 So my name's Seamus. We're going to be talking about how to live an amazing year this year, right? I'm pretty bored. I'm trying to have some fun here. Hence the naked dude and some random lady posing on success magazine. Yo! My name is Alex and I bet you, like me, want to have an awesome year every year. So in this video, I want to share a couple of the questions that I ask myself. Every year where I do an annual review both in my personal business and life mastermind, but also the small number of coaching clients I do have every single quarter and then every year we do an annual review and a quarterly review. What worked? What didn't work? What are the habits I thought would help me reach my goals and what actually helped me reach my goals? So in this video, I want to share with you 15 questions to ask yourself at this new year to see what you can do differently to hopefully reach your goals in this coming 2018. What's up guys? I'm Alex Hine, author of Master of the Day. Now welcome to my two creepy friends right there and right there. That's an acupuncture doll. That's Gabrielle Bernstein. I think on success magazine. I just thought this would be fun and super weird and I'm fun and super weird. So let's do this. Now for me, the most important question is number one, did I have goals? Number two, what did I thought would help me reach those goals in terms of daily habits and rituals? And number three, did they and if not, what do I have to do differently? I mean, that's literally the whole bedrock of my book Master of the Day. It's one of the little tiny daily rituals that I thought would engineer this result and did they or did they not? So the very first question is what went well? You know, maybe you realized like me, you know, I thought that this would be great for my health. So with your fitness plan, did you think that eating a certain kind of food would help you reach your goals? Well, did it? With saving money, did you think that by budgeting, it would help you spend less money? Well, did it? Question number two, what did not go well? So for example, for me, I had horrible sleep all last year, sometimes sleeping three four hours a day. That was a result just from burnout, from overworking way too much, way too much stress. So that really did not go well. I had a lot of health problems for someone that despite having long-term digestive issues, I have no other issues. I don't even ever get colds. I'm so consistent with the gym and eating right and yet I went haywire last year. I messed up in a really big way. So what did I think was going to help me improve that? I thought that it was a matter of just trying to just be less stressed and maybe just taking it easy, trying to slacken my classes and it wasn't that simple for me. It was a lot more complicated and it took over a year of certain habits and rituals and really dropping the RPMs to see things improve for me. So what didn't go well? What were you trying to improve last year and it just didn't improve? Usually fitness, finances and relationships are the things I see come up quite a lot. So what did not go well? And I'm gonna give you a worksheet down below to do all of these two. Question number three. What daily habits did you think would help you reach your goals and did they? Now for me, this is the secret sauce because habits kick the crap out of goals any day of the week. And what I mean by that is I may have the habit, for example, of saving a certain number of dollars per month so that I can pay off my student debt before I graduate my medical program, okay? So that's a big goal. I want to save however many thousands of dollars per year to try to pay off as much as I can each year. Well, how do I turn that into a habit? For me, what I did was I had to automate a certain withdrawal every single month into a different bank account and then that goes to my student debt fund. Along the same vein, for me, my sleep was the number one habit I had to get back on track. To do that, how do I turn that into an actual ritual? For me, the ritual was at 10 o'clock every night is my complete shutdown from work. And I can do anything I want as long as it's just in a relaxed position, so reclined like on a couch here, and it's not on a screen, so it could be reading a book, it could be journaling, it could be reading an interesting medical book that I'm working on from one of my classes, anything, just not working, not being productive, and not with a screen. And then the corollary, did those habits help you reach your goal? And here's what I like, number four, what was the biggest risk you took that worked out? The reason why I had this question is that I'm a big believer that smart risk-taking is almost always, when it's in the name of growth, will make your life better. For me, all the most amazing things that happened in my life came because I took a risk and the way you define risk is gonna obviously define what risks you take and how often, but for me, for example, a risk could be asking out the pretty girl or the pretty guy you like, that's a risk. You'll feel embarrassed or uncomfortable for a little while, and if they say no, you'll feel weird, and they will too for a second, but so what? That's it. The upside is maybe it's the person you marry or you have an awesome relationship with. The risk I took when I decided to write books and put them on Amazon where people could say this was about as useful as a poo-flavored lollipop, like a person can write that anonymously on my book forever. That's scary. That's really scary if you take pride in your work, and there are some reviews like that. Maybe not the poo-flavored lollipop reference, but there are some reviews I'm like, ah, Jesus. What? Like could their life be that bad? They had to write a review like that? YouTube's a great example. So what was the risk you took last year? And if the answer was, well, I don't know. Maybe you need to take more risks, more risks in the name of your dreams, and more risks in the name of growth. Question number four is what was the biggest risk you took that worked out? So building off of this risks thing, you have to show yourself that taking risks does work. It does improve your life. Maybe the risk is on trying a new diet plan when you've given up hope. Maybe the risk is going to a country you were scared of. You have to show yourself that things worked out. So reflect. What did you try new that actually worked out? And it was pretty