50 Hacks for a Happy New Year!

Make this your greatest year.

Ever.

Whether you think of it as a refresh, a reset, or a total transformation, it’s time for a fresh start.

Hack a Happy New Year!

Carry the good forward, let the rest go, and change whatever isn’t working.

Here is a powerful collection of high-value hacks right at your finger tips to help you create your best year ever.

Pick and choose the hacks you need the most.

Share your favorite hacks with a friend to help them get ahead this year.

1. Get the power of a New Year’s Resolution on your side

Let’s start the new year off right with a hack that might change how you look at New Year’s Resolutions …

Make a New Year’s resolution to increase your chance of success.

That’s right. New Year’s Resolutions can actually work.

According to Dr. John C. Norcross:

“Contrary to widespread public opinion, a considerable proportion of New Year resolvers do succeed. 

You are 10 times more likely to change by making a New Year’s resolution compared to non-resolvers with the identical goals and comparable motivation to change.”

See A New Approach for New Year’s Resolutions

2. Limit yourself to one big resolution at a time

This is a hack to help you New Year’s Resolution actually work.

Focus is your friend.

It takes a lot of willpower to make a significant change.

Focus on one big change so that you can prepare for it, manage it, and monitor it.

You can do great things when you focus your time, energy, and resources around your one big worthwhile change.

Your emotions are a great source of input to help you know what you need to focus on, if you listen to them.

What’s keeping you up at night?

If nothing were to change in your life, what’s one attribute or quality that you need to fully enjoy it?

Work on that.

3. Get specific with your goals

Make your New Year’s Resolution specific.

Keep it clear, compelling, and concise.

Turn a vague intention like “get in shape” or “lose weight” or “eat better” into something more specific. For example, you might set a goal to lose a pound a week.

By getting specific, you have something to aim for.

4. Dream bigger to realize your potential

This is a hack to remind you to dream big again.

You don’t just think a dream.

You feel it in your bones and in your heart.

Dreams breathe life into everything we do.

You can use your dreams to inspire yourself, to shape your life, and to do what makes you come alive.

Dreams help us realize our potential and to tap into our greatest resources within us, and around us.

Our dreams act as a compass and help us choose a path, among our many options.

Dreams shape our choices that shape our way forward.

See The Power of Dreams

See How To Test Your Dream

See Are You Living Your Dreams?

5. If you want change, you must change

When you change, your world changes.

There is a great little video that reminds us of one of the greatest lessons in life:

Video: Nothing Will Change Unless YOU Change

Here is my favorite part from the video:

“One of the great lessons in life is that nothing will change unless YOU change.

Nothing will get better, unless you get better.

It’s not about circumstance. It’s not about “luck.”  We all get the good and the bad. We all get the challenging events that arrive in our life.

That’s a normal part of being human.

I’m talking about what you CHOOSE to do with those circumstances.

If you are waiting for the economy to change, if you are waiting for your paycheck to change, waiting for your relationship to change, waiting for something to change …

Nothing will change

If you want change, YOU must change.”

6. Guide your path with vision, values, and goals

This is a hack to help you get out of bed each morning.

Your mission is your map.

When you don’t even have a model, a map, or a path, then it’s hard to make meaning and even harder to balance work and life, because you have no gauges – it’s like flying blind.

With your mission as your map, your vision as the destination, and your values as your guide, you instantly have a way to center yourself and lead your life from the inside out.

Mission Statement – Your missions answers the question, “What’s the purpose?” or “What’s the job” or “Who are you?” or “What are you about?” Ideally, you have a differentiator.

Vision statement – Now that you know the purpose, the vision answers, “Where do you want to go?”

Values – Values help you prioritize and shape your actions. They answer the “Why.” They are what you care about. The more your work matches your values, the more enjoyment you will find.

Goals – Goals answer the question, “What do you want to accomplish?” A good away to make goals useful is to make them SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-based.

See Guide Your Path with Vision, Values, and Goals

7. Change a habit with Habit Stacking

If you want lasting change, hack your habits.

Habits are powerful stuff.

As Mahatma Ghandi said:

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,

Your thoughts become your words,

Your words become your actions,

Your actions become your habits,

Your habits become your values,

Your values become your destiny.”

But how do you actually change a habit?

If you’ve tried in the past, but failed, it’s time to try some new tools.

One powerful tool for changing habits is what S.J. Scott calls Habit Stacking.

Habit stacking is simply linking or chaining actions together to create a routine.

Within this one routine, you stack or link multiple mini-habits.

