It may be arbitrary but the turn of a new year is a perfect opportunity to set a plan for what you want to experience, create, have and do over the next 12 months.

Part of what spurns us on to thinking about our future is the middle of December to early January, for most, is a time where we have time less time at work and spend more time with friends and family. This end of year cycle is a perfect catalyst for reconnecting with what matters most.

But knowing what matters (or what you want to achieve) and making it so are wildly different things.

Having spent a huge portion of my adult life investigating what makes the difference between ‘those who achieve what they want’ and ‘those who try but don’t, or don’t really try at all’, I’ve learnt that 99% of the time it comes down to five factors.

Five factors that are within your control.

1. Clarity

It’s near impossible to succeed when you don’t know what success looks like for you. Most people — not a general statement but a quantifiable one from surveying hundreds of people — have a loose, or vague, or ill-defined outcome they are working so hard for. Check this with yourself: What are you currently working so hard for, putting in lots of time and energy? Do you know what specifically you want to have or feel when you’re done?

Pick one goal or dream or intention you want in your life in 2012 and spend focused time on getting clear and specific on what that final outcome looks like, feels like or does for you.

Clarity is an essential starting point.

2. Conviction and Motivation

Let’s face it, with all the demands in our lives today it is incredibly challenging to stay on track with what you want and not get pulled in dozens of directions from distractions and other people’s requests. That’s life! And it’s your job to keep your most important things front and centre in your life.

Yet even when it’s on our to do list we still need conviction to put in the day-to-day investment – sometimes baby steps and other times giant leaps of faith – to keep working at it.

For your main goals in 2012, strengthen your motivation to make consistent progress. Get clear on WHY you want to do this. Summarise all the benefits you — and those around you — will gain from achieving this goal and reflect on that list on a very regular basis.

3. A plan for inaction

If you’re clear and inspired to take action you still need a plan to get it done. However, you also need to prepare how you’ll respond when things don’t go your way, when you get sidetracked or disillusioned at your results along the way. How will you respond to setbacks? How will you get yourself out of a rut of frustration, procrastination or overwhelm?

Successful goal achievement is not just about taking action but it’s mostly about how to overcome the hurdles along the way.

Here are three sentences worth completing when you sit down and design your action steps:

If I get frustrated with lack of progress, in order to keep going or find a better way I will….

If I find days or weeks passing by without taking any action towards my goals, I can get back on track by….

If I’m really stuck and not sure where to begin, or am overwhelmed by everything I need to do, I can ease my way forward by…

4. Habits of Success

As Aristotle noted long, long ago, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit”. Our day-to-day behaviour is largely driven by our habits.

Habits of behaviour, thoughts and feelings. For example, do you have habits that build physical health or erode it? What is your ritual the first moment you turn on your computer at the start of the day – productive work or guilty pleasures?

Your success in the next year is a direct reflection of the balance sheet of your habits — those that serve you in achieving your goals and those that prevent you from getting closer to them.

What habits will you need to create for your big goals? Which habits do you need to eliminate in order to make consistent (and enjoyable) steps towards living the life you want?

5. Be open and seek support from others

You’re not always going to have the answers, the willpower or the energy necessary to take action. No great things are achieved in isolation.

Collaborate with others on solving the problems in your way. Find a quick tip via Google. Get a coach or mentor to help you to navigate to your end destination. Join a like-minded online community to gain ideas and a network of enthusiastic supporters.

For all of your goals, identify a Top 3 list of people, tools or resources you can tap into when you’re stuck or when you simply start to feel your motivation fade. Nip it in the bud and get back on track!

This is where the magic happens. If you fail to address these Big Five you’re likely headed for a year of missed opportunity, frustration or regret. So give yourself the gift of spending quality time thinking – and writing – through all of these. It’s a wonderful way to kick start your year with optimism and vibrancy.

You’ll be hearing a lot more from ActionPodcast on these points in 2012 and we look forward to helping you achieve fun and rewarding success throughout the year.

Condensing an idea or thought into its key essence without losing meaning is an important skill, yet we can become complacent in our communication.

Have you sent or received an ambiguous “txt msg” lately that could be misunderstood? The convenience of 160-character text messages (SMS) saw us lose meaning in our attempt to be brief and quick.

