How to Set Yourself Up for Success in the Next Chapter of Life

Read this before you do your annual review or start making New Year's resolutions if you want to set yourself up for success in 2024...

Most people make two mistakes every year:

• They do an annual review that’s generic and only focuses on external metrics outside their control (make X amount of money, get Y number of subscribers, get Z number of sales).
• They create New Year’s Resolutions that last three weeks, and then they give up.

There’s got to be a better way, right?

A way to both reflect on the past chapter of your life and set yourself up for success in the next chapter.

There is…

And today, I’m going to share strategies I’ve developed to do both.

I’m not going to claim these are the best strategies in the world, but they’re the best ones I’ve been using for years and have used to help tons of my clients gain the clarity and conviction they need to succeed in life and business.

Let’s dive in…

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Tl;dr

I’ll do a full walkthrough of how I use each of these questions later in this piece, but in case you just want the questions to start implementing in your life, here they are:

ANNUAL REFLECTION QUESTIONS

Why this approach is more helpful:

Review the external → Reflect on the internal

There are tons of annual review guides out there—and many are great—but most focus on external metrics. You don’t control the external, but you do control the internal—so shifting your focus to reflecting on your internal traits, strengths, struggles, and priorities moving forward will yield powerful insights about your future.

Binary → Open-ended

Instead of binary questions like “Did I achieve X outcome,” that you can answer with a quick “yes/no” response, asking open-ended questions helps you reflect deeper and give a more robust response for better clarity and insights.

Ok, here are the questions:

Now that you’ve reflected on the last chapter, it’s time to prepare to write the next one…

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NEW YEAR'S INTENTIONS FRAMEWORKS

Why this approach is more helpful:

Resolutions → Intentions

“Resolution” has a lot of psychological baggage at this point. People make New Year’s Resolutions expecting to break them in a few weeks. But if you focus on creating an intention for the next chapter, you bypass this psychological baggage.

Goals → Priorities

Instead of setting goals, focusing on clarifying your priorities helps focus your mind on what matters most.

Outcomes → Processes

Outcomes are outside your control. But your processes and the effort you put in are within your control.

Instead of wasting your time, energy, and attention on things outside your control (outcomes like “make X amount of money,” “get Y number of subscribers,” or “get Z number of sales”) focus on what’s within your control (processes like “send X outreach messages,” “publish Y pieces of content,” or “revise offer landing pages and sales sequences”).

Ok, here are the questions:

The cool thing with these questions is you don’t have to only use them once a year.

You can use them on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, too.

Ok, if you just came here for the actual questions, you’re good to go—let me know how using these helps you gain the clarity you need to move forward.

But if you want a deep dive into how I use these for my own life and business, check it out here:

https://coreywilkspsyd.com/how-to-set-yourself-up-for-success-in-the-next-chapter-of-life/