S.J. Scott provides us with an example of his Habit Stacking morning routine:

1. Get out of bed and make it. (Reason: I work from home, so having an orderly environment helps me stay productive.)
2. Walk into my bathroom and weigh myself. (Reason: I run marathons and need to maintain a specific weight to have a good performance. Having a daily ‘weigh-in’ keeps me focused on my running goals.)
3. Wash my face with hot water and a facial cleanser. (Reason: Studies have shown that washing your face helps you feel awake and energized in the morning.)
4. Walk into the kitchen and pour a 16-ounce glass of ice-cold water with lemon. (Reason: Lemon is another way to feel awake–plus, I instantly get two of the eight servings of water that I need every day.)
5. Take daily vitamins. (Reason: Most diets are nutrient-deficient. Following a regular vitamin regimine introduces what I’m missing in my diet.)
6. Make a power smoothie. I mix up different recipes, but I like to make ones that include proteins, potassium and antioxidants. (Reason: This simple shake is another way to create energy for the rest of the day.)
7. Text my girlfriend with a loving message. (Reason: The key to a successful relationship is to do the ‘little things’ on a daily basis.)
8. Update my mobile phone app with the habits I’m currently developing (Reason: Tracking habits on a daily basis is the best way to make a permanent change.)

See The Power of Habit Stacking

See 8 Steps for Building a Habit Stacking Routine

See 10 Keys to Changing a Habit

See How To Change a Habit and Make It Stick

See 50 Repetitions to Make a Habit Stick

8. Create mini-feedback loops

Hack away at your feedback loops for actionable insight.

Feedback is your friend.

If you don’t create a feedback loop, you’ll lose momentum when you don’t know whether you are making any progress.

You also need feedback so you can adjust whatever isn’t working for you.

Smaller, tighter feedback loops can work better at helping you make decisions during your day. For example, according to John Tierney, research shows that daily weigh-ins work better than weekly weigh-ins.

See Use Qualitative Feedback to Improve Your Performance

See Feedback: The Ultimate Key to High Performance

See Motivation, Skills, and Feedback

9. Bounce back from a setback

Hack away at your resilience.

As Vince Lombardi said, “It isn’t whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.”

You will face setbacks.

Expect them.

When they happen, get back up and try again.

See Bounce Back with Skill

10. Avoid “All or Nothing” thinking

“All or Nothing” thinking is when you give up because you didn’t do it all, or not everything went the way you expected.

Rather than give up, remind yourself that something is better than nothing.

Maybe you can only do part of your workout. Go for it.

Maybe you messed up on breakfast. Try to eat better for lunch and dinner.

If there is one hack that will help more people achieve their goals, even if it takes longer, or it’s not all of their goal, it’s this one.

See 10 Distorted Thinking Patterns

See You Can Have It All All

11. Choose progress over perfection

This hack is for all of the perfectionists out there.

When you focus on making progress, and you give up the need to be perfect, you free yourself up to find creative ways to reach your goal.

You also take off pressure that doesn’t help.

When you try to be perfect, you will just lie to yourself or to other people, while trying to live up to a fantasy.

Instead, get real and enjoy learning how to make progress on your goal.

Ask the tough questions, that help you move forward:

1. What did you learn that you can use for next time?
2. What’s the next step to make a little progress now?
3. What can you focus on that will help you move forward?

See Stop Keeping Score, Learn Instead

See Growth Mindset Over Fixed Mindset

12. Reward yourself more often

Create mini-rewards.

Rather than wait until the very end, find a way to reward yourself along the way.

That’s the power of positive reinforcement.

When Tony Robbins was writing his book, rather than celebrate when he was all done, he decided he would take a dip in his hot tub each time he finished a chapter.

It was a little reward, but it went a long way to helping him write his book in record time.

See Reward Yourself in the Moment

13. Gamify it

The secret to a great hack is to add the fun factor.

Find a way to make it fun.

Add the fun factor to your New Year’s resolution.

For example, when I dropped 30 pounds in one month, I made it a game to lose a pound a day.

This made it more fun for me, it gave me a mini-goal to focus on, within the bigger goal of losing 30 pounds for the month.

This also helped me quickly adjust my approach for the day, if it wasn’t working. For example, do I need to eat more, eat less, change what I eat, work out more, work out less, or change my workout routine.

I gave myself the freedom to experiment and try to win each day.

See What Does Game Design Teach Us About Fun?

See Go For the Epic Win

See The Gamification of Education

14. Adopt a Tiny Habit

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant

According to BJ Fogg, a Tiny Habit is when you do something very, very small.

Here are some examples:

• floss 1 tooth
• do two push ups
• drink one sip of water

But there’s one more tiny piece. After you do the tiny behavior that you want to repeat, or expand in the future, you immediately celebrate victory.

Fogg shares an example of how he now does 50, 60, 70 push ups a day.

He decided that after he takes a pee, he will do 2 push ups, and then say, “I’m awesome.”