With the freedom of email, when did you last carefully review a message before sending it? The commoditisation of data has meant it is cheap to send increasingly large quantities of information, reducing the need for brevity.

Although brevity is less appropriate when being creative, journalling or simply chewing the fat with an old friend, it is increasingly more important in marketing, fast-paced work environments, digital communication and the prioritisation of our time.

I love Twitter for its 140-character limit which encourages me to be really clear and concise about what I want to say. It becomes easier with practice, so here are 4 Questions for Brevity to try:

1. What am I *really* trying to say? Think about the outcome you want & what the most important detail is.
2. Who is my message aimed at? Think about the audience and how that might influence what needs to be included.
3. Is it clear enough? Think about the context, and whether there are any assumptions made or details missing.
4. What can I cut without reducing the meaning? Think about how much story or description is necessary to your purpose from Q1.

Please add your comments below, and share your thoughts on:

In what context or situation would it be useful to practice your skills at brevity?

This is a longer podcast than normal because whilst Gina & Sam are very passionate about their own daily journals, they realise that not everyone will be as excited or comfortable with the idea

… so they start by exploring some tips for people who might experience strong resistance to the idea of writing down their thoughts every day. The process of writing in this way can skyrocket your success and happiness: and alongside discussing the many benefits of journaling, they also explore some of the ways to make it work best for you.

[Gina & Sam both use a form of journaling from The Artist's Way called Morning Pages - for more info have a look here.]

Whilst expectations themselves seem part of human nature, those of us who hold high expectations for ourselves – complete with perfectionist foibles – tend to have reasonably high expectations of those around us too. Particularly if they are close to us!

But the greater the expectation, the more power it has to hurt us. All hurt and disappointment can be traced back to an expectation we’ve held. One of the 55 Concepts for Conscious Living tell us that “hurt is not getting what you want”. The catch-22 of expectations though, is that we also tend to assume others know what it is we want! So we don’t tell them – which means they’d either need to be mind-readers, or chances are they’ll disappoint us somehow.

How we respond to the inevitable hurts and disappoints has the ability to make or break our relationships. So join Gina and Sam as they discuss some of the ways that we can handle our great disappointments, and choose clarity as an alternative to our (un)great expectations – especially when it matters most!

P.S. Visit the 55 Concepts for Conscious Living on facebook!

In this podcast, Sam and Chris explore the emotional impact of falling behind and simple shifts you can make to minimise the impact and quickly get back on track.

If you have downloaded the podcast from iTunes remember to post a review and visit our website at ActionPodcast.com to leave a comment or contact one of the presenters directly. Sign up to receive the podcast directly to your inbox, plus an additional weekly blog post! You’ll also be the first to receive a copy of our new e-Book.

Yet, how often do you follow your own advice to others?

Do you find yourself telling colleagues they should leave the office on time and get home to more important things while you stick around just a bit longer to write ‘just one more email’?

Have you told a particularly stressed friend that they really ought to take a break and treat themselves to an afternoon at a spa or R&R in the local park, while your common stress-busting strategy is to just keep fighting through it?

Do you and your partner often discuss how great it would be to take in more of the cultural treats and opportunities that your area of the country offers, only to see another six months pass without actually doing anything about it?

Perhaps these examples don’t exactly resonate with you…but I’m sure there are other situations that you have clearly and boldy, with respect and genuine care for another’s well-being, given someone sound advice. Yet, you yourself haven’t gotten around to acting on the same advice or made the time to take care of what’s important to you.

“Do as I say, not as I do” was a popular mantra of a former teacher of mine. Why is it easier to confidently give advice but not have the depth of conviction that we should also follow such solid advice? Why is it easier to tell others what is good for them, while we continue to practice bad habits that are counter-productive in our own life, and the complete opposite of our own words of wisdom.

Actually, a more important question would be “What is a great piece of advice you’ve given recently, that would also help you, but you haven’t taken action in your own life?” Something to ponder for sure.

The point is not to dwell on all the reasons and excuses you haven’t acted, but rather to challenge you to begin walking your talk more consistently. Step up and take on your own advice. Be a shining example for those around you. If your insights are helpful to others, wouldn’t acting on that direction yourself be even better for both of you?

