As we all roll into the New Year, consider taking a tour of your 2016 calendar and build a +- Review Sheet.  It may offer insights to what to do more of and less of in 2017 to keep your emotions in check.

One of the benefits of keeping a journal or detailed calendar is that you can quickly recap your positive and negative situations. This process will help crystallize your focus on MORE positive experiences along with highlighting experiences that MUST be eliminated.

Calendar Tour Process

1. Look at your 2016 calendar or journal month by month and see where you spent your time – do this quickly and not a day-by-day analysis.

2. Type into a word document/Evernote or just write in your journal and make a list of +experiences, and -negative emotions. The key is to quickly glance at the calendar on your computer or journal and write them down. The emotions will come to the surface as soon as you read the calendar entry.

3. Look for patterns or trends when you were either going up or down with stress, positive relationships or experiences.

4. Ask 3 close friends what they would like to see more of you doing in 2017.

Just for background and an example, this is from my personal 2016

+ Experiences – Positive feelings

1. Non-thinking “empty calendar” and off the grid time riding my bike across the US, camping

2. Daily meditation every morning

3. Spending time with godchildren with calendar dates

4. Helping out my aging parents

5. Traveling with short trips with friends

6. Assisting entrepreneurs with actionable plans to grow

7. Helping athletes to think completely differently in their training/racing and life

8. Finally finding a responsive technology partner

– Experiences – Negative Emotion

1. A poor hiring decision

2. Several B.S relationships – startup companies looking to raise capital (however at least the number was less than 2015)

3. Being too stubborn and not listening to my staff with a technology platform that could not perform a necessary task vs. spending money on a new platform and massive time dump

4. Not finishing a project that was on my target list and set an unrealistic timeline

5. Micromanaging a website design

6. Trying to get the “best deal” that was unrealistic with a business acquisition and missing the opportunity

The main point of the exercise is to look at the entire year quickly and see what things offered the most memorable experiences and which became stress situations.   

Adjust, Retool and Revamp for 2017!

Freedom Success Update – “Gigging and Grinding on the side for income”

Because of the demand of the first roll out, we are opening a second class, which is now open for registration.  If you are interested, please text me at 412-427-4828, email me at wayne@chiefgoalsofficer.com or register online.