A wonderful way to start the future is by writing your thoughts, opinions, ideas and interpretation of your past and hopes, expectations and plans for the future

The race of 2020 has begun and the winner is the one who sets the right direction, sails against the tides and accepts the way it goes through.

This New Year has begun a new decade. New Year gives an opportunity to the wise ones to re-think about their life, to re-direct their boats, to craft new vision and to set the right strategy for their boat.This article describes some major concepts that can help an individual or an organization to make New Year proud year.

First, begin with the realization that past has passed. Past knows how to leave its foot print on our heart and mind, the footprint that we name as our memory. Memory has done wonderful miracles to human civilization but that gift has its bitter sides.

Most of us stick to our past even in present. We carry the baggage of past in our journey to future even while most of the contents of that baggage are unhealthy for the journey. It's not very realistic to advice someone to let go of all the negative emotions of the past as it is part of our memory system but it is very realistic to give effort to reduce the intensity of those emotions. With our conscious effort, awareness, proper mentorship and restraining reactions to the thoughts that trigger our emotion, we can decrease the power of those negative thoughts, reduce baggage of negative emotions and free ourselves from most of those memories.

Whatever we eat becomes our body, just like whatever we think becomes our mind and whatever we feel becomes our heart. Therefore, it is crucial to choose our diet well and to choose the thoughts that we think regularly and the emotions that feel.

Second, learn the takeaway message. What is education without lesson, what is a farewell without memories, what is a journey without the takeaways?

Everything that we think, re-think, feel, experience, act or go through in life, are learnings for our mind. Every step we take is somehow stored in our unconscious.

A wise man always tries to bring out conscious lesson out of the unconscious learnings the mind has gone through. That’s the adventure a human mind can go through. The biggest challenge about learning is we tend to learn what we want to learn or we learn what we have already learned before yet we claim that we have learned something new. That’s stupidity. We fail to open ourselves up to see the truth that is in front of us. All it requires is a good observation with eradication of psychological bias given by our older beliefs.

In order to recognize right takeaway message of the previous year let’s ask following questions to ourselves: What are some important lessons that journey of my life is trying to teach?Are there some messages that I am missing to hear?What are the three takeaway lessons that I can take for the coming season?

The more important a journey the more reflective it has to be. The depth of reflection is strongly guided by the quality of questions that is directing the process. So let’s ask these questions in the starting stage of 2020: What are the decisions, mistakes, actions of previous year that will not be repeated at individual or organizational level? What are the three changes I am committed to bring this year?Where will I be by 2030 and how will people around me and my surrounding be in that phase?How would I want to live and what would I want to do if this happens to be the last year or the last decade of my life? What will have to happen for 2020 to be the best year of my life or what will have to happen by 2030 for this phase to be the best decade ever?

Record your thoughts

Third, don’t trust your mind when it is about storing memories and ideas. Maintaining diary or journal is one of the best habits. Storing good and bad memories of the year, expressing interpretation, sharing anger or emotional tides, they all are chapters of diary. It helps us to store the story of our life and to heal our emotional status. It also allows us to reflect on our past and helps us to design our future. Journaling is used by psychologists, therapists and successful people.

A wonderful way to start the future is by writing your thoughts, opinions, ideas and interpretation of your past and hopes, expectations and plans for the future. Aren’t you willing to dissolve your emotional and mental tides on a magical piece of paper?

Fourth, give a name. Any new country I visit, I give a new phrase (name) to that country based on the experience I go through. Also, I give a title to every coming year and rephrase the title when the year ends. This tendency of giving title to previous and upcoming year gives a sense of direction to our mind and helps us to create a beautiful story line out of our life. Every life is a wonderful story plot. Titling or naming the year based on your expectation about the year makes you see your year from a new lens and allows you to relate your experiences with the same title. It also helps you to build action plans or goals. Also, titling the year gives vision statement for the next twelve months. Some of the examples could be:“2020, a year of ambition,” “a year to build my roots”, “a year of risks”, “a turning point”, “the year of a big decision”, “the year of changes”, “the next step”, “settlement ahead” and so on. It could be anything that helps you to create fantasy. It helps you to set a powerful expectation, gives you adventure on the journey and inspires you to take action.

Think about it. It works.

Set your resolutions

Fifth, set your resolutions. People say resolutions fail but not all resolutions fail. If you have a history of failing plans, what about bringing some change on the way we set our resolutions?What about, instead of creating a list of resolutions, creating some powerful goals which will not fail no matter how tough the circumstances are? Hear no excuses, hear no complains, hear nothing else but the words of action.

What are the goals that you are fully committed to accomplish? It may be about starting a new business, changing your job, starting a new journey, writing a book,  signing up for a course, multiplying your income by three times, starting yoga or gym or meditation, waking up at 5:00 am for 21 days, quitting some bad habits, travelling to three different places of Nepal or travelling three countries. Anything specific and powerful that you must do this year. 

Sixth, run the backward calendar. Planning is an art that most of us fail to master. One of the very strategic way of planning our year is by running the backward calendar. It’s simple. First, make the list of activities you would like to do or accomplishments you would like to have this year. After you have the list, place those activities starting from December and ending in January.

What would you like to accomplish by the end of December? Write down your goals of December and then write down the accomplishments/activities you would like to achieve by November, followed by October, September and finally January. The last phase of this planning approach could be to plan to achieve outcome of every month.

Generally, we plan from January to December. Planning from the backward is the reverse approach. It helps us to know the deadlines properly, creates a sense of urgency and helps us to understand the relationship between time and our objective. It’s worth trying. Running the backward race is the new race in town.

Finally, be prepared for the worst roller coaster ride ever. It’s always amazing to make our mind more fertile, but at the same time it is crucial to understand that life brings surprises that may be beyond our predictions. So, be prepared if things may go completely different for you and be prepared for the little bit of planning that life already has for you. It is always the unpredicted problems that tears us apart, or the predicted problems that we are not prepared enough to face. Both have the potential to change the game of life dramatically.

The 2020 is the beginning of a new decade and also a potential year. A wise person should use this opportunity to envision the coming decade and to strongly plan these twelve months. Every ticking of the clock is a reminder that we have got one second less to live. The race of 2020 has begun and the winner is the one that sets the right direction, sails against the tides and accepts the way it goes through.

 
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