We are at the end of the year, and there are many activities that are coming in hard, fast, and from every direction. Besides Christmas parties family gatherings, and intimate times with our friends, the end of the year that accumulates around December also is a time for us to start contemplating what we’re going to do next year.
It is the end of the year.
Many times we don’t wanna think of the end of the year. This is because of what we have failed to do during this year. And there was a lot that happened this year I understand. From wondering if you were going to have enough money to trying to decide how we were going to carry on. But we’ve also had great times happen this year and when you look back and honestly examine, you’ll see that the 50-50 lifestyle is still in effect.
The Christmas time is a wonderful time to start, preparing not only for Christmas itself, and all the presents and all the pomp and circumstance that your family and traditions require. It is also time to start examining how the year went. Examine your successes and your failures. Then look to the future and see what can you accomplish this coming year? this is because Christmas is the season of change.
Review
As mentioned before, it is the end of the year. So we start accumulating all the decorations we need for this festive season we start putting together the events that we will attend. But it is also a time for us to review our wins and our losses. We want to examine what we did right and what we did wrong.
Reviewing our year is just as important as making goals for the next year. We won’t know how far we’ve really traveled unless we glance over our shoulder and look at where we were. We will struggle to appreciate all aspects of our journey if we do not review our lives for that year.
Reviewing allows us to have a perspective to understand what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong. How did we succeed? How did we fail? What were the actions and the decisions that led up to both? These are all important questions we need to ask when we are reviewing Our years.
When you’re looking at whether your goals succeeded or not, it is good to ask the following After Action Review questions.
- What did I do Right?
- What did I do Wrong?
- What needs to be improved?
- What can be learned from this event?
What did you accomplish?
There are multiple reasons to examine what you have accomplished. Not only do you get to see your wins, but you also have the ability to celebrate those wins.
This is one aspect of goalkeeping that we as men often forget to do. We want to celebrate our wins. The opportunity to feel good for the fact that we are rewarded for our hard work.
If we do not celebrate the small wins, then we are more likely to lose interest in our goal.
What did you not accomplish?
This isn’t an excuse to beat ourselves up. But we want to examine what we failed at. We have a better chance of gathering winds when we mark down our losses.
Yes, failure does suck. And many times we want to just forget that we have failed in one form or another. However, failing gives us lessons on how to succeed. Much as Edison found 1000 different ways to not make a lightbulb. You also learn what not to do to accomplish your goal.
Make your plans
At the end of the year, we also get the opportunity to start making plans. Start laying out the goals. You want to accomplish the challenges you want to face, and the obstacles you want to overcome.
Making plans not only helps you come to better understand the steps you’re going to have to make, but it also helps you have mile markers so you can see what type of progress you are making.
Look at next year
Making plans also allows you to start looking fully at the new year. You will have an idea of some of the challenges that you will be facing. You will have some of the obstacles very evident. All others are going to be out of the blue. But when you have a plan, you free up your thought process so that you can focus on the immediate fires instead of worrying about the ones that are over the ridge.
Looking to next year allows you the opportunity to envision what you want to accomplish. It gives you the ability to start focusing in on how you will think if you succeed. You can fully come to understand what you’re going to need to do to reach that desired goal.
Imagine the possibilities
To reach that goal you wanna look at all the possibilities. What are you going to think of yourself when you accomplish that goal? How is that goal going to help you in your overall life?
Looking forward and planning your goal also allows you to fully grasp all the possibilities that come ahead of you so allow yourself to dream big and imagine what the goal would smell like taste like how you would feel how it would benefit your family how it would benefit you your community all of these little aspects all the small details those are the things and all those little possibilities are what you want to look at.
What to work on?
Now a lot of times these guys have not made it a practice to make goals. So when it comes to setting goals a lot of times we will struggle with even exercising the imagination. This is one reason why when it comes to bettering your relationship with your wife, and you start trying to come up with romantic ideas. We struggle with those romantic ideas. But there are always four pillars that you can work on at any time of your life that will impact everyone around you including yourself.
