What Can You Accomplish in a Year?

As the New Year begins to cement itself into our lives once again and the glow of the midnight ball drop starts to fade, we are left with the ambush of setting new goals and making resolutions but it’s important to recognize what a year really is and what it represents.

365 days. That’s a long time to get stuff done. That’s 365 wake-ups and daily decisions that you make which lead to a year full of either success or stagnation. The problem is that while we are smack dab in the middle of those 365 days, the successes can seem few and far between and it can more often than not feel like you continue to be stuck in the same place. The New Year represents new hope and the possibility of growth.

We inch through most days, slowly growing in ways we can’t always see immediately but growing nonetheless. And that’s what matters; not overnight changes that are often only temporary but instead, real transformation and progress that can only be seen in hindsight. Reaching goals you set out for yourself, maybe not as New Year’s resolutions but goals to be better at any time during the year, are an important ear-marker of success because if you never set a goal or express to the universe that there is something wonderful you want to accomplish, well, did it ever really happen?

Last year, our local newspaper-turned-magazine, The Seeker, published a list of the Top 10 Citizens of 2017. Kris and I looked at it, happy to see so many familiar faces, quickly announcing that we wanted to one day be included on that list. We love our community and throw ourselves into it wholeheartedly and not for recognition but truly because we are proud of where we live and work. We put our affirmation out there and didn’t think much of it afterwards. What we didn’t realize then is that by doing so, we told the universe exactly what we wanted. And we got it.

When we found out this past New Year’s Eve that we had been named as one of the Top 10 Citizens of 2018 we were beyond honoured, so happy and extremely proud. The next day, while discussing how cool it was to be featured, we had the realization that one year ago this is something we said we wanted. 365 days ago we had talked about how great it would be if we could be on that list and there we were now, alongside some very notable community change-makers.

It wasn’t a goal we set out for ourselves in particular but it was something we craved. We didn’t wake up each day and say “How are we going to accomplish this feat?” No, instead we created goals for ourselves and our business, goals for how to take our app to the next level, goals on how to be better community-members. Long forgetting the honour we longed for, instead just grinding every day to find success for FanSaves.

The past 365 days have went by quickly but also at a snail’s pace. Some days felt more stagnant than others, sometimes the downs far outweighed the ups and sometimes vice versa but overall we championed ourselves in 2018, accomplishing even more than what we had originally set out to do.

2018 saw us flourish. We launched our MVP and then the 2.0 version of our app, we met incredible people including top executives from huge companies, we met celebrities, we got selected as a Top 100 Finalist for Startup of the Year, we won a pitchfest and came close a few more times, we raised money, we were featured in the media, we experienced so much and learned so much more. That’s what you get when you decide to jump out of the plane and figure out how to open the parachute on the way down.

Sometimes it’s about taking a risk, sometimes it’s important to exclaim to the universe exactly what you want and sometimes it’s about just getting yourself to the next day. And if you do that every day, no matter if it’s January 1st or June 1st then you will start to find that anything is possible.

A year is 365 chances to do something for yourself and to accomplish something that maybe you never thought was possible. A year is a long time but it will fly by if you let it. Ask yourself today what you want for yourself a year from now and work like hell to get there. You can do a lot in a year but you can also do a lot in a day, in an hour, in a minute. Start now.

Shannon Ferguson

For more articles like this one check out our blog Living the Startup and follow our FanSaves page on LinkedIn.