5 Things to Do Before the New Year Starts

Aside from purchasing a planner and brainstorming for resolutions, there are more important things we need to prepare before we welcome the new year. Yes, I know it is quite difficult to plan when we are caught in the holiday celebrations and fun but we need to balance it out and make sure that we are physically, mentally, and spiritually ready to face 2021. Although we can never have certainty in life, we can have excitement and energy when we know that we took actions that would help us tread the journey awaiting us. So here are the things I suggest we do before the first hour of the new year strikes:

1. Set goals for your personal and professional life. Setting goals is best done before the new year starts because it will allow you to maximize the first month. When you already know your goals, you will already know your plans of action and when you’re going to start them. When planning is done before the new year starts, the first month can already be utilized for taking action. 
2. Equip yourself with the necessary skills to achieve your goals. The mindset that we usually have when the year is about to end is days off and fun, that is why we no longer want to think about anything concerning work or business. I believe, however, that the end of the year is the best time to prepare ourselves for the goals and challenges. This can be done by identifying first what knowledge and skills we need to have to achieve the goals we have set, then finding the right action that would enable us to acquire such knowledge and skills. Isn’t it better to start the new year fully equipped?
3. Put a closure to the things that made you unproductive. In the previous blog, I have included on the list of things to do before the year ends the identification of the reasons why we have not achieved some of our 2020 goals. This process can show us the habits or routines we have that contributed to our inability to achieve certain goals. If we can identify such unhelpful habits or routines, then we have to start working on letting those go before the new year.
4. Start new habits that will help you achieve your goals. Besides ridding ourselves of nonsensical habits, we should also start new ones that would help us become more productive, and make us more capable of accomplishing our goals. Since it is said that it takes days to form a habit, we should start developing the habits we want to keep for the new year before it starts so that the first month will not be wasted on adjustments. 
5. Revitalize yourself to be ready for what you are about to do. The current year brought us different types of stresses which made us exhausted not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For most of us, it extracted a lot of energy. For this reason, we need to allocate ample time to rest our body, mind, heart, and soul. This can be done through meditation, exercise, and a healthy lifestyle. 

If there were goals that did not materialize this year, the new year will be another chance to work for them. We may not know what the future holds but we should not just wait for it to unfold without physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually preparing for it. We should have a clear direction, tools, open mind, and courageous heart when we set out on a new journey. The above suggestions are some of the ways that would help us obtain these essentials. 

Do you think these are important? Or should we just go with the flow?