A Million Dreams – A New Resolution for 2019

Do you make New Years Resolutions? I have in the past. It is often a good time to reassess what is happening and how you might like to change going forward. But most people make these resolutions and 2 days later or a week or a month, they are forgotten.

For me, this year, I heard the song A Million Dreams and was inspired by the idea of actually following my dreams – or at least paying attention to them. I believe that dreams are a way of the Universe speaking to you. And when the universe speaks, you should listen.

The Universe speaks to us in many way. Most of these we are unaware of. Is it because we cannot hear it. Or are we not paying attention?

So the goal is paying attention. Because the dreams I have just from the last 2 nights will keep me pretty busy for months.

As for your resolutions, it is up to you whether you want to make them or whether you will do anything at all. I came across an interesting way of doing it from Blog master and author Tim Ferriss (author of The Four Hour Work Week). It is less about making resolutions and more about assessing how things went last year, and putting focus on what was successful.

I’m often asked about how I approach New Year’s resolutions. The truth is that I no longer approach them at all, even though I did for decades. Why the change? I have found “past year reviews” (PYR) more informed, valuable, and actionable than half-blindly looking forward with broad resolutions. I did my first PYR after a mentor’s young daughter died of cancer on December 31st, roughly eight years ago, and I’ve done it every year since. It takes 30-60 minutes and looks like this:

1. Grab a notepad and create two columns: POSITIVE and NEGATIVE.
2. Go through your calendar from the last year, looking at every week.
3. For each week, jot down on the pad any people or activities or commitments that triggered peak positive or negative emotions for that month. Put them in their respective columns.
4. Once you’ve gone through the past year, look at your notepad list and ask, “What 20% of each column produced the most reliable or powerful peaks?”
5. Based on the answers, take your “positive” leaders and schedule more of them in the new year. Get them on the calendar now! Book things with friends and prepay for activities/events/commitments that you know work. It’s not real until it’s in the calendar. That’s step one. Step two is to take your “negative” leaders, put “NOT-TO-DO LIST” at the top, and put them somewhere you can see them each morning for the first few weeks of 2019. These are the people and things you *know* make you miserable, so don’t put them on your calendar out of obligation, guilt, FOMO, or other nonsense.

That’s it! If you try it, let me know how it goes.

And just remember: it’s not enough to remove the negative. That simply creates a void. Get the positive things on the calendar ASAP, lest they get crowded out by the bullshit and noise that will otherwise fill your days. Good luck and godspeed!