Your Best Year Ever

About the Author

Michael Hyatt is the founder and CEO of Michael Hyatt & Company, a leadership-development firm dedicated to helping high achievers win at work and succeed at life. He is the author of several best-selling books, including Living Forward and Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., and Entrepreneur. Michael’s insights are shaped by his extensive experience as a top executive and a mentor, guiding others to achieve their personal and professional goals.

Main Idea

In Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals, Michael Hyatt presents a powerful, proven, research-driven system for setting and achieving goals. Hyatt believes that anyone can close the gap between reality and their dreams by following his structured approach. The book offers strategies to overcome past setbacks, identify limiting beliefs, establish meaningful goals, and stay motivated throughout the journey. The core message is that with the right mindset and tools, anyone can design their best year ever.

Table of Contents

1. Believe the Possibility
2. Complete the Past
3. Design Your Future
4. Find Your Why
5. Make It Happen

Believe the Possibility

The journey to achieving your best year ever begins with the belief that it is possible. Our beliefs shape our reality, and by changing limiting beliefs into empowering truths, we can alter our life’s trajectory. Michael Hyatt explains that our expectations influence our perceptions, actions, and ultimately, our outcomes.

"Our beliefs play a massive part in how we approach life. We tend to experience what we expect." – Michael Hyatt

To upgrade your beliefs, Hyatt outlines a six-step process:

1. Recognize the Limiting Belief: Identify the belief that holds you back.
2. Record the Belief: Write it down to externalize and evaluate it.
3. Review the Belief: Assess whether it empowers or restricts you.
4. Reject or Reframe the Belief: Discard false beliefs or reframe those with a kernel of truth.
5. Revise the Belief: Formulate a new, liberating truth.
6. Reorient to the New Belief: Act as if the new belief is true until it becomes part of you.

By following this process, you can transform your mindset and create a foundation for achieving your goals. Hyatt emphasizes that our beliefs are not fixed; they can be changed and upgraded to support our aspirations. This mindset shift is crucial for moving forward and making significant progress in life.

Believing in the possibility also means embracing a growth mindset. A growth mindset, as popularized by psychologist Carol Dweck, is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication and hard work. This contrasts with a fixed mindset, where individuals believe their abilities are static and unchangeable. Hyatt encourages readers to adopt a growth mindset to unlock their potential and achieve their best year ever.

One practical way to foster a growth mindset is by setting stretch goals. Stretch goals are challenging objectives that push you beyond your comfort zone. They require you to develop new skills and strategies, ultimately leading to personal and professional growth. By aiming high and striving for ambitious targets, you can expand your capabilities and achieve more than you ever thought possible.

Complete the Past

To move forward, it is essential to resolve past issues. Hyatt emphasizes that unprocessed regrets and unfinished business can hinder future progress. By conducting an After-Action Review, you can gain closure and learn from past experiences.

"Regret is a form of information, and reflecting on our missteps is critical to avoiding those missteps in the future." – Michael Hyatt

Hyatt recommends the following steps to complete the past:

1. State What You Wanted to Happen: Reflect on your previous goals and expectations.
2. Acknowledge What Actually Happened: Identify any disappointments or regrets.
3. Learn from the Experience: Extract valuable lessons from your experiences.
4. Adjust Your Behavior: Implement changes to avoid repeating past mistakes.

By thoroughly analyzing past experiences, you can identify patterns and behaviors that need to be changed. This process of reflection and adjustment helps you to let go of past failures and move forward with a clean slate. It also allows you to build on past successes by understanding what worked well and how to replicate those actions in the future.