Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals by Michael Hyatt is a helpful way to consider the year ahead. I’m posting this on New Year’s Eve…a day that seems to be a traditional time to review the past year and look ahead to what’s next. To be clear, I’m not concerned about whether 2021 will be my “best year ever”. God has a plan for 2021 that is way better than anything I could dream up. If 2021 is a year that I am privileged walk in the will of the Lord, I’ll look forward to whatever He has in store. I’ve followed Hyatt’s blog for years and have incorporated a number of his workflow strategies into my toolbox. His intentionality with his professional and personal goals and vision are encouraging.
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- Without a compelling reason to persist, we lose interest, get distracted, or forget what we purposed to do. Location: 344
- The first key difference between an unmet goal and personal success is the belief that it can be achieved. Listen to what famed futurist, sci-fi author, and inventor Arthur C. Clarke said: “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” As Clarke said, it’s a “failure of imagination.” Location: 458
- Achieving our goals starts by understanding the distinction between limiting beliefs and liberating truths. Location: 506
- Resources are necessary, but they’re never the precondition for success. The perceived lack of resources is often a benefit in disguise. In fact, dealing with constraints can trigger a cascade of unforeseen rewards. For one, they force us to rise to the occasion and give our best to the pursuit. Easy resources make for weak performance. Economist Julian Simon called human creativity the ultimate resource, but often limitations are needed to unleash it. A lack of resources spurs resourcefulness. Limited resources also builds resiliency and confidence. The more times we overcome difficulties, the more capable we are of overcoming whatever comes next. Location: 693
- Distill the lessons from your experiences so you don’t lose them and so they can serve as tools moving forward. Location: 957
- By reaching for what appears to be impossible, we often actually do the impossible; and even when we don’t quite make it, we inevitably wind up doing much better than we would have done. Jack Welch Location: 1,557
- You and I should embrace discomfort for at least three reasons, whether we deliberately choose to or it simply happens to us. First, comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It often leads to self-absorption and discontent. Second, discomfort is a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt. Third, discomfort signals progress. When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort, but there’s profit in the pain. Location: 1,577
- But if you have all the financial, emotional, and physical resources you need right now to accomplish your goal—in other words, if you can easily imagine completing the challenge—it’s probably not challenging enough to be compelling. Location: 1,603
- Perfectionism and self-judgment are sure to derail us. “If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly,” G. K. Chesterton once said. That line always makes me laugh. But it carries an essential truth: Doing is better than not doing perfectly. Give yourself a break and keep plugging away. Location: 1,789
- Scottish mountain climber W. H. Murray put it this way: “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creativity, there is one elementary truth . . . that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.” Location: 2,327
- If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins. Benjamin Franklin Location: 2,358
- The creation account in Genesis tells us God looked at everything he created and called it good. He didn’t wait until the whole creation was done. He did it at each stage. That’s a good model for us too. Location: 2,535