Hey guys? Rael here, A new year is about to start, and everyone starts with promises, right? Next year will be better!
This time, I will do such and such. And look, I'm not much different from that, but when we talk about making the next year the best year, it's important to have a parameter to define what that means. For me, it comes down to three very important pillars.
The first one is progress. Am I moving forward towards the things that really matter to me? The second is balance.
Am I managing to keep my life balanced between personal and work? And the third is freedom. How close am I getting to my financial freedom with my personal projects?
Based on these three pillars, you can create a very simple method that you can apply at any time of the year. This will help you measure how much you are progressing in relation to progress, balance, and freedom to get started. I want to propose a super quick and practical reflection exercise, which I call the Satisfaction Map.
The idea here is to evaluate different areas of your life and identify how you are feeling about each one. These methods are usually super easy to apply and can be used whenever you want, helping you organize and ensure that next year will truly be full of meaning, balance, and fun. You can do this exercise wherever you want on a piece of paper, on your phone, or even on a tablet.
I personally prefer paper. I think it helps avoid distractions. Then, when we are doing the exercise, the idea here is to start drawing a circle that will be the base of your Satisfaction Map.
Next, you'll divide this circle into three parts: Work, Health, and Relationships. Remember, these are just initial suggestions. You can adapt and personalize these categories according to what makes the most sense to you.
Now that we’ve categorized into a circle, let's segment and divide each circle into smaller parts. For example, in the health category, you could include nutrition, body, mind, or soul. Whatever you think should go into relationships, we could add: dating, family, and friends.
And for work, we can think of personal projects, money, growth, and personal projects if that doesn’t make sense for you. No problem, you can replace it with career, for example, or freelancing or anything that fits better into your reality. Got it?
I don’t know if you noticed, but we’ve divided life into nine components. The next step now is to evaluate how each one is doing. I suggest using a scale of 0 to 10 so we can assess how happy we are from zero to ten with each specific area of our life.
I think this is the reflection we need to make. Got it? Remember, the focus here is on the current state of each area, regardless of what you’ve done or not done in relation to each area, and how you are feeling in this moment.
Here’s how my example map looks. If you want, you can even color the areas according to the numbers you assigned. This could bring even more clarity, but do it in a way that feels most comfortable for you.
Before moving forward, I want to challenge you. Add an extra category to your map the happiness category, and create a separate area based on your experiences, because this is what you are living in the present. How happy are you feeling right now?
If you think about it, the map you’ve created covers almost all the important aspects of our existence. By adding the happiness category, I think it will remind us that we can enjoy the journey along the way. With our map base ready, we can create a plan to improve each category.
This includes setting goals and creating a plan to replace the numbers we just pointed out. Certainly, the numbers indicate room for improvement. So, if you rated five, you’d obviously expect to find a seven, or, in the best-case scenario, the ten we always aim for.
A big part of making next year the best of your life is exactly this: moving toward those goals and building the progress you deserve. Now is a good time to highlight some areas you'd like to take better care of and that need attention. In the health category, for example, I rated my mind poorly, but I’m not as concerned with that as I am with my body and nutrition, because in my case, I spend a lot of time sitting and lack of exercise and poor nutrition have caused some complications in my work life.
My scores used to be better with work, and with money there, personal projects I think were better, but I think I can improve in growth, for example, because I’d like to get closer to what I’ve projected for myself. Again, stressing that these are just examples. You can adapt them according to your reality, are you understanding the dynamic here?
The more you practice the satisfaction method, the clearer things will become. What points do you need to improve? The best part is that you can adjust them at any time of the year, whenever you feel like things aren’t going the way you want, you can re-evaluate and give a different score, and that will help.
Once you’ve created the foundation, this will only take a few seconds. And if you’re curious wondering why I gave such a high score to personal projects, it’s because I’m really happy with what we achieved this year, right? We developed partnerships, we closed a lot of cool things.