Your 4 pillars
You want to work on the four pillars of a Relaxed mail at every opportunity you come across. These poor pillars are what attracted your wife to you when you were younger. Remember when you were young and you were driven, you had thoughts ideas you were in shape you were learning new things. You had lots of friends in your group. These are all resemblances of your four pillars.
Therefore, if you’re struggling with coming up with ideas for what you want to set goals on set four goals one for each pillar in your life.
Look at what it is you’re learning. Decide you’re going to read one book a month. Decide you’re going to attend a conference or that you’re going to learn something in particular. You’re gonna learn a new skill or you’re going to level up an old skill. Learn something that interests you.
The man’s body pillar is your health. I get it. Oh my gosh! Do you want me to go vegan? No somebody who believes that eating cleanly is actually better for you. Eat meat, but eat meat that has been minimally processed as possible. So yes that does mean staying away from fast food joints. Start bringing your lunch with you. So that you may have a homemade brisket sandwich that and if you can make the bread, your own even better, but like I said, make it as minimally processed as possible, and have as few carbohydrates as possible.
But maybe your idea of the man’s body is something completely different. Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to become healthier? That is what the man’s body pillar is about being in shape so that you can last longer in a fight for your wife and kids. So that you are able to be with your wife well into old age. These are aspects of your body that you want to take care of eat more vegetables eat more lean beef eat more meat eat less carbohydrates, more fat less oil.
Working on the man’s soul pillar is your passion. What drives you to get up in the morning? What allows you get you to talk about something incessantly? What topic puts a glimmer in your eye? This is the thing that you are passionate about the thing that you love to do. Well, besides your wife. Women in our lives love when we are driven. We have a purpose and we’re reaching that purpose we’re going for it. It makes us more interesting. It allows us to be more of a man and allows us to open up our possibilities even more When we have a purpose insights our wives are more curious about what we’re doing. So you want to be driven because if you’re not you wind up being the couch potato sitting on the couch and you become a bit boring your wife doesn’t want boring. Your wife wants you to be this man of action.
The final pillar is your community. This includes your family but also expands out to the actual literal community that you live in. But more focused on who are your closest friends. Do you have a group of men that you talk to on a weekly basis? Do you have a group of men that you’re always reaching out and saying hi to?
This is your community and most guys sadly only have one maybe two very close friends. As men, we need a community to turn to. There are examples of civic organizations like the Lions Club the Elks Lodge, the Rotary Club, and the lake. It is a means for men to be able to meet regularly. Another example of why men need to gather is because when men have a strong community, they are more fulfilled and live longer. So you wanna have more friends if you only have two or three friends you wanna double that take the challenge to find 345 new friends and y’all sit down once a week and do something for 34 hours. At first, your wife may be a little worried and that’s OK. She’s allowed to have her emotional thoughts. You need to do what you need to do to make sure you are as well of a balanced man as you possibly can be.
What am I going to be working on?
So what am I going to work on? I’ve got a few things that I am planning on achieving this year.
Find a convention to go to
I want to grow my community a bit more. So I am going to find a convention of other men so that I can start getting my name out there even more. I’m gonna start having more conversations with just random men. I’m gonna start getting out of my Comfort zone and talking to men for a purpose.
Make 4 new contacts each month.
In doing so I’d like to see if I can make four contacts every month. This means I get to make one new contact with one new person every week so at the end of the year I should have 52 new people who know me and that I talk to maybe not on a close friend basis of once a week but on a monthly basis.
Still work on growing Relaxed Male.
I’m going to continue growing The Relaxed Male. I have another project that’s in the works, but I’ll announce it here a bit later when I have decided if I am going to actually launch it or not. Bit more homework that I need to do on it but there might be something else in the books showing up here rather soon.
If you would like to see what it is like to work with me and see what changes are possible.
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