With 2018 drawing rapidly to a close, this is traditionally a time when we look back at what we’ve accomplished in the year. If you’re the forward thinking kind, you probably also look forward to your plans for the coming year.
Although it’s only a change of page on a calendar, the end of one year and the start another is marked very differently by different people. In fact, there are three distinct groups.
First, there are what I call the doers. These people started the year with clear plans and goals in mind. When they look back on the previous year, they do so with great satisfaction. All the plans and goals they had set themselves twelve months ago have been fulfilled, or at the very least have been started. These people are getting somewhere. They are in control of their lives.
Second are the hopers. Like the doers, this group of people start each new year full of ambition and hope. They have great plans, whether it be to find the partner of their dreams, start a family, move home, or take a change in direction of career. However, unlike the doers, the hopers look back on the past twelve months and wonder what happened to all their dreams of a year ago. They were so confident of making a change in their life, but life somehow got in the way. These people are not in control of their life, they are controlled by their life.
The third group are what I call, perhaps unkindly, the no-hopers. These people just drift from year to year with no plans, no goals, and no idea of what they want from their lives. They are content with their lot and either see no reason to change, or don’t believe they can change anything for the better.
An Ex-Hoper
Which category are you in? I suspect most people fall into the hoper category. I know I did for many years. I was stuck in my crappy day job working for the man year after year. Every January I would say to myself, “This year will be different, this year I will find a way to make money on my own, this year I will break free of the system! This will be my year!”.
By February or March I would once again be tied up in the day to day routine of the day job. My plans weren’t forgotten, but I was too busy to do anything about them. I just needed to get some time aside. Before I knew it I would arrive at December and nothing would have changed. I was still stuck in the same old routine. I used to hate December; it reminded me of how I had, yet again, failed in my plans and my hopes.
Just An Hour A Week
The problem is that we are all like high-speed trains, hurtling along a track. We can see a better life, but it’s another track, and it seems like a million miles away. We think we need time to slow down and figure out how to change to that other, better, track.
What I never realised back in that dark time stuck in my day job, was that in reality, to make that change requires only a tiny nudge. Just a very small effort can set you on a whole new track.
For me, the change was made by setting aside an hour a week to learn more about day trading. One single hour out of the 168 hours that pass each week.
That hour got me onto a completely new track, a track that lead me to the life I had been planning for so long. It gave me the chance to see new opportunities. To begin to learn new skills. To meet new people. It opened my eyes to just what is possible with a tiny amount of effort. That hour a week changed me from being a hoper to a doer.
Looking back now, it was an easy change to make. But I know that when you’re flying along that track at a million miles an hour, changing paths can seem pretty scary.
Now I love this time of year. I love setting myself new goals, planning my achievements for the year ahead. Designing my life for the next twelve months.
2019 And Beyond
What will your 2019 be like? Where will you be this time next year? Will you be looking back wondering what happened to all your plans, or will you be celebrating having changed your life for the better, and designing your life for 2020?
Whatever you decide to make 2019, I wish you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous new year!