Your Best Year Yet!: Ten Questions For Making The Next Twelve Months Your Most Successful Ever

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WISDOM IN A NUTSHELL

Your Best Year Yet!


Ten Questions for Making the Next Twelve
Months Your Most Successful Ever

By
Jinny S. Ditzler
Warner Books, 2000
ISBN: 0446675474
230 Pages

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Your Best Year Yet Page 2

Overview
Here is a book with a thought-provoking questionnaire recommended for anyone who is either
new to the field of personal growth, or want to take themselves to the next level. The first part of
the book is largely a personal account of how the author developed the workshop and how it
helped her and her husband reach their goals. The book and questionnaire is challenging, yet
easy to follow and can help readers sort to out their beliefs, values, roles and goals.

Key Ideas
By completing this Best Year Yet workshop, anyone will be able to:
1. Acknowledge and appreciate what happened during the last year.
2. Define any useful lessons
3. Create an internal focus for producing results.
4. Identify your top ten goals.
5. Learn a system of planning to ensure success.

Be sure to look at both your accomplishments and failures from the previous year to put
everything into perspective.

Don’t give your failures from the past year more significance than you give your successes.
Unfortunately many people have an enormous capacity to remember our failures while forgetting
successes.

Find the lessons that you can learn from your successes and failures, and commit to learning
those lessons in the next year. Discover the limiting beliefs you have, and change them to more
empowering beliefs.

Determine which roles you are playing in your life, and which role you wish you were playing.
Commit to improving one of those roles during the next year. Identify specific goals you would like
to attain in each of your roles.

Look at your personal values and determine which ones need to be adjusted or developed. Your
personal values motivate you to achieve tangible goals.

Practically all of the personal growth experts recommend that you set goals, keep a diary and
record other details about yourself. The majority of people are like ships without rudders, they
spend more time planning a birthday party for a friend than they do in planning their own life.

Spending the three hours recommended to complete the Best Year Yet workshop is an excellent
way to accomplish many of the planning steps that could impact your life for the better. The ten
questions that you will answer will help you learn about yourself, how you are successful, and
how you hold yourself back. You will understand what steps that you can take to improve different
areas of your life, and you will probably find yourself looking forward to the year ahead.

Here are the questions from the workshop with a basic explanation

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Your Best Year Yet Page 3

1. What Did I Accomplish?


Think about the past year. Write down all your achievements, and the things that you felt good
about. Your answers could relate to many areas of your life: school, work, family, or your health. If
you did something well, no matter how small it seems, write it down. Don’t wait for other people to
notice how good you are; do it for yourself. Your accomplishments are a reminder that you create
your own destiny.

A few examples from the book:


I Read 10 novels.
Decorated my daughter’s bedroom.
Paid off credit card each month, etc.

2. What Were My Biggest Disappointments?


What were your disappointments in the past year? The idea here is that is that you can’t grow the
way that you want unless you become aware of your own disappointments and failures. Ignoring
the weeds will not help your garden grow. Identify the weeds so you can remove them. Realize
that these disappointments are in your past, and the best way to deal with that is to learn from it.

While it may be too late to do anything about the past, it is not too late to do something about the
future. The goal is to learn the lessons from your failures. Regardless of how painful they were at
the time, many setbacks are just what are needed at the time in order to grow and learn.

Some examples from the book:


I gained too much weight.
My father died.
Joined a gym but hardly ever went, etc.

3. What Did I Learn?


In this section the author has readers look back at their answers from the first two questions to
see what they learned. Look at your accomplishments and your disappointments.

What could you have done differently?


Did you learn any lessons from your successes or failures?

Think deeply about your answers, and focus on the lessons that you have learned, along with the
lessons that still lie ahead. Changing just a few behaviors can radically improve your chance of
success. Think about the difference that it would make over the next twelve months if you learned
just one of the lessons on your list. Choose the three lessons that could make the most difference
in your life. The author recommends that you focus on just three to make it easier on yourself and
to give yourself every chance to be successful. Next year, you can always work on three more.
Ask yourself if you have you been honest with yourself.

Do you take care of yourself as well as you need to?


Do you face difficult problems quickly?
What lessons are there for you in your work? How often do you say thank you?

Here are some sample lessons from the book:


Do first things first.
Set aside more time for myself and my husband.

