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5 Big and Little Ideas for Change and Success In 2021
The profound question for us all: how do we achieve our goals in a world that can overwhelm us with new crises, uncertainty and competition? 2021 will be a truly transformative year - whether good or bad, it is up to us.
Despite the challenges, 2021 will still offer opportunities for personal and societal change. And, more than ever, you'll need to depend on yourself - your talents, skills, beliefs, and the ability to sustain a clear focus and positive attitude in order to achieve your goals.
5 Ideas for 2021 :
1. Challenges and obstacles.
2. What will be the same?
3. What's different in 2021 and into the future?
4. The new environment for us.
5. What we need.
Why am I adding my opinions as an amateur philosopher?
Please take a look around us. Read the news in the United States and around the world. As they say," how's it working for us?"
We have outstanding academic, technological, healthcare, and economic resources. Yet, despite all these capabilities, the state of the world is a mess. There are social and cultural conflicts, technological displacement, economic disparity and political chaos. Health and wellness crises escalate with chronic diseases, addictions, suicides, rising healthcare costs and more.
So, despite all the professional, well-meaning, and skilled intentions, conventional expertise is not adequately changing the course of what's going on in the world.
Facing the future, two things are on my must-do list:
a) Do what I can for myself and my family to achieve our goals.
b) Help change society and institutions so the resources you and I need will be available.
5 Ideas for Personal Change and Success
Challenges and Obstacles
More than at any time in our lives, 2021 will be defined by more challenges, and more opportunities, and issues we have yet to encounter. The challenges in 2021 include:
Health and wellness crises: Getting through COVID-19 and its harmful impact on life and the economy. Continuing trends in chronic health issues and wellness. The threat of another, but inevitable, unknown virus.
Domestic and international politics: Dramatic political chaos and conflict in the United States and around the world
Economics: Economic uncertainty and disparity in almost every sector.
Society and culture: Social and cultural conflicts and injustices.
Environment: Global environmental/climate change, with contested planning and solutions.
The cumulative effect of the COVID-19 Virus: The Coronavirus is having a significant impact on our psychological well-being. The long-term consequences of months, perhaps years, of global health dangers, is already a burden on our emotional state — more fear, more depression, more negativity. We certainly need our institutions to lead the repairs, but we're going to have to do most of the heavy-duty work ourselves.
What Will Be the Same?
Most of our needs and daily responsibilities will remain the same, but challenged and constrained by the new obstacles:
We still have to work, eat, sleep, remain healthy.
We still want time for personal interests, vacations, family, friends.
We still want to find a bit more happiness, peace and contentment in our lives.
We still need, and want, things — a new job, more financial security, a new house, a new car, a trip, and an endless list of personal wants and wishes.
We still want and need personal connections, relationships, safety, security, a belief system that helps us feel connected to people and something else that might be undefinable.
We need a way of planning, coping with obstacles and change. Strengthening our ability to still have creative ideas and finding guidance to help achieve our goals.
How will we continue to do the normal, necessary activities plus new things we want to pursue when we have new challenges?
What's Different in 2021 and into the Future?
Despite the historical cycles of economic, political and social change, 2021 will be a dramatically intense period of threats and challenges. Yet, there are always opportunities for people who learn to adapt to changing conditions- that's our survival instinct. I still have altruistic goals at the personal level, but I have to first focus my ideas, thoughts, and energies on my goals for 2021. I need to survive and thrive in order to participate in my broader aspirations. What are some of the most important shifts and escalations in 2021?
Information volume and access: With instant digital communications, individuals, groups, organizations, and governments have the power to create change in seconds. Past social and economic cycles provide clues, but at no time in history was information available in the volume, with the speed, diversity, and uncertainty of today's information. The challenge is to determine which information is accurate and useful and which information is not accurate and even intentionally misrepresented. Misinformation and negative news will increase even more in 2021.
You need to make more and faster informed decisions: What information will you seek, access, accept, believe, and act upon? I'm a pretty information, intense person. But today, even though I use information sources I considered accurate and timely, I no longer believe they are always correct. Even the experts are suffering from information overload. People may intend to be truthful but are incorrect in their conclusions and forecasts. Information emerges 24/7, and there is too much information confusion. It's work, but I have to be more information aware and critical as it relates to me and my goals. Or, of course, you can just opt out of everything and let external forces have greater control over your plans.
