10 Ways to Make 2010 the Best Year of Your Life

January is now over.  Perhaps you’ve already slipped back into the grind, your resolutions by the wayside, living more or less the way you did in the last decade.  But hopefully you, like me, are still filled with enthusiasm for the fresh New Year.

Wherever you find yourself, let’s kick those February blues with ten meaningful, wholly worthwhile goals for the eleven months ahead of us.  Put just one into practice and you’ll definitely see change.  Apply all ten and you’ll see a sea change.

Without further ado, I present  my guide to making 2010 a “ten out of ten” year…..

The Ten Best Ways to Change Your Life in 2010

1. Focus more on spirituality than you ever have before.

I’m going to let you in on the biggest secret nobody is talking about: the more attention you put on spirituality while still living a balanced life, the more joyful you become.  It doesn’t matter if the outer circumstances of your life have fallen to pieces- attending to your “within” can bring you back from the worst adversity.  Real growth isn’t linear, anyways, so there’s no reason that tremendous success can’t follow up total failure.  In fact, it often does.

Make this the year that you discover your spiritual side.  Better yet, make this the very week.  Explore different faiths and traditions, noting what you resonates with.  Question what “spirituality” means to you, and don’t let up until you have an answer.

What I’m doing in 2010: My main goal is to personalize, broaden, and refine my spiritual practice.  I plan to meditate more than ever, read widely about different religious and spiritual traditions, and start integrating multiple forms of meditation into my daily practice.

2. Meditate daily.

Nothing will transform your life as dramatically as adopting a daily meditation practice.  If meditation is a foreign concept to you, I suggest you go here to start yourself on the greatest path of spiritual growth in existence.

If you have experience meditating, this point should be even more obvious.  If you’ve fallen off track, simply remember the joy of your past experiences and imagine what good you could accomplish wielding that power today.  There’s never any reason to feel down about backsliding, with meditation or anything else. You can easily build back atrophied meditation muscles, reaping huge rewards along the way.

There are many ways to put daily meditation into practice.  You can try meditating in intervals throughout the day, meditating first thing, or meditating at the end of the day.  Try it all; each one has its own benefit.  The most important thing is to build slowly and keep the rest of your life in balance.

What I’m doing in 2010: I came into the New Year with a very clear meditation goal- to gradually work up from ninety minutes of meditation a day (my current average) to two hours a day.  My plan is to add ten more minutes each month until I reach my goal, dropping back down to the previous duration if I can’t maintain it.  Why so gradual?  Because I have learned from nearly seven years experience that when it comes to meditation, consistency is king.  By meditating daily, we magnify the positive effects and get more for our time spent.  For that reason, I’d rather put in twenty minutes every morning than four hours one day a week.

3. Write down your goals, and put them on display.

I’m amazed by how few people actually write down their goals- or write them down only to hide them away in some drawer to be forgotten about until the next round of resolutions.  Serious goal-setting goes much further than that.  Here are a few points to help you get it right this time:

1) Articulate your goals for the New Year clearly. Make your goals explicit.  You should be able to look back and say with absolute certainty whether or not you achieved them.

2) Choose exciting, purposeful goals.  Uninspiring goals are useless.Good goals are realistic and exciting- just looking at them should make you feel like you’ve accomplished something great.  Carefully select goals that resonate with your sense of purpose and excite you from the inside out.  This will greatly increase the likelihood that you achieve them.

3) Post your goals in a place you will see daily- ideally where others will see them, too.  This brings them into your social reality and helps you take them seriously.  Talk about your goals.  How can you get help from those around you unless they know what you’re up to?

4. Eat more fruits and vegetables, less of everything else.

You can’t go wrong here.  Wherever you fall on the dietary spectrum, adding more F&V’s to your diet can pay big dividends.  Here’s what I guarantee:

1) You will feel better, have more energy and think more clearly.  You will notice that your energy levels don’t fluctuate as much, that your focus improves and your sense of purpose increases.  You will feel deep in your gut that you are taking care of your body and be inspired to use it for good.

2) You will also get sick less often due to increased intake of vital nutrients and decreased intake of crap.  That means more quality time in your life.

3) If you currently eat poorly, you can expect to lose some weight as your body settles down toward its ideal weight.  But given the extra energy, you’ll also find it easier to add muscle if you exercise (I personally gained ten pounds of muscle when I switched to a vegan diet and increased my F&V intake).  It’s a fantastic win-win.

For me, adopting a vegan diet with plenty of F&V’s eliminated 90% of the acne that had plagued me since I was 15 (check out these before and after shots).  Instead of using hardcore antibiotic topical medications, I use only a gentle African black soap.    Going vegan also ended a chronic cold I had suffered from for years.

If that’s not a transformative change, I don’t know what is.  Who can say what kind of positive transformation you will experience?

What I’m doing in 2010:  I recently bought a juicer and have been incorporating tons of freshly juiced F&V’s into my diet.   They make a great snack on their own, but become downright delectable in a good smoothie, my favorite way to start the day (try adding some cacao powder, vega, and soymilk- my favorite recipes to come in a future post).

5. Exercise as much as you can.

Daily physical activity is integral to a healthy lifestyle and its benefits are practically endless.  Whatever your goals, exercise will bring you closer to them.

This isn’t just true in theory, but in my own experience.  My habit of daily exercise gives me more energy, makes me happier, prevents me from catching whatever is “going around,” kicks negative emotions, deepens my connection to music, and inspires my best ideas.  If exercise isn’t currently a part of your life, you are missing out on one of the most rewarding and powerful resources available to you as a living being.