Next time you want to give some advice, look in the mirror first and challenge yourself to do the same. It’s time you benefited as much as your friends from your thoughtful words of wisdom.

Leave a comment to let us know what advice of yours you’ve been avoiding, and what action you might take from reading this post. You’ll help others take action as well.

In this podcast, Chris and Paul discuss how to simply break the cycle of worry in any situation and find a better approach.

After listening to the podcast and trying the suggestions, please leave a comment and let us know how it worked for you. We’d love to hear from you!

WHEN life gets challenging, do you find yourself ruminating regretfully on the past – searching for reasons to justify present dissatisfactions? The anxiety producing “If only… you’d taken that job, married that person, moved countries, bought that flat, had different parents, gone to a different college, taken less drugs, taken more drugs, had more fun, travelled more, had children, not had children… This ego-inspired reasoning, which keeps us in a state of disempowerment and impotence is endless. And endlessly demotivating. And it lures us away from the immense power of being fully conscious and fully present.
Right here, right now.

Or perhaps like many of us, you prefer to focus on the future to avoid feeling any present pain. Or taking action to move out of your current unease. The “What if…. line of anxiety producing self-enquiry… What if…. I get made redundant, make the wrong decision, my boyfriend/girlfriend leaves me, choose the wrong job, it all goes terribly wrong, lose all my money, feel lonely, etc. Projecting our fear into future events, which have yet to happen.

Resistance
We all, myself very much included, have constructed myriad ways of resisting the present moment. The Right Here. Right Now. The mind, ego, whatever you want to call it, invariably takes us away from true consciousness. It feeds off and promotes our fear. Controlling and self-denying, it loves the whip hand. And until we take charge of our thoughts, the CD of self-sabotage will continue to play into the sunset… like an interminable Groundhog Day (without the humour!).

Why do we avoid feeling present?
If you are a human being – and I’m assuming most of you reading this are of that persuasion – then you’ll probably find yourself taking more action to avoid pain, than taking positive action towards experiencing pleasure in life. Think about it. Sex addiction, work addiction, drug addiction – we self-medicate and self-anaesthetise to suppress painful emotions and feelings. But of course they simply go underground, emerging at inappropriate moments with the result that we often self-sabotage – in work and our personal life – the very relationships we hold most dear. Or we simply never invite them in in the first place. We avoid ‘being’.

Observe your emotions
One way I work with clients is to encourage them to feel their emotions. Not deny them. Look at the very word ‘emotion’. Motion = movement. They are simply passing through. They are not OF you. By refusing to  identify with the emotions, but by simply observing them as they move through, you will become less addicted to checking out. There are many ways of staying present, with presence. The most powerful way is to focus on your breath. Put all your attention on your in – and your out breath. Practise this daily for at least 5 minutes at a time. Then any time you feel overwhelmed by emotions and feel yourself checking out, use this technique to change your state. It’s the best way to be fully present. And surrender to the moment.

Ground yourself
Another way is to stay in your body – preferably 24/7. Use grounding exercises such as imagining heavy cords reaching from the soles of both feet down into the ground. As far as the earth’s core. Tie these cords or vines around large boulders. Then draw up that fabulous fire energy from the earth’s molten core. Visualise that energising orange, brown, red colour rising up your feet, ankles, and legs until it fills your whole body. You will feel energised and more powerfully in your body.

Pay attention
Give your full attention to whatever you are doing. Whether it’s watching soapsuds on a glass you’re washing up, to watching the trees on your way to work, to totally focusing on your work. Practise right here. Right now.

Give yourself permission to be increasingly creative… Write a stream of consciousness page every morning as soon as you get up. Start painting, drawing, learn a musical instrument… move your consciousness from your left to your right brain. The source of all inspiration. Play! Play! Play! Run around a field, scream and shout. Allow your inner child expression and let go! Laugh – and above all, don’t take yourself too seriously.

Results
Being fully present will enable you to draw on unlimited inspiration. You will be able to deal with your emotions in a constructive way, instead of diving in and becoming overwhelmed by them. Unfettered by the past or future, you will access all the energy, self-awareness and clarity you need for peace of mind and a more creative and fulfilling life. Enjoy your presence!