2 push ups turned into 5, and then 8, and for extra credit he sometimes does 12. Over the course of a day, this adds up.

See The Power of Tiny Habits

15. Just Start

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe

Sometimes the best way to get started is to just start.

Don’t wait until the moon is full or the stars or aligned or you’ve figured everything all out.

Instead, just get started and figure out things as you go.

As long as you focus on learning, improving, and making progress, you can keep moving forward, and sometimes that is the best strategy to actually achieve your goal.

See Starting is the Hardest Part

16. Adopt a growth mindset

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

Hack your mind for better results.

When you adopt a growth mindset, you open up a world of possibilities for your personal development.

You break the limiting beliefs that a fixed mindset creates.

With a fixed mindset, you believe your basic qualities, like your intelligence or talent are simply fixed traits.

In other words, you can’t change them.

With a growth mindset, you believe that you can change, develop, and improve your abilities.

Rather than worry about whether you were born a great athlete or a great writer or a great genius, you decide you can learn whatever you put your mind to.

See Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

17. Create if-then plans to stick with your goals

This is another hack to help you stick with your goals and your New Year’s resolutions.

Decide ahead of time how you will handle challenges that come up:

If this happen, then I’ll do XYZ.

The key to making this work is to focus on positive statements.

Rather than this negative statement:

If someone brings cupcakes, then I won’t have one.

Create a more positive statement you can act on:

If someone brings cupcakes then I’ll treat myself to hummus and crackers.

See Create If-Then Plans to Stick with Your Goals

18. Start with Great Expectations

This is a New Year’s resolution hack inspired by Tony Robbins.

Don’t start by expecting failure.

Expect great things to happen.

If you don’t expect great things, then great things are never going to happen.

Not because of fate, or destiny or because you are doomed to failure, but because you will limit yourself.

You won’t try very hard if you start off by thinking you will fail.

If you think you will fail, you won’t tap your most resourceful self. You won’t motivate yourself. You won’t inspire your creative genius.

Remind yourself that you get what you expect.

See Your Potential Starts with Your Beliefs

19. Adopt 7 beliefs for personal excellence

Great results are the by-product of great actions, and great actions are the by-product of great beliefs.

What are some great beliefs to adopt?

According to Tony Robbins, here are 7 beliefs for personal excellence:

1. Everything happens for a reason and a purpose, and it serves us.
2. There is no such thing as failure.
3. Whatever happens, take responsibility.
4. It’s not necessary to understand everything to be able to use everything.
5. People are your greatest resource.
6. Work is play.
7. There’s no abiding success without commitment.

See 7 Beliefs for Personal Excellence

See Where Do Beliefs Come From?

20. Master the art of goal planning

Setting goals is easy.

Achieving them is not.

It takes planning.

You can master the art of goal planning by asking yourself 5 questions:

1. What is the specific work or effort required to achieve your goal?
2. What resources or dependencies do you need to help you succeed?
3. What is your action plan to achieve this goal?
4. What time investment is actually required?  What should your weekly schedule look like to support achieving this goal? (Can you be a world-class violinist if you practice 5 minutes a day?)
5. What obstacles will you face and how will you respond?

See Goal Setting vs. Goal Planning

21. Prime your mind for greatness

This is a hack you can use everyday to light your fire.

Use priming to set the stage for your success.

In practice, you can just think of priming as to make ready or to prepare.

You might hear people say “prime the pump” to mean encourage the growth or action of something.

Or you might see an athlete who is primed and ready for action.

Whether priming works because of mirroring and our innate tendency to imitate, or our reticular activating system (RAS), or our subconscious mind, or whatever, what’s important is that you can prime yourself for better results.

You can create new frames of reference to draw from.

You can fill your mind with hope, aspirations and bold ambitions to crowd out fear, failures, and regrets.

One way to prime your mind is to ask 3 questions:

1. What do you want?
2. Why do you want it?
3. What do you need to learn or what quality do you need to build to achieve it?

Yes, it sounds simple, but we get resourceful when we ask the right questions.

Ask these three questions to start priming your mind to figure out what do you want for this year.

If you know WHY you want it, and your WHY is strong, this will keep you going through the tough stuff.

When it comes to the HOW, you first need to identify what you need to learn so that you can find the right strategies.

If you turn reaching your goals into a learning journey, you win along the way, and avoid putting your success “out there” or far off in the distance.

That’s just one example of priming. You can also prime your mind by reading great books, learning about great people, reading great quotes, and learning about stories of personal transformation.

See Prime Your Mind for Greatness

22. Use dreams, goals, and habits to pull you forward

This is a hack to help you put it all together as you turn your dreams into action.

A good way to think about dreams, goals, habits, and inspired action is “better together.”