What I’m doing in 2010: This year, I’ve resolved to stick to an organized exercise program year-round.  I’ve been exercising (weight training and running) 4-6 days a week consistently for about a year and a half, but only recently started a structured weight training program. I’ve also enrolled in three physical activity courses through my college.  Once my semester ends, a very gradual marathon training program will be next.

6. Define 3-4 focal points for the new year, and pour your attention into them.

Reaching your personal potential depends on how well you concentrate on the essentials.  Setting focal points allow us to channel our attention into a short list of activities or skills that help us fulfill our unique destiny.  Living as we do in the age of distraction, this is more important than ever before.

I have found that having a set of focal points-a short list of skills I one day hope to master- brings focus to the way I plan my life.  For instance, since identifying “writing” as a focal point one year ago, I’ve started this blog, changed how and what I read, enrolled in a fiction workshop, and made journaling a daily habit.  None of that happened overnight, but rather as a gradual result of channeling my attention into the focal point of “writing.”  I’ve achieved similar results in the areas of meditation, music and exercise through the same approach.

What I’m Doing in 2010: My focal points for 2010 are meditation, writing, reading, and music, and I have a battery of goals for each one.  I’ll talk more about them in the appropriate sections below.

7. Create more.

Creativity is an amazing human endowment, and life isn’t complete without at least one fulfilling creative outlet (and possibly several).  I believe creativity stands at the gateway between the mind or ego and the infinite (of which our own consciousness is a part), giving all creativity a spiritual quality.  In short, creativity is a simple and essential way to bring meaning into our lives.

Creativity has always been a part of my life, but only recently have I begun to take the entire process seriously.  Whether it’s songwriting or story writing, the vast majority of people get stuck somewhere in the creative cycle, thus never becoming the artist or writer they dreamed of becoming.  Become deeply determined to not let this happen to you: It’s not only an injustice to yourself and your work, but to everyone who might have benefited from it.  Please, in 2010, see your work to completion.

What I’m doing in 2010: Two of my central goals for 2010 are creatively based- to write one blog post per week, and write one new song per month.  Those goals aren’t very sexy on their own, but their consistency excites me and feels spiritually congruent.  I’ll also be recording my first full album of material in which I will play vocals, guitar and drums.  I’ll also be studying guitar and drums, and playing my first coffee house gigs- so the creative juices will be flowing strong.

8. Learn more.

Life without learning is stagnation.  When it comes to personal empowerment, there is simply no substitute for exposure to and contemplation of new ideas.  The best way to learn is to set serious learning goals.  Try reading a new book every week or two, picking up a community college class if you aren’t in school, or committing to learn a few new words or facts every day.  Learning whatever interests you is always the best way to start.

What I’m doing in 2010: Although I read a lot in 2009, 2010 is the first year I am seriously committing to reading at least one book of my choosing every two weeks.  I’m also experimenting with a remarkably curious program known as Supermemo, a quiz and recall tool designed to help you memorize anything at the fastest rate possible using the principle of spaced repetition.  If your goals include learning a new language, increasing your vocabulary, or otherwise increasing your knowledge base in any area, I suggest you check it out.

9. Get out more.

By this I mean two things: travel and meet new people.  Few of us do enough of either, which whittles our world down to a pitiful fraction of its potential splendor.  Instead, we need to consciously expand our perspective.  Let’s address each approach:

1)Travel is particularly good for recharging your batteries and creating perspective on your life by stepping outside of it.  The farther from home you go, the more powerful this will be.  I love traveling because it allows me to deeply appreciate everything in my life by seeing it in contrast to something else.  I felt this very deeply while studying abroad in Madrid last spring- you can’t help but see your life differently after spending four months in another country.  If your circumstances allow, I highly suggest you live in another part of the world for a time.  As you evaluate a different way of living, you can adopt what you like and discard what you don’t.  Whatever happens, you’ll come away with a much deeper understanding of who you are.

2) Meeting new people is similarly powerful- especially when we go out of our way to connect with those we wouldn’t normally approach.  This is a fantastic way to challenge your assumptions about life and get a fresh perspective (which always breeds new ideas) while increasing your sense of connectedness with other human beings.  Most of the time, you’ll smack yourself for how far off your first impression was.

What I’m doing in 2010: I’m currently building the habit of actively seeking new social experiences and noting any acts of social bravery that I commit throughout the day.  So far, the experience has been superb: I’ve started to initiate more conversations with total strangers, turn quick “hello’s” into warm conversations, and throw myself into situations I would normally avoid.  The result has been dozens of new connections and experiences I would have completely missed before.  As a naturally shy guy, I can think of few better exercises.

10. Love more.

Set the goal of finding new ways to express love.  Send out a loving vibration to all the inanimate objects you interact with every day.  Mentally say, “thank you,” to everything that enters into your awareness.  Instead of just saying hi to people, start initiating hugs.  Dish out more compliments.  Smile when you could just as easily sport a grimace. Most of the time, doing the right small things for others creates big joy for both parties.

Try and weave this concept through whatever you’re doing.   And don’t forget to share some love with the dude (or dudette) in the mirror!

What I’m doing in 2010: For every day of 2010, I’m writing down 20 unique things that I am deeply grateful for.  That’s 7200 unique thank-you’s by 2011!   So far, this has not only been an exercise in finding new perspectives (I can’t say,  “I’m thankful I worked out today” over and over), but a loving way to conclude the day.

I hope I’ve given you some fresh ideas to consider.  They emanate from my own reflections on what is most universally important for conscious beings living today, and I sincerely hope that they work as well for you as they have for me.

2010 is here, and each of its 365 pages will turn only once.  Embrace each one of them completely!

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