A short motivational talk by John Assaraf offering a personal framework for year-end reflection and goal-setting as the decade ends. He emphasizes radical honesty and transparency, learning from both failures and successes across his life (58 years) to bring an empowered, nonjudgmental self into 2020 and achieve greater growth and freedom.
Chapters
Hey, I hope you are choosing to have a great day. I wanted to give you a framework that I use to approach every new year. And so, as we say goodbye to the decade that is behind us, and we say hello to a new decade that is upon us, when I do my year end review, which I started doing a few weeks ago, and I'll complete before the end of the year, I like to make lists and saying, what are all the things that I learned from setting goals, creating plans, achieving many of them, not achieving many of them? What did I learn? What did I learn about myself? What did I learn about the way that I approached achieving my goals? What worked, what didn't work? Why? There's something that I love to practice, and it's called radical transparency and radical honesty. And it first has to start with myself, right with me, the person in the mirror that's responsible for all my results. And in order to be radically honest and transparent, I have to create a framework where it's safe, even for me. Because writing, I'm thinking, I'm looking at myself. And I learned, and many of you already know this, how to do that in a format or an environment where I don't blame myself. I don't feel ashamed, don't feel guilty. I don't justify, I don't judge. That stems from my belief that everything happens for a reason, and it happens for my spiritual and emotional and mental and physical growth. And so the framework is the perfection that's in every moment, in everyone, in everything. Even though we may not like the result, we may not understand it, it may be painful, horrific, whatever the case is, the moment is perfect. If I'm looking to grow, if I'm looking to develop, if I'm looking to become more, I'm looking to have more. More freedom, more awareness, more understanding, more compassion, more love, more of everything. And so, as I review my goals, I ask myself, what did I achieve? What did I not achieve? What do I want to achieve? And what lessons can I bring from this past year, this past decade? But more importantly, in my case, 58 years of living, 58 years of lessons, 58 years of failing miserably, succeeding magnificently. What can I bring from all of the lessons so that the best version of me shows up to the new decade? The best version of me shows up to the to the decade. And you'll probably agree with me that many of the greatest lessons I've encountered are not because of my successes. They're because of my failures, every kind of failure that there is. I have mastered. And I'm sure I'll continue to master a bunch of them and try to minimize them, of course. But I want you to come with your whole SEL to 2020. Come with every bit of knowledge and skill and emotion that you can without judgment, blame, shame, guilt or justification. Leave all that behind you because they're disempowering states of mind. And when you can take those lessons and use them to your benefit, you're not bringing the lesson of just one year or one month or one quarter. You're bringing your whole life. And you can compound those lessons, those bits of knowledge, the skills you have, into the next year. That's powerful. That is what can drive you to achieve more success next year than you have in the last three to five years. And so the mindset, the framework is that you're more than enough. You're more than enough as a result of the things that worked well for you and the things that did not. Now you can change the things that did not. Now you can eliminate the errors in judgment or even behavior. And you can tweak and adjust and tweak and adjust and tweak and adjust until you hit your stride. So invest a little bit of time in reflection, radical honesty, radical transparency. And I want you to commit, no interest here, commit to bringing the best, most powerful, incredible you to 2020. I look forward to being part of helping you achieve an amazing 2020 and for helping you love your life even more than you do now. Have a great, great, great end of 2019. And if you're watching this in 2020, you can still do this.
