Are you ready for 2014?

Our view while goal setting at the W Singapore

Let me ask you again. Are you ready for 2014? Many of you are probably asking yourselves at this point, “Am I ready for what?”  This is the most common reaction I get when I ask people if they are ready for the next year.  Most people never even think to plan for their life.  People plan for grocery shopping.  People plan what they are going to do over the weekend.  People plan for what they are going to have for dinner.  People plan what outfit they are going to wear. But rarely do people plan for their LIFE.  They prioritize a television show or a party over the time, energy, and focus it takes to plan the life they want to live. 

A few weeks ago, my friends and I spent the weekend at a beautiful hotel overlooking the water and spent 13 hours designing and strategizing our lives for 2014.  We set goals. We set plans. We created strategies to see our goals come to fruition.  It was a powerful weekend.  It began with a review of our goals from 2013.  We celebrated victories and confronted challenges that we faced.  We explored the 12 domains of our life and programmed our minds to work on these areas on a regular basis.  We refined or recreated our personal affirmation statement.  We designed everyday incantations to feed our minds.  We did a guided goal setting session where we dreamed and wrote down everything we would love to learn, create, be, do, and have in all of the areas of our life and boiled the list down to 10-15 things that we would focus all of our attention on in 2014.  We created our intellectual board of trustees that would “advise” us in all of the domains of our life.  We expanded on each goal with vision casting and strategies to see that these things come to fruition.  It was an empowering, inspiring, and challenging weekend. 

So I ask again, “Are you ready for 2014?”  Do not leave your life up to chance.  It breaks my heart to see so many people going through the motions of life without ever really fully living.  Are there things you would love to do that you have yet to do? If you are anything like me, you have plenty of those things!  There is so much to experience.  There is so much of an impact we can have on the lives around us.  In the vastness of our universe’s time continuum we are but a tiny speck.  What do you plan to do, have, and create in this short time we have?  What kind of a legacy do you want to leave? When you are 90 years old sitting on the balcony with a cup of tea looking back on your life, what do you want to see and remember? Do you want to be known for clocking in and out of work on time or do you want to be remembered for truly living a life worth living? 

You will face challenges along the way.  You will have doors slammed in your face.  You will run into walls and stumble upon boulders.  In doing so, new doors will open.  People will show up in your life to help you climb those walls and move those boulders.  It is in times of our greatest challenges and adversities that life’s greatest gifts are revealed to us.  We do not get to experience those gifts if we stay where we are.  Dare to be great.  Dare to experience more, see more, and love more.  Dare to step on the edge of your comfort zone and discover a life worth truly living.  

Love,

Matt