Power of Monthly Goals (How to Schedule Your Year)

Hey, everybody, it's Brendan. I'd like to share with you one of my favorite and most powerful tools in personal development. It's something you have access to every single day, and yet most people never even use it. It's something that could guide your entire year in your entire week, your entire month, your entire day, and most people never use it. And yet it is the secret to all great growth and accomplishment and every single year in our lives, and we all forget it, and all it is is your calendar. You know, so many people don't use the strategic 12 months that they are given each year to grow, to live a better quality of life, to reach that next level of joy and achievement and fulfillment and connection. It's like, why don't they use it? You look at their calendar, and it's busy work. You know, there's a lot of, like, go here, grab that, take the kids here, or. Or go to that game. But it's not used to develop themselves. Does that make sense? They use a calendar to record simple tasks, but there's no big picture. They don't enter the year, as an example, looking 12 months out and saying, wow, what kind of person do I want to be at the end of this year? What do I want to have achieved, felt accomplished, connected with, contributed? And because of that, their life actually feels like a big, random bag of tasks and. And activities. They tend to feel a little lost or directionless, even if they are busy, because sometimes they're just not really growing. They're just doing a lot. You know, they're not really experiencing things that they purposely chose proactively. They're just reacting to the world's needs. And so they start to feel like a cog in a machine versus an independent, conscious human. And so let's figure this out. How can you use this more strategically? Well, here's what I encourage you to do, no matter what time of year you're watching this video, is to think about, you know, these next 12 months of your life and think about it strategically in specifically five different areas. I think these five areas, if you'll plan out the year, you'll be able to have a different level of growth and experience each year. It's kind of like, you know how sometimes the seasons change and you feel like you're maturing with them, or a different sort of energy is entering your life during the seasons of the weather. Well, that can happen each year. Each year can be a significant season or change or maturity or growth in your life if you'll just get More strategic. So the first area that I'd love you to do and just think about the next 12 months of your life is the area of skill development. What do I mean? Well, we can all choose to develop skills, but very few people actually sort of calendar it or schedule it over a 12 month period of time. Let me give you an example. Some people say, well, Brendan, I want to learn to play the piano. And. And they're just excited. They said, this is the year I'm going to learn to play the piano. And so they get all excited about the skill, but it's never really scheduled. And even if it's scheduled, even if they say Friday piano. So every Friday they go in, they play the piano. Every Friday they go in piano, but they're not really thinking about where they want to be in terms of their real skill on the piano at the end of the year. So let me give you an example. Instead of just saying Fridays piano, you say these 10 songs, I want to be able to play without any music sheets by the end of the year by memory. That's skill development, right? I want to be able to play these 10 songs by the end of this year by memory in front of people and be okay with it and not mess up. That's skill development, right? It's pushing yourself, it's challenging yourself. It's having a goal in mind more than just to do the activity. Doing the activity, you know, that gets your foot in the game, that begins the process, but it's not going to really grow you if you don't have an outcome in mind, a level of skill acquisition, right? There's one thing to say, I want to do the activity to acquire some skill. There's another thing to say, I want this skill and I'm going to move my year to get to that skill. Does that make sense? So think of a skill that you would like to achieve. So I'll give you a great example. One of my just desperate, deep desires in life that I was very, very excited about was I wanted to learn to speak extemporaneously with no notes. So if you've seen all of any of my videos, all my podcasts, almost all of my trainings online, I don't use any notes. I prepare, I rehearse, I think about it. But I don't have a teleprompter here. I don't have a note card or note sheet hanging anywhere or duct tape anywhere. This is just me talking. I thought, you know, if I'm going to be able to communicate and shift the energy of the world and inspire other people. I need to learn to get out of my own way, find my flow, get in the conversation with people and just go and trust and allow. That's where my creativity, my genius, my flow will come from. I got to learn to get out of my own way. So I would set up a schedule. The end of the year, I'd be better at it. I'd say, okay, by the end of this year, I want to be able to do a 20 minute video with absolutely no notes in one take. I would say I want to be able to speak to 300 people for an entire hour with no notes. And I would start sort of setting myself up, rehearsing for that. And I'd be working towards it every single month so that by the end of the year I could have that moment and that experience. So what's your skill? What do you want to develop? And do you have a real calendar set up with truly defined skills that you're marching toward? If not, you're just doing activity. And you will always be a hobbyist. You will never be a pro. Second area that I think I want you to think about the next 12 months of your calendar is your health. How could you finish this year in the best health of your life? What would it really take over a 12 month period of time? And what would that look like for you? Maybe the