The New Environment for Us
Competition for everything will become more intense. Whatever you want in life, whatever you want to achieve, there will be increased competition with other people to achieve the same goals.
More competition for attention, resources, power, economic leverage, social change and political advantage. I can't do all things, so I need a plan to adapt my goals to external reality. If I can succeed in my goals, I can and will be able to help others achieve their goals and beneficial societal change.
For our personal goals, among the most common is to improve our quality of life. This includes our wellness, jobs, education, financial security, housing, and more. What will it take to achieve those goals?
Competition is always based on the nature of each individual's clarity, focus, confident beliefs and maintaining the persistence and positivity to achieve the goal. Someone will be promoted. Someone will open that new store. Someone will be accepted to that school. There will always be someone who will succeed in an increasingly competitive environment.
The challenge in health and wellness
Health and wellness goals will be especially challenging, but even more important, because you need to be mentally and physically healthy to pursue your other goals. The only competition will be yourself, the nature of your self-talk, and motivation. External challenges can be a negative influence on your best health and wellness intentions. But your well-being is the one goal over which you have direct control, so you need to find a practice and a positivity mindset that works for you.
What We Need: Goals-clarity-realistic-focus-persistence-confidence-positivity.
How do you succeed? The people who succeed in achieving a goal will be those who can maintain the quality of their beliefs and persistence. We've called it the power of positive thinking, laws of success, the law of attraction, and dozens more popularized terms. Regardless of the term, there is a necessary, personal positive psychology to succeed in an increasingly competitive world.
My personal approach is to apply the principles of my Manifestation Formula; the only things I have control over are my thoughts, creative ideas, choices and actions. I've learned that the single, most important determinant to the success of my idea has been elevating and maintaining my beliefs and the level of my positivity.
Henry Ford said, "whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you are right."
To oversimplify, I cannot let my negative thoughts and negative self-talk overwhelm my more positive intentions about achieving my goals. Fear, doubt and uncertainty are inevitable and part of our survival instinct. But modern survival and success require that more positive control of our thoughts is the foundation tool for our personal achievements.
The year 2021 will continue to be one of increased interest in emotional, psychological, and spiritual support due to the multiple crises surrounding us.
Willie Nelson said: "Replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts, and you will have more positive outcomes."
Create Your 2021 Plan
You are in charge If you don't take the necessary positive and productive control with a plan, the external forces will be making decisions for you.
It may not be enough to try and succeed with only your own goals.
Your opportunities and chances for success will still be dependent on the actions of other people and institutions. The ability to align goals and connect with resources will be more difficult. So, whatever your plans, include some effort to help or influence, in a beneficial way, the thinking, decisions and actions of other people – whether it's personally or societally. It may be a cliché now, during the virus, that we are all in this together. Clichés are popular because they are largely true descriptions. You can help yourself more if you also help to change the environment in which you strive to achieve your goals.
Get information and create a plan
We individually have to work on two things to manage our lives going forward, and 2021 will be the platform for our future lives.
Become more information educated: You're going to have to do the work to acquire more information, assess its usefulness and validity, and determine how to apply it to your purposes and goals.
For personal goals and the things you want to achieve, you also need a personal success plan: The basic process and tools for achieving your goals and obtaining the things you want have not changed- a specific goal, clarity and intention, choices and actions appropriate to the goal, discipline, motivation, and persistence. But our world is now more information-intense, more competitive world, with the increasing influence of external factors. We need to reinforce our sense of purpose and maintain that necessary belief and positive focus on the goal.
There are always people who push forward through obstacles, and find ways, both conventional and creative, to transform their thoughts and ideas into successful outcomes. Let's be those people.
You can read more about what I've done at manifestformula.com or in my book, The Manifestation Formula. I'll be writing about modern, practical positivity in my posts.
Richard Spitzer January 1, 2021
Upcoming articles:
Born to Manifest
The Common Denominators of Success
The Modern Survival Instinct
Setting Goals
Power of Negative Thoughts
How to Manifest Health & Wellness
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