HOW TO
Reinvent Yourself for the New Year
12 January 2019
Every year we set goals (or at least think about setting them). We vow to never eat chocolate again, or to quit smoking, or to spend more time practicing music or… if you’re anything like me, you have a long list of things you want to achieve this year. It can be anything from putting on your own art exhibitions to releasing albums and getting radio play internationally.
It’s a New Year thing and the best time to start fresh. To reinvent yourself and become the person you wish you could be. Whether that simply be a slimmer, stronger, smarter version of yourself or the person envied for brilliant piano skills, the artist killing it with products stocked by retail outlets, or the writer hitting the Amazon best seller list.
So why is it that our goals and dreams often end up forgotten or incomplete come December?
Today I have three steps for you which will help you gain clarity and reinvent yourself for the New Year so you can not only reach your goals, but SMASH through them.
Nicola xx
Dreams are just that; dreams….
unless you act on them.
1. DECIDE WHAT IT IS YOU WANT.
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You’ve got to know where you’re going before you can get there.
Take some time to brainstorm and think about what is it that you really want to achieve, or change, or improve this coming year.
Are you truly happy with your life?
What are the good things, and the bad things.
What do you want to change?
What’s your dream?
Have you written it down and started working towards it yet?
So here’s what we’re going to do.
Grab a big piece of paper and brainstorm all the things you do would like to achieve this coming year. This isn’t a ‘brainstorm your perfect life’ exercise. Of course if you haven’t done that yet, make sure you take time to do that too, but this is a ‘taking a realistic look at what you want and what you can achieve in one year from your current position’ exercise.
So whatever that is, WRITE IT DOWN.
2. NARROW IT DOWN
Ok, so we know you’ve got to know where you’re going but the next step is to stop yourself from getting overwhelmed and therefore not achieving anything. I’m a HUGELY susceptible to this. I have a massive list of things I want to achieve and I write it all down with enthusiasm, only to realise that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and then I end up going nowhere.
CONFUCIUS SAYS: ‘SHE WHO TRIES TO CATCH TWO RABBITS, CATCHES NO RABBITS.’
So grab that brainstorm of yours and give it a realistic kick in the pants. From your current position, where do you want to be by this time next year? I know some gurus say ‘Think Big!’ or ‘The Sky Is the Limit!’ and yes, that’s true, but we also want to be realistic here. So to say something like “I want 500,000 YouTube followers by December” probably isn’t going to happen, (unless you have a massive PR team and you’re super lucky to hit #1 on the charts)… but hey, that’s like wining lotto so don’t bank on it.
So narrow it down to two or three things. TOPS.
To give you an idea, and for full transparency, my main goals are to start making a living off my art sales online. I feel very vulnerable as a musician alone putting all my financial eggs in one basket and so I want to diversify my income. I also want greater opportunities for my music because from a performance/ touring perspective I feel I’ve hit a wall.
So when I break this down into an annual plan, my goals are:
1. To build my Instagram following to 10,000 this year as a promotional platform to sell my art (and music)
2. To build my YouTube following to 10,000 this year as a promotional platform for my music.
We all know, once you have an audience, you have access to greater opportunities so for my end-goals, it makes sense to have these two goals.
So when you’re doing this for yourself, pick the tasks that will get you the closest to your overall goal and focus on just that. If you like songwriting and do it all the time, don’t include ‘write 40 new songs this year’ on your list because chances are you’ll do that anyway. Pick things you know will require effort.
I recently saw a YouTube talk from Arnold Schwarzenegger explaining how he achieved his goals even though he came from a really poor Austrian town. When he was going for the Mr Universe contest, he visualised himself winning then every day he’d go to the gym to work out and he smiled the whole time.
When someone saw him smiling through the pain of yet another pull-up, yet another bench-press, he simply replied ‘I’m smiling because every rep I do takes me one step closer to my goal’…. and you know how that turned out for him.
3. SET A PATH
Ok, here’s where it gets actionable. We now know what we want, and what we need to achieve this year to get us closer to our grand goal. Now we need to break it down into WEEKLY steps.
Taking my goals as an example again, so to build my Instagram following I know I need to create super amazing content and post at least three times a weeks plus do daily Insta-stories.
So that gives me my task list; go out and do photoshoots of my art, learn how to create fabulous looking flatlays to display my art in an aesthetically pleasing way and make damn sure I post my three pics a week and at least one story per day.
Now for the YouTube goal (and see how just these two goals is already equalling a lot of work? Yep, that’s why we do step two; narrowing things down.
For YouTube I need to post one awesome video per week. That means researching recent chart toppers I want to cover, learning them and putting my own spin on them, recording and filming the music and releasing them weekly.
If I want to create other arty videos to give my Channel a bit more than just music, I need to work out what it is I want to create, story board it and become a little filmmaker.
You can see that my week will now consist of creating new content. Its all about promotion for me this year. Not creating new songs (well, I’ll do that anyway), not creating new art (because I’ll do that anyway), its about PROMOTION. Something I’m crap at (for my own art anyway!)
I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to hit 10K followers anymore. All I have to worry about is creating my video every week.
THAT is how you achieve your goals. Baby steps. A little action every day to take you closer to your goal.
NOW GO FORTH.
PLAN AND CREATE!
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Did you find this post helpful?
I’d love to know what your New Year’s goals are and what you plan to do to achieve them. Let me know in the comments below.
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