The dream is the vision that inspires you.

It needs to reflect your passion and your purpose, and it needs to be actionable and believable.

You can have a dream for your career, a dream for your health, a dream for your relationships, etc.

Once you have a dream that you believe in and that can inspires you and pulls you forward, you can chunk it down into goals.

The goals are simply your meaningful milestones, or the stepping stones or the mile markers on your journey.

Goals are a way to see and feel your progress, and to funnel your focus along the way.

And, of course, when you have a meaningful dream, you can add habits that help support you.

After all, trying to achieve a goal, where there are no habits supporting you, is a setup for failure.

And, having habits without any goals or any dreams to inspire or pull you forward, may get lost along the road to good intentions.

See Dreams, Goals, and Habits

23. Use the Exponential Results Formula to make a big change

This is a powerful hack for making leaps and bounds in your life.

The Exponential Results Formula is a method for rapid results.

The beauty of The Exponential Results Formula is that you can enjoy both the journey and the destination toward achieving your success.

If you have a trusted system, then you can explore and experiment with speed and skill in a more reliable way.

You can learn at a faster pace.

You can enjoy a higher level of success.

You can reduce the pain along the way.

You also learn how to more effectively avoid the dead ends and fruitless paths.

Here is a summary of the Exponential Results Formula:

• Step 1. Envision the Future Capability
• Step 2. Map Out the Goals
• Step 3. Model the Best
• Step 4. Map Out the Possible Paths
• Step 5. Identify Your Tests for Success
• Step 6. Test Your Results
• Step 7. Change Your Approach Based on Feedback

See The Exponential Results Formula

24. Adopt the 7 Habits of Highly Motivated People

Hack your motivation so that you have the juice to keep going and to face your challenges.

You can think of motivation as a driving force, stimulus, or influence, or as an internal or external desire to achieve a goal.

According to Wikipedia, motivation is “these inner conditions such as wishes, desires, goals, activate us to move in a particular direction in behavior.”

My favorite definition of inspire is “to breathe life into.”

So, effective motivation is the ability to continuously breathe life into whatever you do.

Here’s my take on the 7 habits of highly motivated people:

1. Find Your WHY
2. Change Your Beliefs About What’s Possible
3. Change Your Beliefs That Limit You
4. Spend More Time In Your Values
5. Surround Yourself With Catalysts
6. Build Better Feedback Loops
7. “Pull” Yourself with Compelling Goals

The sum of the whole is more than the sum of the parts.

By stacking these habits, you compound your ability to create your own motivation to help you jump out of bed in the morning, ready to dominate your day.

See 7 Habits of Highly Motivated People

See Master Motivation: The Keys to Motivating Yourself and Finding Your Drive

25. Use Trigger Moments to activate your higher self

This is a hack to help you stay on track every day so you move closer to your goals and bold ambitions.

Sometimes, all we need is just a gentle reminder.

In psychology and NLP there’s the idea of a trigger or stimulus. Brendon Burchard calls them your trigger moments.

The idea here is when you trigger happens, choose a better response.

You can use trigger moments to add or reinforce habits, build better routines, change how you show up, and to energize yourself throughout the day.

Here is how to setup and use Trigger Moments:

1. Set Up Triggers Throughout Your Day. You can setup alarms to trigger you to do the things you need to do. For example, you can set an alarm on your phone or on your computer to go off at a certain time. It’s like a little angel in your ear reminding you of who you want to be. Other triggers might be when you wake up in the morning, or when you walk through your door, or when you open the refrigerator.
2. Practice Your New Behavior. When your trigger happens, use the reminder to choose your new behavior. Practice the response that you want to get better at.

When your trigger moment goes off, perform your action.

Each trigger moment is another chance to practice or to choose a better response.

Let’s say you want to add a workout routine to your life. Set a trigger that when you wake up in the morning, you drink water, put exercise shoes on, go downstairs, or go you go to the gym.

That’s the trigger.

When you wake up in the morning, nothing interrupts that action. You don’t start something else, you run your routine.

See How To Use Trigger Moments to Activate Your Higher Self

26. Use Door Frame Triggers to inspire a better version of you

This hack can help you be the person you really want to be.

You can use a trigger to remind yourself of a new habit or a new way to show up in the world.

One of Brendon’s favorite triggers is walking into a new room.

When you walk into a new room, you can associate a trigger with that door frame.

When Brendon walks through his front door, he repeats three words to himself:

1. Caring
2. Inspiring
3. Engaged

Those three words reflect how he wants to show up. When he walks through the door, his mind automatically triggers those three words.

What words do you love to describe you?

Have those three words and set those up in your life.

Each time your pass through a door frame, remind yourself of those three words that you want to demonstrate more in your life.