best health of your life is that you know what, finally you can make up the stairs without being winded. You know, maybe for you, it's like you're going to run that marathon in your personal best time. Maybe you can squat X amount of weight, maybe you can finish CrossFit without throwing up on your neighbor. Whatever it is, it's like find what is it for you? What's going to be the next level of health? Because that next level of health for you in terms of nutrition, exercise, rest, renewal, rejuvenation, well being, mindset, all of that next level of health for you, that's going to help you live a better life. You'll be so happy that you finally dedicated a year for that next level. Very, very important. People forget this all the time. And I think if you can grasp this one, you're gonna be really excited about it. How could you, by the end of this year, the end of this year, have your most fun year ever, no matter what your constraints or your boundaries are maybe like, well, Brendan, that's not possible. I hate my job. Then great. Bring more joy to your job. Force yourself to make the Job more fun. Look, I mean, if we learn anything from the old philosophical traditions, everyone can carry a bucket of water joyfully, Everybody can accomplish a task joyfully. Doesn't mean it doesn't get repetitive. But being mindful, present and aware allows us to bring more intention and joy into that moment. So what you do is not an excuse. And I can tell you that because I used to work jobs that they weren't glamorous, they weren't great, people didn't like them, I didn't necessarily like them, but I found a way to enjoy it. And that's what I had to do at the time. But I also had to strategically be setting up the goal of having more fun in my mission and my work. And for me, at one year of my life, that goal, that meant that 12 month goal was new job, new community, new place to live and work that would energize me and excite me. And that became part of the goal. How could I move towards that? What skills could I acquire? Who could I network with? What opportunities could I chase so that by the end of that year, I had the most fun in the work that I was doing, but also in my relationships. I think people need to set a goal for that. What grand adventure could you have this year? How could you earn it? Work for it, save for it, plan it, schedule it with your growth friends. Go have this extraordinary time together. Because too many of us, you plan your career, you plan your business, you plan where you live, you plan kids lunches. But you don't plan your joy. You don't plan time to escape and have an adventure and be a human and explore and enjoy life. Make sure you do that part. Okay? It's really important, I would say the next level for you. If you've got your work, your fun, your health, and you have some sense of personal enjoyment along the way, the next thing is simple. Every single month, set a monthly challenge for yourself. A monthly personal development challenge that's related to your virtues. So, for example, you say, you know what? January, that's gonna be my month of patience. February, that will be my month of listening to other people. March, that's gonna be my month to be kinder than I've ever been kind. The next month is gonna be the time that I'm gonna journal all month, whatever it's going to be. I want you to have this sort of rhythm in your Life where every 30 days you have a personal challenge to make yourself a better human. And I can share with you. This is my 19th year of having a personal challenge to make myself better and make myself better in my relationships or my personal life or my health. But every 30 days, I have a goal. And that every 30 days keeps my life feeling like it's growing, like I'm challenging myself. I like I'm learning. I'm not always finished those 30 days feeling like I mastered those areas, but I got better at them, you know, And I think we all have to be on that process of mastery throughout the year. And if we can just set up little things like that every month, it's just, it's a nice utilization of the calendar. Just say, okay, it's the first of the month. Here's my challenge this month. Every day you journal on that challenge, you see how you're doing. The end of the month, you say, great, here's how I did. And even if you didn't do a good job, doesn't matter, Move on to the next challenge, then go through that every 12 months, different challenge every month. You can recycle them the next year if you want to, but I think that's how we really become better humans is using that calendar. It's just a convenient way. Look, our calendars all change. You and me, we both have a new month coming up. What are you going to do in this next month? What are you going to strive for? How's your health going to be next month? How are your personal relationships going to be next month? What are you going to contribute and create next month? What do you really want to feel next month? How is next month going to continue to grow? Your maturity, your consciousness, your joy, your fulfillment? By asking that question, you start looking for a better quality of answer. By looking for a better quality of answer and striving to get there, you feel more joyous, more fulfilled, more of what we call the charged life. Hey, guys, it's Brendan. Did you like this episode? If you did, you can do three things right now to continue your journey. First, you can subscribe right here to my channel, which I hope you will, so I can keep sending you videos on a weekly basis to change your life. Second, you can get my brand new book for free by clicking the link right here. And third, you can also go to my website, sign up for my newsletter so I can send you free, free offers, free products, free programs, updates on my events, new podcasts, and everything else that we don't do on this channel here. If you like to do that, just go ahead and click any of these buttons you see right here. Look forward to seeing you on the next video. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, and make your difference today.