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Your Best Year Yet Page 4

Take care of myself so I can take care of others.

4. How Do I Limit Myself, and How Can I Stop?


This question has readers look at how their thoughts and actions have limited them. After
identifying self-limits, such as, “I procrastinate,” or “I waste too much money,” ask yourself what
these limits have cost you. Once you have identified the costs and benefits of limiting beliefs,
decide if you are willing to stop limiting yourself. A simple yes or no answer will do.

To stop limiting yourself, change how you feel about yourself. Try to switch a limiting belief into a
more empowering one. Write down the areas of your life in which you are not achieving what you
want. Then write down how you justify these failures.

For example, if you spend too much money, you might justify it as “being generous.” A more
empowering belief or paradigm would be, “I can be generous without spending more than I can
afford.” The author believes that what you focus on is what you will eventually get. By taking
responsibility for our capacity for positive change, we can control and guide our intelligence and
feelings, and point them towards our goals.

Ditzler recommends that you start by discovering one of your strongest limiting paradigms rather
than trying to change everything at once. Learn to catch yourself when your thoughts, feelings,
attitudes and points of view are leading you back to your old perceptions.

5. What Are My Personal Values?


Knowing your personal values helps you understand what really motivates you. Why, for
example, do you pick up books like these? What are you looking for and why? The more
conscious you are of your drives and motivations, the more you can make necessary changes in
your life.

Underlying your tangible goals (such as buying a house or a car, getting fit, or taking a vacation)
are intangible goals that are based on what the object represents. For example, getting fit might
represent greater energy, stamina or self-esteem. These intangible goals bring us to a greater
manifestation of our personal values.

When we are aware of these values, we see a clearer picture of who we are and can find the
motivation to make changes in our lives. By focusing on your intangible as well as your tangible
goals, you increase your chances of getting what you want. Write down your personal values and
realize their connection to your tangible goals. Live your life according to your personal values
rather than living for material things.

Here are several questions related to developing personal values:


What can you do with the gifts that you already have?
What is most important to you?
What are your personal values?
How do you want to be remembered?

By increasing your awareness of these issues, you can satisfy these intangible goals and values.

Some of the examples from the book include: integrity, loving family, self-actualization,
happiness, respect, etc.

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Your Best Year Yet Page 5

6. What Roles Do I Play in My Life?


Everyone plays many roles in their life. Identifying the roles in your life helps to give you an
overall view of all the aspects and responsibilities of your life. It also helps provide direction,
generates balance in your life, and helps you create a connection between your roles and how
you play them (or would like to play them).

Think about the various roles you play in your life, such as: parent, son/daughter, husband/wife,
student, artist, business leader, friend, etc.

Then think about your responsibilities in each.


Which roles need more time and effort?
Which roles do you wish you were playing (traveler, lover, poet, actor, student)?
It is often necessary to drop old roles and add new roles as circumstances change.

Besides the actual roles, ask yourself about your current responsibilities, what you are
accountable for, what you do most of the time during the day, etc. See yourself acting in the role
that would most demonstrate what’s important to you and would match your values. How will it
look? feel? sound? Think about how you would like to be seen in carrying out each of your roles.
What are the outcomes you’d like as a result of playing each role?

Ditzler recommends that you consolidate your roles into no more than eight. (For example,
combine the roles of parent, daughter, and aunt into the role of family member). She
recommends that you give lots of attention to the goal of looking after yourself. One of the
recommended exercises in this section is to do a short weekly review session where you think
about your roles and what’s most important to achieve in each of them for the coming week.

7. Which Role Is My Major Focus for the Next Year?


Think about your life and the roles you play. Assess the whole of your life before selecting an
area on which to focus your efforts during the next year. Selecting and focusing on one role
during the next year will create a breakthrough in your life. The book has a whole life review
model to assess your entire life before you choose.

The model is a wheel with eight spokes. At the end of each spoke, write down one of your roles.
Each spoke, or line, is marked from one to ten. If you are completely satisfied with your
performance in a role, place a dot at the “ten.” If you are only fifty percent satisfied, place a dot at
the “five.” If you are not doing anything in that role, place a dot at “one.” Once you have placed a
dot for each role, connect the dots to see which role you are performing the best, and which one
you are performing the worst. Decide which role to work on first.