sweet. Question number five, what did you ship? I'm a big believer that nothing matters in life. Ideas don't matter. Philosophy doesn't matter unless you produce something in the world that produces fruit, produces results. And to be clear, what I mean by that is almost in a creative sense. What is something you wanted to bring into this world that you did? You know, it could be as something as big as a book. It could be you just decided to put a drawing of yours on the internet, on Facebook or on Instagram. And the reason why this is such an important question for me is because I always want to be in the habit of producing. When you look at the world, the people who are the most renowned, who contribute the most to humanity, and if you want to think financially, the people who make the most money are always producers, not consumers. Right? Who gets more money? The YouTuber that produces videos every single week or the person who watches them? The producer, of course. They have all these connections, they have ad revenue, they have products, they have books, whatever. It gets me in the habit of producing in my life. Producing could be producing results like in the gym. Producing could be a physical piece of art I always wanted to make. It could be starting a business. For me, this question is related to what are just cool creative things I want to produce in the world that add value to the world? Question number six, what were the biggest lessons you learned? For me, this is obviously a humongous question, right? I believe that the reason why we live the same life over and over every year is because we don't reflect on what we're doing differently. What do we have to do differently? How did I mess up? What do I have to do now to make sure I don't mess up again? That is the million dollar question and honestly, it's kind of the only important question, right? I said I was gonna get fit. Last year nothing changed. Well, I messed up. That's a fact. What had to happen differently? All right, you know, I said I was gonna eat healthier, but then on Friday night when I went out with my friends every week It was Buffalo Wild Wings and a bunch of beer. What do I have to do differently? Well, you know what this year? I need to do the non-sexy thing and track every day what I eat and drink. Maybe the lesson is something else like it was personal development related or self-esteem related. Just reflect back. What were the biggest lessons learned? Question number seven, what were three big personal development changes you made? Again, this builds off of the biggest changes, but I like to specifically ask three because it forces you to find three ways to improve. You know, for me last year, the biggest personal development change was not rushing. I have so much crap on my plate that I'm always in a rush and even when I'm not physically rushing my body's not physically rushing. I am rushing because I'm like crap. I only have 30 minutes to do this. I only have an hour. But think about if you were to live your life 12 hours a day with that internal feeling of I only have one hour. I only have 30 minutes. I only have 10 minutes turns you into a nut job, right? That's exactly what happened basically last year. So think about what are the changes you have to make to you as a person because I'm a big believer that we attract success by physically changing who we are in terms of our mindset and our habits. That's a Jim Rohn idea. So think what are three personal development changes like portraits about you that you have to change to get better and along those three personal development changes question eight is What are three things you can do differently? So we kind of talked about things you can do differently already, but here go into more detail on what are a couple things You can do specifically that are going to be different. That will help you reach your goal Question number nine. If you did not reach your goals, why didn't you? You know, if you didn't save the money you thought you were going to save Well, why not? What happened? What were the things? Did you not track daily the habits? Did you not even set habits? Did you not review and reflect what was not working? Did some unexpected thing happen in your life? Somebody got sick. You got into an accident medical bills. I don't know What happened? So yeah, I like to use this a lot to try to figure out Well, what did I think was gonna work with my habits and now with the coming year? What do I have to do differently my habits wise? Because I obviously didn't reach my goals. So what am I gonna do differently? Question number ten. What are three things you want to achieve this year? So I personally always break my years down. It's just three big goals Three big goals that I'm working on and then I just reverse engineer those into daily habits and daily rituals And then I just delete the goals So goals are worthless because habits kick the crap out of goals any day of the week because it shows you Specifically what you have to do every day in order to reach that goal and plus there's no guarantee We will ever reach a goal, especially not in the time we want. That's just completely a myth There's no there's no guarantee in life. And so what you can't control is what you do every day What you can't control always is the outcome. So that helps bring the focus back to today and that hating yourself If you're not reaching your goals Question 11 next year my perfect day looks like this. I personally in my Yearly and visioning document. I write down the vision of what my perfect day looks like because to me it's all about Engineering, what do I want to do on a date debate day-to-day basis? You know, it's not about for me achieving the goal so much like I get it when you don't have a lot of money You need more money. You need to reach that goal. I feel that a thousand percent But what has worked well for me is instead if I think about the day Just what is the average day that really excites me? That's more motivating to work towards than it is to say I want a million dollars I want to have a book or be a youtuber or have this great relationship Just thinking about the coolest day possible Motivates me quite a lot So I actually write out that vision of what I want the day to look like and then I begin working towards that and reverse Engineering it now these next four questions are what I call the God question round and it's all about some of the Deeper kind of