Starting a new year has a mixture of qualities for me: I feel a strong sense of expansiveness, opportunities and wonder “what possibilities will the next 12 months hold?”. I also find a surprising inner reluctance to race off the starting block, to get back into flow of life and work after the Christmas/New Year break. Poised as I am at the beginning of the year, I have one foot hovering over the accelerator and another over the brake.

Before I fully commit to my New Year, it feels natural to cast my mind over the previous year and what has gone before. What were my highlights last year? What were my true accomplishments? How did I feel? What did I learn?

Although getting through my cancer treatment felt like a significant accomplishment, my real highlights were relationships. Spending quality time and having adventures with family and friends; making a difference with clients and seeing them and their organisations change for the better; raising to new heights with colleagues at work, with existing staff achieving some fantastic breakthroughs and new team members firing us up and sewing the seeds for fresh success. My roller coaster of feelings spanned frustration and impatience to exhilaration and deep happiness.

What did I learn? That relationships are my most important consideration. The hardest lesson has been owning up to the relationship I have with myself. Acknowledging that I am important and need to be true to myself, has brought the greatest pleasure and pain.

How about you? What was most significant for you last year?

What would you like the New Year to hold?

I believe very much in the power of 3 and I’ve seen over the years that encouraging people to commit to no more than 3 things can radically improve their performance outcomes. I challenged myself to focus on my 3 most important outcomes for 2015. After some deliberation, my top 3 are:

• Be 100% the real me: fully own my personal brand
• Make what I do count: focus on clear outcomes
• Sustain consistently high quality energy: physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual.

 100% Real Me

This is not only about knowing and utilising my strengths and talents (and delegating weaknesses where possible), but more importantly, it’s about connecting to my true essence, my inner strength. I know that shifting our internal perspective and understanding of self, changes our external reality and the results that we achieve. So my daily meditation, quiet mind – being fully present and acting on intuition using my infinite brain are key for me this year.

Connecting to the real me is about tuning into myself at regular intervals every day, how do I feel? When am I fully alive? Am I being true to my personal values?

100% real me is about knowing my “why”. Why am I here? What is my real purpose? It’s about knowing what you are ‘the one’ for and standing up for that with conviction. Having done a lot of work on ‘purpose’ over the years, I know my fundamental beliefs are about the infinite potential of people capable of achieving outstanding things and therefore, my purpose is about inspiring people to fulfil their potential. My challenge in 2015 is to ‘own’ that more and take it to the next level.

How about you? What are your strengths and talents? What are your 3 personal values? How would people describe your leadership brand? What is your purpose? What do you believe in? How will you take that to the next level in 2015?

Making what you do Count

This is about using our Full Brain (Head, Heart, Gut and Infinite brains) to agree and fully align around the key outcomes we want to achieve in any given timeframe. This year I’m going to commit to following the “OPM” process:

• ‘O’ is being clear on your ideal Outcome, knowing what that looks, feels and sounds like.
• ‘P’ is for Purpose, having a clear reason why that outcome is important.
• ‘M’ is for Measurement, measuring progress, actions and results.

It’s part of being human, that we get what we measure. Over the years I know getting agreement on measurements and then following through with monitoring progress is a challenge for most people – and organisations. It is only difficult if we think it’s difficult. Think ease and simplicity, and quantitative and qualitative measurements will become clear and extremely satisfying.

What matters most to you this year? What are the 3 outcomes you’ll be most satisfied with achieving by December 2015? How will you measure your progress, actions and results? How will that make you feel? What wider impact will this have on the people around you?

Consistently High Quality Energy

Maximising energy, health and vitality is crucial for me this year. After a challenging 18 months, this is my silver bullet. With busy working lives, constant change and external pressures, it’s easy to take our energy for granted, until it starts to run out. Consistency is key. So is maintaining our energy on all 4 levels, excelling in 1 or 2 isn’t enough.

• Physical energy – I’ll be measuring my physical activity with my FITBIT, counting my steps, monitoring aerobic exercise, walking, running and swimming alongside my yoga. Holding myself to a low sugar diet, drinking lots of water and getting as much sunshine and fresh air as possible will be my rituals. How will you maintain your physical energy through 2015?
• Emotional energy – doing what I love as much as possible and being aware of what makes me feel good and what doesn’t and doing something about it, sounds like basic common sense, but it’s something I’ll be working on. Expressing true feelings and speaking my truth is also something I’ll be challenging myself to do more frequently than before. Releasing feelings unlocks energy for most people. What will recharge your emotional energy this year?
• Spiritual energy – whether you believe we are spiritual beings having a human experience or human beings having a spiritual experience, or neither, living a life and work that resonates with our values and purpose creates meaningful energy for many of us and provides inspired drive to achieve things beyond our apparent physical capability. My own personal values are: inspire, adventure and radiance. In 2015 I’ll be focusing on being, doing and having these qualities more in my personal and working life.
• Intellectual energy – what stimulates your thinking brain? What charges you up mentally? What knowledge and wisdom would you like to gain in 2015? Learning is a lifelong journey that energises us mentally. My 2015 focus is to deepen my learning around the ‘Full Brain’ and to share my findings with others. What’s your focus?

So here’s to it, my foot is off the brake and ready for the accelerator. How about yours? Here’s to 2015. Watch this space…

Carole