The new year always begins with joy, merriment and hope for better days ahead. Why is it so? People love to celebrate life, they're glad that they made it into the year, regardless of whatever they might have faced in the past year.

Truthfully, the new year gives us the opportunity for a fresh start(which can also be taken at anytime of the year) where people can reorganize, strategize and begin the execution of their plans. However, the celebration of hope and joyfulness during the new year celebration does not determine a man's success in the year. What then determines your successfulness in a year?

Before we answer this question, let's establish what "having a successful year" means. A successful year is one that ends with fulfilment. Fulfillment can be broken down; it could mean satisfaction, it could mean achievement or realization of one goals. So we can say having a successful year is having satisfaction at the end of the year or having achieved one goals at the end of the year. And of course, achieving one goals definitely leads to satisfaction.

Let me point out something here. There's a difference between satisfaction and contentment. So do not confuse what I mean by satisfaction with contentment. The words are used interchangeably in many ways but they are not the same. Satisfaction is the joy derived from fulfilling a particular desire, need or goal while contentment has to do with being okay with how things are. So, I may not fulfill a goal but I can decide to be contented with what how far I achieved.

That settled, let's return to our topic. Your success in this year is dependent on you. Yes, you determine your success by what you do and what you don't do. For example, if you don't have plans or goals for the year, then you're already prepared for failure. I wrote sometime ago, how to prepare for the new year, make sure you read it.

Now after planning and listing out everything you want to achieve in this year, do you just sit and watch, waiting for the goals to fulfill themselves or do you do things to bring them into fulfilment?

For example, for a young secondary school leaver or student in Nigeria whose major goal this year is to gain admission into the university, there are things he needs to do to make that goal a reality. He/she needs to have written, or write the Senior Secondary School Certificate Exams and pass all the necessary subjects required for his/her desired course of study in the university. He/she also needs to partake in the Joint Admission and Matriculation board exercise and select the university of his/her choice during the registration. If you find any student who tells you his/her goal is to enter into the university and has not taken or is not planning to take the two steps I've mentioned above, would you take the person as serious? Of course, No. In fact, when you meet such a person, you'll outrightly declare that it is impossible for him/her to gain admission into university because the necessary steps that will give the chance to fulfilling that dream has not been taken.

It applies the same way to your goals. Do you have a goal of building a new house this year? Have you found out the cost of building? Have you decided how to fund it?

Or do you you have a goal of starting a new business this year? Have you found out how much the capital is? Have you gotten information about others in the same business? Have you made enough research on how the business runs? Do you have a plan on how to raise the capital or you're just hoping the money will fall from the sky?

You have to do specific things to ensure you avoid failure this year.

Source: http://talkeverytime..nl/2017/01/how-to-avoid-failures-in-2017.html?m=1

Follow to get updates on the continuation of this.