soul questions about life if you want to go there So these are all about the soul or deeper questions about life if you're ready to go there They might blow your mind. They might blow your soul and change everything So question number 12 is am I deliberately on the path that I want? I'm a big believer that setting conscious goals is the most important thing a person can do But there's two words there conscious goals saying I just want to become a millionaire is not a conscious goal. Why? Why? Right, maybe you want to be free Maybe you have this job that you hated you hate working for other people you want to wake up and do what you love But why a million dollars like have you ever taken the time to sit down and be like Cool apartment. That's not a penthouse. How much is that 1500 a month? How much is my spending my groceries my car lease or my car payment and then like a nice vacation per year for $5,000. What is that cost for most of us? It's like 70 grand so conscious goal-setting is Really really really really being honest with yourself about breaking down. What is that ideal life look like and so to me? Am I deliberately on the path that I want is am I doing the life and the things that excite me? Am I going after my passions? Am I going after am I in this relationship because I really love the person and I'm happy or because I'm afraid of Ending it and being alone or I'm afraid because it's not the right person, but I'm still in there because That's scary to end that Deliberately being on the path you want is consciously thinking is this the life I'm trying to create and then having the guts to actually go for the life you want to create Question number 13 is my ladder up against the right wall now This is a build-off of number 12, which is ladder up against the right wall is am I pursuing the goals that I want? For my life in a conscious way again There are so many artists in the world that become friggin lawyers because they follow daddy or mommy's advice And can you imagine they might have been one of the most amazing artists or marine biologists or doctors in the world in history? But they didn't go after what excited them the most their intuition and their passions Can you imagine if instead everyone went after the thing that they love the most to do and that's not easy I know trust me. It is not easy. It's it's gonna be a lot of work, but Your ladder the ladder of success that you're climbing or you can are you climbing the right ladder towards the right goals? Or are you doing it because some of the reason you're being a doctor because there's a lot of money or fame or prestige? Or your parents think you should are you really doing what you want to do? That's what this question is designed to help you think about Question number 14 gut check What does gut check mean it means? Removing all this intellectual masturbation What do I? Intuitively what does my gut say I should do next okay? That could mean For some reason setting goals this year you may realize you want to move to California from whatever the East Coast You don't know why it's just kind of calling to you gut check might say You need to end the relationship with a guy or the girl that you've been dating or married to That's what your gut may say Gut check may say you need to work less hours at work or else you're gonna kill yourself You're gonna die of a heart attack Gut check might say that the gut check is all about intuitively. What do I know needs changing in my life? No rocket science no analysis no personal development Just like this a role and we always know that's the thing we always know we know when we're so overweight We're a ticking time bomb We know that we're ruining our family life because we're spending too much time working We know that what we're passionate about sometimes, but we're too afraid to go after it gut check is put your gut on the table Put it on paper get it all out there and the final question here 15. Am I happy? That's it right. It's like at the end of the day. You still have to sacrifice You still have to put off things today for tomorrow. We don't live in a world where you can just focus on today But are you happy like do you want to keep doing what you're doing every day for the rest of your life? That's an important question to me. It's a very important question Do you want to keep doing this right? It all comes back to reverse engineering your great day and then building on to that Perfect day and trying to do that all the time. So if you're not happy, what needs changing? It's just supposed to be a self-reflective question Am I happy or am I not and again? You could spend all day intellectually rationalizing and going through it in your mind and Proconless, but at the end of the day, you know whether or not you like your life It's that simple and you're gonna know whether or not it has to change and what has to be changing on a day-to-day basis So that is the way I do my annual reviews and my quarterly reviews In fact, I build these into daily and nightly rituals, but the reviews are usually just monthly or quarterly and then annually And again How we structure our days is how we structure our lives right that famous quote And so if you can make today your masterpiece as John Wooden says the coach Then basically you can make your life your masterpiece And I think the only way you can do that is by consciously deliberately Structuring it to build out whatever life you want. So again, I included a worksheet there below Just click on that little link punch in your email. It'll send you that that's the easiest way for me to do that And before you go, I want you to leave a comment there below. Let me know for you. What is that? What's that? Let's just do one thing. What's the big thing you're working towards this year? Just let me know right there in the description and otherwise I will catch you soon Now to stay in touch come grab this free guide on my site It's a new weight loss and personal development challenge. I put together for this year punch it in there You'll get that with a bunch of emails as well. That's the best way to stay in touch Also, if you like this kind of daily ritual based goal-setting philosophy This is based on my book master the day You can see it in the description or on Amazon and if you send me a receipt to Alexander at modern health month calm I'll send you a free two-hour bonus video course. Alright, so go do that and I will catch you in the next video