2021-2025 The New Year’s Resolution

2021 – 2025

The New Year’s Resolution

I’m not a fan of New Year’s Resolutions because I’m very much centred around consistency and balance in life. However I do believe in starting as we mean to go on, with the best of intentions. So yesterday, having taken down all the Christmas decorations and cleaning the house, it felt clean and tidy – so I plan to try my best to keep it like this! I have a new diary and a new contacts book which I aim to keep up to date and thus I aim to try to remember all important dates! These are very simple goals for this year ahead where Brexit, Covid and vaccinations make things equally as uncertain as last year.

If you make a New Year’s Resolution this year, why not vow to create a 5 Year Plan to focus on Work/ Life Balance. This will, of course, encapsulate many things and in so doing I guarantee that you will learn more about yourself and achieve far more than you would than if you make your normal New Year’s Resolutions. Are you up for the challenge?

If you undertook the 5 Year Planning Workshop with me in November you will now be starting to work on the first year of your 5 Year Plan. What an exciting feeling – to have something to work towards and goals to achieve! Ticking off the things on your to-do list and making progress, however small, is incredibly rewarding and just having the plan in place makes you 30% more likely to achieve success in your chosen path. Make your goals positive rather than negative and you are 12% more likely to achieve them – so rather than ‘I will stop eating chocolate’ say ‘I will eat more fruit and drink more water’.

Often, though, we focus on the wrong things in our plans because we haven’t thought out a long term strategy or gone on a ‘Planning Journey’. I teach clients to walk through their ‘Planning Journey’ which helps them to get to the root causes of their feelings – so we build plans around real requirements rather than something they think they want or ought to do.  

In the Future of Jobs Report 2020 by the World Economic Forum they outlined the Top Skills of 2025 as follows:

1.       Analytical thinking and innovation;

2.       Active Learning & Learning Strategies;

3.       Complex Problem Solving;

4.       Critical Thinking and Analysis;

5.       Creativity, Originality and Initiative;

6.       Leadership and Social Influence;

7.       Technology Use, Monitoring and Control;

8.       Technology Design & Programming;

9.       Resilience, Stress Tolerance and Flexibility;

10.   Reasoning, Problem Solving and Ideation.

Many of these should come as no surprise, especially after the events of 2020, however how many of you have started to work on boosting your skills for your future? Have you thought that boosting your skills may in turn help you to achieve your goals submissively? Those of you who took part in the 5 Year Planning Masterclass definitely have Skills on your 5 year plan and it may even be worth re-evaluating them with this survey in mind.

If you didn’t undertake the Masterclass with me, it’s never too late to start planning and I’m considering running another in March 2021 so if you would be interested send me a quick message and we can discuss your thoughts and requirements.

For those of you who are not in a place to create a long-term plan and perhaps struggling to move forwards this is the best time to remind you that none of this is a reflection on you personally. If you are struggling, that’s entirely normal and I’m not surprised that people feel uncertain. The following things, despite being important to plan for, do not define your levels of self-worth:

1.       Your Levels of Productivity;

2.       Your Weight;

3.       Your Past Experiences;

4.       Your Grades;

5.       Your Relationship Status;

6.       Your Income

Therefore, if you have set New Year’s Resolutions around the above, I think it would be wise to rethink them. There are better ways to plan around the above without putting you under unnecessary pressure. Rather, let’s take a slightly longer term view and work towards that. Let’s make it a year of self-love, rather than loathing and where 2021 will bear witness to the aftermath of Covid let’s be prepared for what comes next.  

The CV Writing Workshop is taking place on Saturday 23rd January for 49 Euros per person and The 5 Year Planning for Work/ Life Balance Workshop is usually done over 7 days online; schedule for March TBD. If you are interested in learning more send me a quick message on yourconsultant@candehrconsultancy.com