For example, if you’re looking to boost your career, develop management, leadership, productivity skills, maybe you’ll be interested in Learn & Education, where I’m a teacher and one of the partners It’s an online platform that offers G. L. I.
training, management courses, leadership, productivity that will transform your career. The best part is that you pay a symbolic amount and get access to the content. I’ll leave the link.
Obviously, in the video description you can check it out and pay the price of a hamburger for something that will change your life, so don’t miss it! Now we can move on to the next step. Now that we’ve done the diagnosis, highlighting the areas that need more attention, it’s time to start working on your goals.
There are many ways to define goals. You can use whichever one you prefer. In my case, I’ve been doing this for years because it’s part of my job.
It’s not by chance, guys, that many studies show that those who set goals have much better performance, they feel more productive, fulfilled, and so on, compared to those who simply don’t. Writing your goals puts you on a much higher level than those who don’t organize or prioritize their ideas, thinking that maybe the people watching the video might not be familiar with goal-setting. I decided to adapt a simple method and call it the "Conquest Project.
" The idea here is to make sure you can take the concept and apply it in a simple, relaxed way. The dynamic is very simple. I want you to ask yourself what would you like to be celebrating in 12 months or perhaps at the end of next year.
Imagine with your family, with friends, celebrating the progress of these achievements in different areas of your life. Remember the areas we highlighted in the Satisfaction Map? My recommendation is to start with those areas, because they, in some way, need more attention.
You can do this exercise at the start of the year and apply it to all areas. It’ll be a bit of work at the beginning, but after that, you’ll just adjust it as you go along the year. So let’s go.
You’ll ask yourself in 12 months in each of these areas, what would you like to be celebrating? But let’s use a practical example, right? If you looked at the Satisfaction Map example I gave, I placed the "health" category with a very low score, so I can imagine myself with friends, sitting in Ibirapuera Park, celebrating how I managed to improve my physical health over the last 12 months.
For those who don’t know, Ibirapuera Park is in São Paulo. So, some goals I’d like to celebrate would be: increasing my muscle mass, losing weight, reaching my ideal weight, going to the gym for the first time, practicing some sport at least once a week. So, these are goals that can be achieved, so start visualizing, as an example, the tip is to choose only one of these goals.
Choosing many can demotivate you along the way. So, if you had to choose only one goal, which one would it be? In my case, reaching my ideal weight would bring a bonus of improving other aspects of my health, like getting out of pre-diabetes, having more energy day to day, among other things.
Now just repeat the process in the different categories you mapped. An important point here! Make sure to have your goals recorded somewhere easily accessible.
Preferably, it could be Google Docs, a notebook or any practical place where you can track the progress of those goals. If not, it won’t help at all. It’s essential to have a space where you can break those goals into smaller, more tangible objectives, making it easier to execute them daily.
To help you with this mission, I’ll leave the possibility below for you to download a spreadsheet. If you don’t know where to start, this spreadsheet will be a real help. It will help you turn all of this into something simple and practical.
Most people mess up here. They define goals in their heads but don’t write them anywhere. The result is that they end up getting lost along the way.
That’s why you need to revisit your goals regularly and take time to reflect and ask yourself: "Am I on the right track? " For a long time, I used an online spreadsheet for this and even saved the link in my bookmarks in the browser. Because it helped me stay focused and have clarity on what I really needed to do daily.
My suggestion is that you start with weekly reviews. Over time, you’ll gain confidence, clarity, and control over the process. You can increase the interval between reviews, maybe every 15 days, monthly, it’s up to you!
The spreadsheet will help you a lot with this. Now you have everything you need. You have a map, you have your goals, you have the tools.
It’s up to you to take the first step. Remember, next year will only be the best year of your life if you act to make it happen. There’s no magic formula.
I’ll say it again, there’s no magic formula, but there is a method. And with the right tools, next year can be the start of the best phase of your life. Start simple, but start.
Reflect, set your goals, review them regularly, and most importantly don’t wait for the perfect Monday, the ideal moment. The ideal moment is now, my friend! If this video made sense to you, leave a like below, comment on which areas of your life you will prioritize first.
And, of course, share it with someone who also needs to transform the next year. Alright? See you in the next video, and take care!