See How To Use Trigger Moments to Activate Your Higher Self

27. Find your purpose

This is a hack that will help you face your Mondays with a smile and get up on the right side of the bed in the morning.

When you know your purpose, you make more impact.

Your purpose also keeps you grounded among the chaos.

It’s your North Star. It guides you. It helps you adjust your sails to the winds.  It gives you the strength to fight your good fights.

When you fall off your path, it helps you get back on the saddle again.

Perhaps, most importantly, your purpose helps you find your drive when you need it most.

I’m a fan of one-liner purpose statements.

It keep them simple and sticky so you don’t have to look them up. For example, Google’s is “Organize the world’s information.”  Starbuck’s is “World’s best coffee.” Apple’s purpose for ITunes is “World’s best online music store.”  Microsoft’s is “Help people and businesses realize their full potential.”

They’re aspirational and they inspire.

More importantly, they are easy to say, which means they are easy to use.

To find your purpose, keep it simple:

1. Write your One-Liner purpose statements down
2. Say some out loud
3. Choose one that resonates right now

To give you an example, my purpose statement is:

To improve the quality of life for as many people as I can, as long as I can

That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning.

See Find Your Purpose

See Discover Your Why

See Find Your Major Definite Purpose

See Ikigai: The Reason for Which You Wake Up in the Morning

28. Figure out what you really want

Hack away at all the noise until you figure out what you really want.

What if you spend your years climbing the corporate ladder, only to find that your ladder was up against the wrong wall?

What if money can’t buy what you’re really looking for?

What if there’s a simpler or more effective way to get what you want?

Nancy O’Hara writes about an approach to help you figure out what you really want:

1. Write a random and comprehensive list of all the tangible things you would like to have that you don’t now have (in no particular order.)
2. Now prioritize the list by placing numbers before each item, with the number 1 being assigned to the most desired thing.
3. Then for the top ten items on the list assign a number from 1 to 5 that indicates the intensity of your desire, with 1 being low and 5 being high.
4. For each of the ten items write a paragraph or two about how having them would change or not change your life and how not having them now affects your life.
5. Repeat exercises 1 to 4 with a list of intangible things you would like to have in your life. (This could include relationships, feelings, states of mind.)
6. Repeat exercises 1 to 4 with work-related desires (perhaps your ideal job, a new boss, a different schedule.)
7. On a separate piece of paper write down the most-desired thing from each list and put it aside for the moment.
8. Afterward sit quietly again and absorb the impact of this ritual. Write about the feelings it evoked and what effect, if any, it had on your wish list.
9. Now look at the three desires you wrote down and set aside. Is your level of desire for these things the same as it was when you first wrote about them?

See How To Figure Out What You Really Want

29. Use 3 Wins to Rule Your Year

This is a simple but powerful hack to change how you look at your entire year.

You can think of the Three Wins for the Year as three stories of personal change that you’d like to be able to tell at the end of this year.

Does it get any better or more simpler than that?

Three Wins for the Year helps us dream big and play out “what if” scenarios in a simple way.

It gives us a way to very quickly, and very easily re-imagine what we can achieve this next year, before we get bogged down, or over-engineer, or over-analyze our goals, or lose site of our bigger picture.

To do this, simply push aside your over-analytic mind and simply ask yourself the following question:

“If this were next year, what are three great results I would want under my belt?”

If you do this right, your answers might surprise you.

Not because they are things you don’t expect, but because you finally give yourself permission to acknowledge what you really want.

See How To Use 3 Wins for the Year to Have Your Best Year Ever

30. Commit to your best year ever

This is a surprisingly simple, yet surprisingly powerful hack.

The secret to your best year ever is to decide to commit to your best year ever.

I’ll share a little story of how I this changes the lives of 8 people I know.

As we turned the page of the previous year, and headed into the next, our team faced a lot of big challenges and a lot of unknowns.

We were understaffed, over committed, and pulled thin in all sorts of directions.

Our team was crazy busy and putting in all sorts of hours, and everybody felt under-appreciated.

In a lot of ways, you might say our team felt defeated.

It had been a year of great sacrifices and not much reward.

We all knew that we didn’t want another year like it.

We all wanted a year of meaningful impact.

Among the chaos, confusion, and ambiguity, we wanted one thing to hold on to, and one thing to be true:

Our best year ever. Period.

So, as a team, and individually, we committed to having our best year ever.

A funny thing happens when you choose up front to have your best year ever.

You actually do.

See Commit to your best year ever

31. Find your Signature Strengths

Hack away at your strengths to become your greatest version of yourself.

Finding your Signature Strengths is one of the best ways to improve your energy and effectiveness.

To find your Signature Strengths, familiarize yourself with the 34 key themes of strength.

