Think of the habits you've built, the goals you've achieved, and the person that you've ultimately become through all of this.

What do you want that person to look like?

What do you want life to look like in one year's time?

And what does it really mean to live the best year of your life?

And imagine for a second that in that year, you have become almost unrecognizable.

You are completely blown away, in a good way, by all of the things that you've done and the person that you have become.

But that kind of transformation doesn't happen by accident.

And it definitely doesn't happen just by setting some New Year's resolutions.

So in this video, I'm going to show you some simple yet effective changes that you can make to really make this year count.

If you're new here, my name's Izzy.

I'm a Cambridge graduate and a doctor.

And if you're interested in hearing from me more regularly, feel free to sign up for my weekly newsletter where I share even more tips or follow me over on Instagram at izzysealy.

The first change is recognizing that New Year's resolutions are not enough.

If you're a bit like me, you probably set some kind of New Year's resolutions or goals every single year.

And chances are that you won't have actually achieved those goals that you set.

This isn't because goal setting in itself is bad, but the whole concept of setting New Year's resolutions once a year is actually a pretty ineffective way to go about goal setting and making actual change in your life.

Goals are important for setting directions, but ultimately it's the system that results from those goals that's going to get you there.

Taking actual action and executing to make it happen.

If you simply set goals, but never check in on these, never review how your progress is going and never adjust your course, you're almost guaranteed to fail.

And this has definitely happened to me before where I've set some kind of New Year's resolution I'm super excited about, but then actually never take action on reviewing how it's going and checking in on it.

And so then it just ends up being something that is in my journal from the new year and I never look at ever again.

So don't let this be you because this has been me before.

It might have been you as well.

It's not what we want to be.

What we want to do is to take our goals and use them as a springboard for setting our systems to actually carry us towards that destination.

This is a concept fleshed out in the book, The 12 Week Year, where he talks about how setting annual goals is actually not particularly useful, where actually it's not a long enough period of time to set a life vision for yourself because realistically your life vision should really be set over maybe a period of 10 years or five years, more in the long term.

But it's also not short enough to really drive meaningful progress in a motivating way.

The best way that I have found to get around this is to set your new year's resolutions, but then also on top of that, integrate at least a quarterly review, if not a monthly and weekly review, where you check in on how you're doing on all these goals and adjust course based on that.

So for me personally, I do a monthly review and also a weekly review, which means that every month I set a few main goals I want to achieve.

And then within that month, each week I check in on how these are going.

During the weekly review, it's important that it doesn't take up too much time, but just checks in on exactly what you need to keep driving progress forwards, along with setting action intentions.

This means that you're planning out what you need to do in order to move yourself closer towards that goal.

By checking in regularly with a weekly review, this keeps your eye focused on where you're even going.

It's a bit like, let's say you are a sailor.

Back in the good old days before GPS and all these fancy navigation systems, you would have a map and you would have a compass and you would use your compass to figure out, okay, this is my goal on the map and the compass sets my direction for how I'm going to get there.

But the sailor doesn't only check his compass once a year when he does his annual planning and new year's resolution setting.

In fact, he will check his compass multiple times a day while he's on his journey.

This is because a slight deviation of even just a few degrees of the ship's direction can have an outsized effect on what destination he ends up arriving at.

And again, to use the sailor analogy, once the sailor has decided on a goal of where he wants to get to, where he wants to sail his ship to, he then has to make a plan for how he's actually going to get there.

There might be a few countries or difficult waters in the way that he has to navigate around and figure out, okay, what course am I actually charting to get to my destination?

What journey do I need to go through?

And therefore, what do I need to get the compass to direct me to do?

And so there's a bigger planning session, usually before he sets out on the journey.

And then while he's on the journey, there's continuous checking in on, okay, how's it going?

How are the weather conditions now?

Is this place still safe to pass?

Am I still able to go this direction?

What's the compass saying?

Am I still on the right course?

In the same way when we're setting goals for our lives, I know we're not on a physical ocean, but in some ways we're on the ocean of life and we're trying to navigate where to go with all of this.

And setting our goals, we need to develop a plan for how to get there.

So where we're planning to go, how we're planning to go about it.

And then we need to have a system that actually backs us that up and also can give us the opportunity to review and reflect on what direction we're still going.

I'm making a full video breaking down how to effectively implement these monthly and weekly reviews into your life to make sure you're staying on course.

So if you're interested, I will link that somewhere on screen for you to check out.

Also, if you're watching this before the 4th of January, 2025, my husband Ali and I are hosting a totally free productivity spark summit, which is a series of talks by both of us and also guest speakers designed to help you to spark off your 2025 with a bang by setting your life vision, setting your intentions and creating this plan and system that will actually get you to the destination that you want to be in.

Well, essentially making sure that the journey along the way is enjoyable and sustainable.

So if you're interested in potentially joining, again, it's totally free, then feel free to check out the link below in the description.

The next change is to ask your higher self for advice.

I have found this a truly transformational journaling exercise.

Each of us has this idea of the version of ourselves, which is the most spiritually advanced, the most generous, kind, motivated, inspiring version of ourselves that we know is somewhere inside us, but we can't always let that version of ourselves out.

