I don’t know anyone who feels like they’re getting the most out of life.
Most people I know feel like they are windscreen wipers: get up, get ready for work, sit at your desk for hours on end pretending to care about what’s important to the company, then go home, make dinner, watch Netflix, and go to bed early enough to get up and do it all again tomorrow!
If you want to get more than that out of life, you’ll need a plan. In anticipation of Rosh HaShanah — the day we’re given a new year of life — here are three secrets to writing a New Year Plan that will actually work.
’If you seek it as silver and search for it as treasure, then you will understand the Fear of God.’ – Proverbs 2:4
King Solomon is teaching us that if you want to succeed in your personal growth, you need to approach it like you would a business. If you’re starting a business — and you want it to be successful — the first thing you need is a written business plan.
The first thing you need for a successful New Year is a written personal New Year Plan. Here’s how you write one.
1. Know what you’re trying to achieve
The first thing you need is to know what you’re trying to achieve.
If you hop in a taxi with no idea of where you’re going, it may end up a very expensive ride. People are like that too. People live their lives with no idea where they’re going, and then look back years later, disappointed with where they ended up!
‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.’ – Lewis Carroll
On the other hand, if you know where you want to go, but you don’t know where you are, you won’t be able to get there either. To get from where you are to where you’re going, you need goals, but you also need self-awareness and self-acceptance. Make sure you have both when you’re writing your plan.
2. Take small consistent steps
I’ve been married for over 22 kilos. A few years ago, I asked my brother in law, Nathan — who is an exercise physiologist — how to lose that weight. What he said next changed the way I look at personal growth:
‘How long did it take you to put on the weight?’
I said, ’18 years.’
He said, ‘And I expect you’ll tell me that you want to lose it all in three months, right?’
Bad habits took time to develop. Good ones will too. So don’t exercise your willpower. Exercise your habits.
Don’t help some gym owner buy a new car with the money you paid to use the gym for the first three days of an entire year’s membership. Pick small actions that will make a difference over the long haul.
3. Keep balanced
One of the signs of a healthy business is balance. That is, there’s an appropriate division of resources to each of the departments: Marketing, Finance, Ops, HR, IT etc. They don’t have to be equally divided, but they do have to be appropriately divided.
It’s the same on a personal level.
All of us have to balance our own aspirations, our mental and emotional health, our Jewish growth, our key relationships, our physical health, our community contributions and our finances.
These categories — and they’re not even exhaustive (even if they’re exhausting) — need to have an appropriate place in our lives, and often when we look at the pie graph of our life, we’re out of balance!
So make yourself a rough pie chart, and whatever you decide is the right balance, try and integrate that new learning into your plans for this coming Jewish year.
* * *
If you want to have a better life, you’ll get it on the other side of personal change. And to break through that wall, you’ll need a plan.
Make sure you make time before Rosh HaShanah to plan your upcoming year, and with God’s help, this will be the year that you transform your life.
Biography
Rabbi Andrew Saffer studied Law and IT at Monash, anticipating a career in intellectual property. A four-week summer trip to Israel changed that. After six years of study across from the Western Wall at Aish — a global Jewish adult education organisation — Andrew became a rabbi and met his wife the next day. He now directs Aish’s activities here in Australia. He teaches weekly classes about building a more meaningful and vibrant life using Jewish wisdom, and longs for the day when every person in the world knows why they were created.