If you can identify your top five Signature Strengths, you can use the information to cultivate your strengths for personal excellence.

If you know your unique combination of Signature Strengths, and if you play to your strengths instead of focus on your weaknesses, you can dramatically amplify your impact.

You can also use your Signature Strengths to get into your flow state on a more consistent basis.

See Find Your Strengths

See The Language of Strengths

See Why Strengths?

32. Practice a “lighter feeling”

This hack will help lighten your load.

What if you could release negative emotions and feel lighter and ready for anything as you go about your day?

You can.

You just have to find your lighter feeling.

A “lighter feeling” is a big deal.

Practice feeling lighter.

According to Larry Krane, the key is to build a habit of letting your feelings flow through you versus hold on tight.

When we hold on tight, we get heavy.

When we release, we get lighter.

If you know what it’s like to travel light, whether it’s a lighter backpack, or simply lighter shoes, you can imagine the value of traveling emotionally lighter on this journey we call life.

Crane says our energy is made up of particles that, although they are small, have size and weight, and we can measure it. He was an engineer so maybe that’s true. Either way, what’s important is that the feelings we hold on to can have psychic weight.

And that’s what bogs us down.

See Feel Lighter: Let Emotions Flow Through You (Don’t Hold On Tight)

See How To Feel Great Today

33. Let go of regrets

Here is another hack to lighten up a heavy heart.

It’s easy to regret.

It’s easy to second guess yourself, especially with 20/20 hind-sight. It’s easy to ponder the “what if’’s” and “what could have been’s.”

It’s not so easy to let your regrets go.

In essence, you could have taken your other path and been hit by a bus.

My take is, you never know how things will go.

Instead, you make the most of where you are now, and you carry the good forward — the rest is experience.

See Don’t Regret the Path Not Taken

34. 15-Minutes of Fulfillment

This is a hack to help you start your day the Tony Robbins way.

What if you could start your day like Tony Robbins? …

Would you move mountains?

Would you change the world?

Or, would you simply have a better day?

Tony Robbins has a specific startup-routine that he uses to condition his mind, body, and emotions to bring out his best on a daily basis.

He calls it 15 Minutes of Fulfillment.

Tony Robbins focuses on fulfillment over achievement. The point is to enjoy the journey.

He’s seen too many people that achieved great things, but weren’t fulfilled.

The key to fulfillment is gratitude.

And, an interesting thing about gratitude is that you can’t feel fear while you’re feeling extreme gratitude.

Tony Robbins startup routine is simple and has three parts:

1. Moving and Breathing (5 minutes)
2. Emotional State of Enormous Gratitude (5 minutes)
3. Incantations (5 minutes)

Start your day like Tony Robbins and see if you can unleash your own giant within.

See Start Your Day the Tony Robbins Way

35. Create your ideal day the Tony Robbins Way

This is a hack to help you envision how much better you days could be.

It all boils down to how you spend your days and the environment you create to support you.

What would your ideal day and ideal environment be?

If you want better days and a better environment, it starts with your mind.  Put on your director’s hat and imagine your perfect day. Break it down: morning, noon, and night. See the scenes and imagine the experience.

Walk through your ideal day and your ideal environment.

Imagine the scenes and the people involved.

Get specific and write it down. Writing it down will force you to get more clarity on what you really want.

It works because you get your mind, body, and emotions all going in the same direction, instead of riding off in all different directions.  It also works because you have a target to aim for.

See Create Your Ideal Day the Tony Robbins Way

36. Master your emotions for power, passion, and strength

Hack away at how you feel.

Feeling great is a habit you can build.

That’s right. — Choose the emotions you want to feel more of, and practice them until you do.

You can cultivate your 10 Emotions of Power to flourish and fulfill your highest potential.

After all, what good is building your emotional intelligence if you don’t use it to feel your best.

Tony Robbins shares the 10 Emotions of Power that help you feel power, passion, and strength. By working on your emotional intelligence in this way, you can reach new levels of personal greatness.

Here are the 10 emotions to master for power, passion, and strength:

1. Love and warmth
2. Appreciation and gratitude
3. Curiosity
4. Excitement and passion
5. Determination
6. Flexibility
7. Confidence
8. Cheerfulness
9. Vitality
10. Contribution

Tony Robbins says to think of your emotions like a garden. Pull the weeds, or the negative emotions that you don’t want, while your nurture and cultivate more of the emotions that you do want.

See 10 Emotions to Master for Power, Passion, and Strength

37. Start your year in February

This is a hack that will help you stay ahead for the New Year.

Use February as your starting point.

Use January to recover from the holidays and make February your focus for getting down to business.

So, if you didn’t get the start you wanted in January, then don’t sweat it.

Instead, get ready to make things happen in February.