Ditzler believes that focusing on one role is essential. Work on the role that has the biggest effect
on all your other roles. Ask yourself what is the biggest impediment to your success and
happiness right now. If you could solve one problem once and for all, which would it be? Focusing
intensely on one problem will help you will perform better in all of your roles. Ditzler recommends
that you paint a scene in your mind of what would improve and actually see yourself doing it.

8. What Are My Goals For Each Role?


This next question helps you to develop clearly defined goals for each role in their lives. The
ability to set goals has far greater impact on your success than your education or intelligence. Set
powerful goals for each role of your life. Your goals should be specific, measurable, and time-

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Your Best Year Yet Page 6

framed.

Be sure to set specific goals. For example, rather than the nonspecific goal of spending more
time with your children, set a specific goal of reading to them three times a week. Powerful goals
must be measurable. How many? How big? How often? Making a goal measurable allows you to
assess whether you achieved it, or exactly how close you came. Setting a time limit on the goal
also helps to establish focus. Goals without a time limit are as meaningless as a basketball game
without a time limit.

After you set your annual goals, help yourself achieve them by setting some specific, milestones.
For example, if your annual goal is to publish a book, a three-month milestone would be to write a
chapter outline and contact three possible agents. Use action verbs in creating your goals (give,
achieve, learn, meet, plan, etc.). Decide if you are committed and motivated to make each goal a
reality. Get rid of goals that you won’t really try to achieve.

9. What Are My Top Ten Goals for Next Year?


Select the ten goals that are the most important from the lists that you have generated. You can
continue to work on other goals, but choosing the top ten will focus your power more effectively.
Make sure meeting these goals is possible. If you can’t figure out how to reach a goal, you may
have to switch it for another. Have at least one goal for each role you play. This will lead you to a
more balanced existence.

Make sure your chosen goals will lead to your best year yet and those goals are ones that you
are genuinely enthusiastic about. Goals you delete for now can always be added next year,
because every year can be your best year yet. Remember to think about the lessons that you
have learned and the guidelines you’ve established for your next year. Remind yourself of your
new paradigm and your personal values as you decide on these top ten goals. Revise, rewrite
and reword each goal until you are completely satisfied. Look at the goals together and prioritize
them.

10. How Can I Make Sure I Achieve My Top Ten Goals?


To achieve your top ten goals, take action instead of just thinking about it. Set up a system that
helps you do what you need to do to keep making progress. Keep your Best Year Yet plan in
sight. Read it every day and make the time you spend on your top ten goals a priority. Set
monthly goals to help you achieve your top ten, and use weekly goals to help you achieve your
monthly goals.

Ditzler uses the letters “ESP” to help readers remember key topics.
E stands for external factors, what we need to do in order to move towards our goal.
S is for support, who can help us reach our goals.
P is for paradigm.

Remove internal obstacles by changing our paradigm or internal beliefs. Here are three key
questions.
E= what is the next step?
S= who can provide the support I need?
P= does the way I see the problem lead to success?

Ditzler describes Gold Time Management as managing ourselves by identifying the activities in
each of our roles that will make the greatest difference to us and to others. Focusing on activities
that are important but not urgent is Gold Time.

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Your Best Year Yet Page 7

For each role, ask yourself what the most important thing that you want to accomplish this week.
Also be sure to ask yourself what you can do that will make the most difference in this role. Ditzler
believes that managing yourself to achieve your weekly Gold Time goals are the most important.
Once a week you should stop to consider your life and the roles that you play in it.

Your Best Year Yet Plan


The final section of the book is the actual worksheet where you work on these ten questions.
Ditzler recommends that you prepare for the process.

1. Get in the right frame of mind - work on your mental attitude (getting excited about how much
you will benefit, etc.)

2. Prepare your workspace- create an inspiring workspace where you won’t be disturbed.

3. Gather your materials- diary, favorite pen, etc.

4. Decide whether to do the questionnaire alone or with a friend or partner.

5. Other tips - avoid editing and judging, write down whatever comes to mind and let your
answers flow freely.

Move on to another question when answers dry up. Come back later when you have new ideas to
record.

Perhaps the main benefit from reading Best Year Yet and completing this workshop is that it will
help you to create your world rather than letting circumstances dictate your success.

www.bizsum.com © 2001, 2002 Copyright BusinessSummaries.com

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