeed. Don’t exaggerate, you don’t need to go all the way to taking a shower and brushing your teeth.

Be flexible and understand that you will need to make changes and sacrifices in your life in order to achieve your goals.

3. Assign deadlines. Start by figuring out by when would you like to achieve the goal and work your way down, you will be surprise how early you should start some of them. Make sure to take into consideration that some tasks may take weeks, specially if you need support from others.

Keep in mind that you do need time to sleep, get ready, transportation, house chores (cleaning, cooking, washing), shopping. These are things that we tend to overlook but more importantly is allocating space to relaxing and enjoying. The worse thing you can do is pack everything with the excuse of lack of time. If you don’t have enough time is because you don’t know how to manage it wisely.

Don’t plan more than 2 or 3 major tasks per days. If you want more tips on increasing your productivity, read “The 4 hour work week” by Tim Ferris.

I have not given you an example of the action plan because I don’t want to influence your thinking. In the end is your plan and it should make sense to you. That is why I provided you with a detail development path since the 1st question so you can now compile everything together.

8. Where should you be by June to make your 2015 a REALITY?

Can you answer this question? Can you tell where in your plan should you be by June 2015? That is the goal of creating milestones. What should you have achieved by 30th of March 2015? 30th of June 2015? 30th of September 2015? If you have the answer, you know what you should be doing.

If your goal is to save $5,000 by December 31st, 2015 the that means that you should save $417 per month or about $105 per week. In order to make sure that you reach your goal you should know that if you start in January 1st, on March 31st you should have already $1,251. If you don’t, you are already behind schedule and changes should be made to your strategy.

Congrats!

You made it all the way to the end.

I wish you nothing but success. Now go on and have an amazing year!

Always keep in mind that self-development is a constant process. Make sure not to get comfortable in a lifestyle you are not fully happy with. Make it a rule to push yourself for more. Procrastination is the enemy. Reaching success is not supposed to be easy; otherwise, everybody would. Just understand what you have to do and keep yourself focus on the bigger, final reward because that is the one that will change everything.

Yours, Juan Guerra Founder of

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