Last year I started a new habit of reviewing the past year and looking ahead to the new year. I called this process the “Past Year Review” or “PYR” for short.
I’ll share with you what my review of 2020 looks like below and in future posts, I’ll detail my 2021 plans. But before I do, I want to highlight why I think this is a worthwhile task.
Reflection – this process reminds me to reflect on the entire year. I do this in several ways as it can be easy to forget things that happened over the course of twelve months unless you have something to trigger your memory.
One of the best ways that I have found is to go through your camera or cloud photos over the past year. It helps if you can scroll and see the month of when the events happened. I have an Android phone so I use Google Photos and this works particularly well.
Another trigger I use is my personal and work calendars. This helps to remind me of key meetings and events.
Gratitude – 2020 was an unprecedented year for many reasons. Obviously, the year of COVID-19 but plenty of other bad things happened. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see all the positive things that happened during the year. This process allowed me to fully appreciate the year in an objective manner.
Forward Focus – Following this process crystallizes my focus for the coming year because along with the positives that happen there will always be those things that I did not accomplish. I pay particular attention to these things so I can set myself up for success in the coming year.
As you can tell from my journal image above, the positive lines were about double the amount of negative or regret lines. I would not have expected this prior to doing the review which speaks to the value of gratitude #2 as I outlined above.
One of the other key insights for me was in some cases I had a positive because I started something but it became negative because I did not continue the habit or the process. This blog is one specific example, but there were others such as my fitness goals. I had done a good job on exercise and nutrition in the first half of the year but admittedly fell short of my standards towards the back half.
The next step in this process is to plan for success in the coming year. I’ll write about that in another post to come (soon I promise)!
This foundational principal is loosely based on “if you want to help others, you have to help yourself first.”
Achieving an extraordinary life requires longevity. You have to stick around to support those that rely on you. And like me, if your mission is to help people, having a healthy body and mind are critical.
What I explain below is my current set of Life “Apps” curated throughout the last few years. I keep what works for me and discard the rest.
The first book that really set me on this path was Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani. This helped me to understand the power of reprogramming my mind as well as downloading “Apps” to use for various purposes. It was in this book that I picked up the “6 Phase Guided Meditation” that I still use to this day. I also came to realize that if I wanted to change something about myself that the best thing I could do was to take action every single day.
Next came The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. For those of you that have read the book, he talks about the “SAVERS” routine which is an acronym for:
Silence (meditation)
Affirmations
Visualization
Exercise
Reading
Scribing (Journaling)
This got me in the habit of a morning ritual. I still used Vishen’s 6 Phase Guided Meditation for the meditation portion, but I started adding the other elements including a morning run for my exercise portion which I actually did first thing in the morning. I also substituted listening to a podcast during my run instead of reading. It helped me to make the most out of my morning ritual. I adopted this routine and it became a part of my daily habit over the next 18 months. I didn’t always do every step in SAVERS. And there were days I didn’t do the routine at all, but it helped me in my journey of personal development.
In February 2020 my sister-in-law Wanda let me borrow a book she had just gotten called the 5am Club by Robin Sharma. I was leaving on a short business trip and she knew I would likely be done with the book by the time I returned.
Personally, I thought the book got off to a very slow start. Some might like it because it was written a story format. I just thought it took forever to get to the “meat” of it. The good stuff that I could apply to my own life.
When I finally did get there I picked up on the very simple 20/20/20 formula. When combined, I call this my “hour of power” that I execute every morning during the workweek. However, I must admit, didn’t adopt the “5am” part of it all. Yet since March, I have consistently been doing the routine at least five days a week and in many cases on Saturdays and Sundays as well. COVID-19 certainly helped me to cement the habit, but I found that even when I go into the office that it is easy to stick to.
In the remainder of this post, I’ll focus on what I do in the first 20-minute block which is exercise.
I haven’t been too good about my morning runs but I have found during this COVID-19 pandemic something that has worked well for me: YouTube videos. For me, this is a steady rotation of 20 to 30-minute Kettlebell, High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), yoga and a basic push-up/pull-up routine. I tend to look for routines I can do within the 15 to 25-minute window. On weekends or days, I work from home I will pick a longer or more intense workout.
I’ve included the links to the ones I use the most below:
Besides the YouTube videos I also do a simple push-up and pull-up routine. All that is needed is a mat for the push-ups and a pull-up bar that you can put over your door.
Here is the routine which is essentially four sets of each:
30 Push-Ups
10 to 12 Classic (Shoulder Width) Pull-Ups
30 Push-Ups
10 to 12 Chin-up Pull-Ups
30 Push-Ups
10 to 12 Classic (Shoulder Width) Pull-Ups
30 Push-Ups
10 to 12 Chin-up Pull-Ups
Besides the working out I’ve also adopted a 16 hour fast twice a week. Now that the weather is getting nicer where we live, I am trying to take a walk with my family two or three times a week.
As far as eating, I have found Paleo/Primal Diet to be the most effective but I haven’t quite found the consistency as yet. I’ve done one round of the Keto diet. While it helped to quickly burn off some fat and get me to my target weight range, I found it wasn’t something I could sustain.
That’s my DailyStack habit for health. In the next post, I’ll dive more into the second 20-minute section which is meditation and journal time.
The second step in the Daily Stack method is to define your values. If you haven’t done step 1, please go back to my original post on that.
This is about building habits so why am I talking about values?
While vision and purpose answer the why, our values determine the how. One analogy is the vision and purpose are the foundation and the values are the pillars to the structure.
Gandhi actually flipped the structure. He said your habits become your values. I agree with this. However, I would say you can predeterminewhat you want your values to be and drive your actions to reflect those values. Ultimately what we do is the expression of our values.
“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.”
― Gandhi
No matter where you start, values are critical to living the life that you want to live. As an example, people ask me how to save money. I tell them to decide what is most important for them to spend money on and then figure out to cut costs on everything else. How you spend your money (your actions and habits) is indeed a reflection on what you value.
So where did I start? I wrote down ten things that are important to me. I then distilled it further and further until I could get into the essence or the “core” of those values. My values are as follows:
Health
Family
Living with no regrets
Gratitude
Growth and learning
Valuing time
Hard work
Protecting dreams
What isn’t listed there that I should add is helping people. However I suppose that would have already been stated in my vision and purpose in Step 1.
What are your values? Let me know on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or subscribe to the blog to keep in touch!
When designing a building, architects start with a vision that the client wants to achieve. In life, developing one’s self starts with a vision of what you want to become.
This seems pretty straightforward and is consistent with the advice given by many books on the topic. Take for example Stephen R. Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In his popular book, the author suggests to “begin with the end in mind.” Napoleon Hill in the classic book Think and Grow Rich uses the term “definite chief aim.”
Ten years ago I did this exercise so you would think I would have been on the right track, but I’ve come to realize I created a vision or legacy statement that lacked a purpose wasn’t aligned to what I wanted in life. As an example, in part of my definite chief aim, I had stated “$500K net worth by 2015”. I’ve come to realize that money IS NOT the same thing as purpose.
Purpose matters a lot because it means something deeply personal to you. It has to connect with your own values. You have to want it so bad that you are willing to push through and persevere through all the tough times. Yes, money is nice to have, but ultimately, it is a means to an end. Once you make enough money to comfortably live it stops becoming a source of motivation. That is why purpose matters so much more. I’m reading Winston Churchill’s three-part biography starting with The Last Lion so it is fitting I found this quote related to purpose.
My advice is to spend a considerable amount of time getting to what your true purpose is. Once you do that, you will have a solid foundation to build everything else on.
