How to Make 2023 Your Best Year Yet | The BL360 Model for a Fulfilled Life

How close do you feel to living the kind of life you always dreamed of? While it is true that life is full of several twists and turns that one may never be able to prepare for fully, you can take control of what you can and, like an experienced sailor, navigate your way through the storms that may arise from a failing relationship, a struggling business, a dead-end career or from losing a loved one.

The idea of a fulfilled life is not to have a smooth ride where everything falls right in place. The goal is to learn to dance in the rain and not shy away from it.

The Bright Life 360 Model for a fulfilled life requires you to:

1.   Pause

2.   Backtrack

3.   Envision

4.   Flesh Out, and

5.   Follow Through

Pause

Can you recount the number of times in your life that you’ve had to pause and take a deep breath when it appeared that things were spiralling out of control?

The ‘PAUSE’ element of the BL360 Model works pretty much the same way.

We are all so accustomed to being busy that we just keep going on and on; ticking tasks off our to-do lists, scheduling meetings back-to-back and simply not having enough time to relax, unwind and rejuvenate. Having a great year requires us to slow down to go faster.

We recommend taking a day or two this month or at any time at all to PAUSE. During this period, you would get little, or no work done. You would also have to keep your mind from worrying or overthinking about the many things you need to accomplish. You can choose to have a long sleep or take an hour or more for a long, slow walk-through of nature with your favourite music plugged in. You can go for a swim or soak in the bath with a glass of wine. Do whatever calms you and gets you to disconnect from the thoughts and activities of your daily routine.

Backtrack

The second element of the BL360 model is the ‘Backtrack’ element. This element requires you to take stock of the year. 

At this stage, you would be asking yourself critical questions and providing honest feedback to these questions. Questions you can aim to answer as you go through the ‘Backtrack’ phase are:

-      What went well?

-      What didn’t go quite well?

-      What did I achieve?

-      What would I have loved to achieve that I didn’t?

-      What would I leave as is?

-      What would I change?

-      What things or people contributed to making this year a good year

-      What things or people did not contribute to making this year a good year?

As you answer these questions, make sure you write your answers down. It would be great to create an e-document for this or get a book or journal to write your thoughts.

Envision

After providing answers to questions on how 2022 went, the next phase in this model is to envision what 2023 would be like for you.

The goal here is to come up with a vision statement for the year. This is simply deciding what you want the new year to be or what you hope to achieve in the new year.

The one question you should aim to answer is – ‘What is the coolest thing that can happen to me/for me in 2023’.

Your answer to this question would stem from your answers to questions in the Backtrack Phase and where you see yourself going as an individual. Make sure you write down what you think the coolest thing that can happen to you/for you in 2023 is.

Flesh Out

After envisioning what you want the new year to be, the next thing to do is to flesh out this grand vision into specific, measurable goals and action points (in this case, habits).

To flesh out your grand vision for 2023, we recommend that you write down three things you must achieve in 2023 to actualize your vision for the year.

For instance, if the coolest thing that would happen to you this year is to ‘make a career switch to a field that you are excited about and be more available for the people in your life, your top three goals may be to:

1.   Acquire Content Marketing Skills

2.   Secure a Content Marketing Role with a Multinational or Start a Content Marketing Side Hustle

3.   Spend More Time with Family

However, just writing down these goals are not enough. You need to be able to flesh these goals out further to give yourself a blueprint to follow all through the year.

This is the point where you need to develop action points per goal. These action points refer to the actions you intend to take to achieve each goal to ensure that your vision for the year is actualized.

Let’s take Goal 1 which is to acquire content marketing skills for example. The action points under this goal may include:

1.   Identify online and offline channels to build content marketing skills.

 2.   Subscribe to YouTube Channels, Podcasts, blogs, etc. that focus on developing content marketing skills.

 3.   Save 5% of your monthly income to pay for a content marketing online/offline course.

 4.   Read one book every quarter on content marketing.

You should provide action points for each goal that you have written down. All action points must be written in your goal-setting/2023 document.

Follow Through

After determining your vision and setting your goals and action points, the final thing you need to do is follow through.

Your vision and goals will be nothing but entries in your journal or inscriptions in your book if you do not act on them.

The ‘Follow-Through’ Element of this model requires you to:

1.   Act

2.   Review

3.   Fine-Tune, and

4.   Act Again

As you act on your goals, it’s important to pause from time to time (this could be monthly or quarterly) and review your progress to determine what is working and what is not. After reviewing your progress, it is important to finetune your goals and action points to ensure they remain ambitious but realistic.

This model has proven to be effective for hundreds of people who have already tried it. We cannot wait to hear how this works for you.

Follow the link to download the template for this model My 2023 Playbook