Use January as your time to plan things out, decompress from the holidays, and get clear on what you want out of the year.

I like this idea on multiple levels.  For one thing, it’s a forward-looking mental model.

Instead of trying to play catch up or worry about how you missed your great start in January, plan your great start for February.

This will help you feel like you are on top of things, rather than playing permanent catch up for the rest of the year.

See Start Your Year in February

38. Build your personal effectiveness toolbox

This is a hack to amplify the impact of all other hacks.

If you want a better year, then gear up for it.

Invest in yourself and equip yourself.

Maybe you don’t have any tools in your Personal Effectiveness Toolbox.

No problem.

Use my Personal Effectiveness Toolbox as a starting point, and go from there.

Pick one tool you want to try, and do your own experiments to find what works for you.

Most of all, remember that it’s not the tools you have or that you know about.

It’s the tools you use, and how you use them.

Enjoy the Personal Effectiveness Toolbox and please share it with 10 of your family, friends neighbors, or colleagues that need a lift up in work or life.

39. Write your story for the future

Hack away at the stories you want to tell about your life and about your amazing future.

As we turn the page of a new month or a new year, it’s a chance to write a new story.

You can write your story for the future.

I’ve been helping a few friends and colleagues write their stories for the future.

I see too many people jumping into goals and habits and New Year’s resolutions without first taking a step back and figuring out who do they want to become.

If you can get a clear picture of who you want to be and what experiences you want to create, it will help you focus and prioritize your time, energy, and attention.

To write your story, simply write a narrative about “future you.” Describe the kind of person you want to be and what life is like. If it helps, imagine “a day in the life” and walk through a day.

The more clearly you can see it, the more fully you can sense it, the more you will be able to feel it, and the more you will be able to realize it, and make it come true.

Write your story using very simple “I am” and “I feel” statements. For example, “I am strong and fit like a Navy Seal.” Or, “I feel calm, cool, and collected even under my otherwise stressful situations.” Step into the future, see it, feel it.

Don’t let fears and limiting beliefs hold you back.

Write a story worth making come true.

See Write Your Story Forward

40. Get out of a slump

It’s hard to hack when you feel like you’re stuck.

How do you get out of a slump?

A common cause of getting in a slump is low confidence.

To get out of a slump, stop focusing on what can go wrong.

Instead, focus on what to do right and take action.

According to John Eliot, Ph.D., the key is that you need to change your focus.

Focus on the steps you’re going to take, not the outcome.

See How To Get Out of a Slump

41. Give your best, where you have your best to give

There is a hack to multiply your productivity by 10,000 times.

The key is to give your best where you’ve got your best to give, in an arena that supports you, with a network on your side.

It’s how you’ll hit your high notes and quit the right Dips, and lean into the right ones.

Stephen Covey wrote about how to multiply your

“Do you believe that the Information/Knowledge Worker Age we’re moving into will out produce the Industrial Age fifty times? I believe it will. We’re just barely beginning to see it … Nathan Myhrvold, former chief technology officer at Microsoft, puts it this way: ‘The top software developers are more productive than average software developers not by a factor of 10X or 100X or even 1000X but by 10,000X.’ Quality knowledge work is so valuable that unleashing its potential offers organizations an extraordinary opportunity for value creation.”

To do this well, it takes extreme self-awareness. The first step is to discover your unique strengths where you can amplify your impact.

See Give Your Best Where You Have Your Best to Give

See Multiply Your Productivity by 10,000 Times

42. Ask more empowering questions

You can hack your thinking for better results.

Thinking is just asking and answering questions.

If you want better answers, ask better questions.

When you ask better questions, your brain gets more resourceful.

Here are a few examples of better questions that empower you:

1. What do you want your life to be about?
2. Who do you want to be and what experiences do you want to create?
3. How can you stop holding yourself back?
4. If this situation were to never change, what’s the one quality I need to truly enjoy it?
5. What do you want to do more of each day? … What do you want to spend your time doing more of?
6. Are you giving your best where you have your best to give?
7. What are you pointing your camera at? (a simple way to direct your day on a scene by scene basis)

See 101 Empowering Questions

43. Surround yourself with better people

As Jim Rohn famously said:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

The key to this hack is to surround yourself with better people.

Better is relative.

You just need to find people that are better for you.

Find some friends that lift you up or help you grow or that help make life a little sweeter.

You friends can rub off on you, in good ways, if you pay attention.

Similarly, if you spend too much time with people that drag you down, find a way to surround yourself with more people that bring out your best.

Whether you think of it as running with the right wolf pack, or standing on the shoulders of giants, or running with the titans, you can be more deliberate about who you spend your time with to help you survive and thrive in our ever changing world.

See You Are the Average of the 10 People You Spend Time With

See I Get By With a Little Help from My Friends

44. Find better mentors

Hack away at your sources of inspiration and insight.

This hack helps you climb ladders faster, find the right ladders worth climbing, and make sure your ladders are up against the right walls.

Mentors are the ultimate short-cut.

Whatever you want to go do, you can find somebody who has been there and done that.

The right mentor can save you a ton of wasted time and help you avoid some nasty pitfalls.

The right mentor can share strategies that work.

You can read all you want, but the beauty of a great mentor is that they can tailor advice to be more specific for you.

The key here is that people that are great at what they do, tend to like to teach others and share their passion. So whatever you want to learn, you can most likely find somebody willing to show you the ropes.

See Mentors are the short cuts

45. Do the opposite

This is a surprisingly simple hack that can produce some amazingly effective results.

Sometimes the best way to change things up is to do the opposite.

Just do the opposite of whatever you would normally do.

If you are always late, try being early.

If you are a morning person, try being a night person.

If you always do things slow, try doing some things fast.

Treat it like an experiment and be open to the results you get.

You might surprise the people in your life, and you just might surprise yourself.

See Do the Opposite

46. Try a 30 Day Sprint

This is one of the most powerful hacks I know for creating great changes in your life.

Try something for 30 days.

Simply spend a little time in whatever you choose each day, for 30 days.

Whether you want to learn something new, or change a habit, it helps if you know that every day, you have another chance to try again.

You’ll be surprised by how many breakthroughs you will make, often after the first few weeks.

In the past, I used to give up within the first two weeks, because I didn’t see quick enough results.

I’ve since learned that it’s better to try something for 30 days and allow myself some slack for experimenting and figuring things out, while making slow and steady progress over the course of a month.

See 30 Day Sprints: Improve Yourself with Skill

47. Grow 10 Years Younger

What if you could end this next year younger than when you start?

Hack away at how you age.

Instead of aging, try youthing, or growing younger.

Dr. Julian Whitaker and Carol Colman wrote the perfect book just for the occasion:

Shed 10 Years in 10 Weeks

What if you could shed 5, 10, 15 years or more.

While it sounds like a big bold goal, there is a wealth of information on pragmatic things you can do to reverse aging.

Some simple shifts in your eating, sleeping, and exercising can work wonders when it comes to building a younger, stronger, more capable you.

The keys to remember with growing younger come down to your mindset, how you deal with stress, and the old adage of “use it or lose it.”

Worried about your face?

Try the Face Yoga Method with Fumiko Takatsu, or Mei Zen “beautiful person” cosmetic acupuncture.

Worried about your body?

Find a Beachbody program that’s right for you, where you can exercise in your own living room. (I used Tony Horton’s 22 Minute Hard Corps Workout Program to lose 30 pounds in a month.)

BTW – how cool is it that Sanford Bennett grew younger from age 50 to 70. He got rid of his wrinkles, grew muscles, and even reversed his baldness!

See 10 Years Younger

See How I Lost 22 Pounds in 3 Weeks

See How To Live Forever

See Exercising in Bed

48. Don’t get sick this year

What if you could go the whole year and never get sick?

Hack away at your immunity.

According to Dr. Furhman, the key is nutritional competence.

The big idea is that with nutritional excellence, we can both reduce our changes of getting sick, and we can reduce the impact if we do get sick.

Fat is not the enemy.  In fact, fat can actually help the absorption of micronutrients. It’s the lack of micronutrients in our system that hurts our immune system.

See Never Get Sick

49. Know Thyself

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” — Lao Tzu

Hack away at your self-awareness.

To be yourself, you need to know yourself, and what you’re capable of. And, limitations, and opportunities for growth, too.

The more you know yourself, the more you grow yourself, and the more you can bring out your best. And, the more you know yourself, the more you can also understand and appreciate others, and deal with differences.  This will help you connect better and build better bridges.

So you think you know yourself?

Let’s take a quick check …

1. Do you know WHY you do what you do? 
2. Do you have your short-list handy of your top values that shape your priorities in life? 
3. Can you name your top 5 strengths? 
4. Do you know your preferred learning styles? 
5. Do you know your preferred thinking styles? 
6. Do you know how you like to deal with conflict and your preferred conflict management style? 
7. Do you know your NLP meta-programs that you use to drive your mind? 
8. Do you know your personality and work environment type that shape your career path?

See 10 Tools to Know Thyself

50. Decide Who You Are

Hack away at your identity.

Your identity can limit or empower you. It’s up to you.

Define yourself.

Don’t let others define you or what you’re capable of.

My favorite answer to “Who are you?” is from Scott Adams:

“You are what you learn.”

Another favorite answer to “Who are you?” is from Peaceful Warrior:

“This moment.”