We know what it would look like, but it's not always reflected in reality.

But one thing that we can do to connect with this sense of our higher self is to ask our higher self for advice.

So I like to do this during my review sessions where I ask myself, what's something that my higher self would advise me to do differently right now?

And there's two ways to go about this.

You can either go about this with a specific question, so something that you're struggling with.

For example, at one point, I didn't know what to do with my YouTube channel.

I was like, oh, like I'm not enjoying the process anymore because it started to feel really heavy and trying to optimize the performance of the videos because of all the sponsors.

What do I do?

And so then I asked my higher self for advice.

Given this scenario, this situation, what would she do?

How would she respond?

And the answer came that actually, instead of just quitting or continuing to hate it, maybe finding a way to actually enjoy it and connect with a sense of purpose and service through the YouTube channel is a way to be able to give back to the world while also nourishing myself.

Because if I'm in a state where I'm not enjoying what I'm doing or the content that I'm creating because it's been shaped too much by external extrinsic motivation, then there's no real point in doing this whole creative thing anyway.

And so following that intuition and that advice was very helpful.

The other way that you can do this is more generally.

So during a review session, for example, one question I love to ask myself is what is a piece of advice that my higher self would give me about something that I could do differently?

Another variation of this higher self exercise is asking your virtual mentors for advice because mentors don't have to just be somebody that you actually know in real life.

For example, in Tim Ferriss' book, Tribe of Mentors, he tries to collect some kind of advice and input from various different people that could be seen as a mentor figure.

And by collecting through, whether that's their books, podcasts, interviews, this tribe of mentors in your head, even if they don't know you in real life, you might be able to model what they would say and how they would advise you to approach different situations.

And again, there's no shoulds here.

It's not about what I should do differently.

It's about what I could do differently if I'd like to.

And right now in this moment, one thing that my higher self would suggest that I could do differently is to invest more energy in relationships, which brings me on to the next point.

The next thing is to do a relationship inventory, which is essentially a form of audit where you reflect honestly on the relationships in your life and the role that they're playing.

And this is something that actually came up for me when I was asking my higher self for advice.

So the previous point, and this was that I could invest more energy into relationships, because this is one of my favorite quotes from Esther Perel, the quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships.

Our most finite resource in life is our attention.

And where we choose to direct this is therefore really important.

In a world of infinite connectivity over social media, it's very easy to lose our attention in avenues that don't really matter to us at the end of the day.

And it can be hard to give every relationship the full attention that we would want to give it, which means that we have to spend our attention wisely on relationships that really move the needle for us.

So an exercise that you can do is creating a relationship inventory where you list out all the key relationships you have with friends, family, or your romantic partner, and then rate them on things like trust, mutual support, understanding, and whether they give you energy or drain you of energy.

I find it really helpful to then decide how much more energy and attention to invest in that relationship based on this.

There's this idea of people who are energy vampires or energy radiators.

Are the people that you're spending time with radiating energy and giving you more energy, or are they draining it?

Figure out how you feel after spending time with each person.

And importantly, don't keep sources of negativity around.

If there's somebody that always leaves you feeling drained or tired or down about yourself or not supported, then listen to your gut on this.

Listen to your intuition.

Once you've created this inventory, then select between one to seven people relationships that you would like to invest more energy in in the coming year.

And actually one part of my regular monthly reviews is figuring out who do I want to spend time with in the coming month?

Where do I want to allocate my social energy and attention?

And this leads on to the next point of your relationship with yourself.

Find time every week to dedicate to doing something that you love.

Treat yourself like somebody that you cherish because ultimately, imagine that, let's say you owned a really lovely race horse and this horse was really sweet.

It was your lovely pet horse that you really cherish.

And also happens to be a million dollar race horse that is very valuable and is worth taking care of for two reasons.

One reason, because you just love the horse and it's your lovely pet.

And secondly, because they're also like a very precious elite race horse.

If this horse was unhappy or hungry or stressed or not sleeping enough, what would you do about it?

Would you just be like, oh, this is fine?

Or would you maybe respond like, oh, I need to really cherish this horse.

I need to take care of it, make sure it's eating well, it's being nourished with healthy food, it's getting enough rest, and that it's having a good time and enjoying life because ultimately that helps to reduce stress levels and leads to better outcomes overall.

The thing is that each of us is in some ways our own million dollar horse or our own million dollar being.

And actually you could argue much more than a million because there is only one you.

There is only one person who can truly take responsibility for your own life and that's you.

And you deserve to cherish yourself and to take really good care of yourself.

This means things from the basics, such as health and wellbeing.

If you're ill, go see a doctor.

If you're not getting enough sleep, try to prioritise it.

To the things that help us feel like we're flourishing, which is why dedicating a block of two hours to something that you love doing every single week gives you the space to cherish yourself and treat yourself like somebody that you truly treasure.

This is something that I have struggled with in the past because I would feel like I would have to earn or deserve valuing myself.

But over time I've realised that's crazy.

Like that's unbelievable because why would I need to have to earn being worth treasuring myself?

Because I only get one me, you only get one you.

The life that we've been given, the breath in our lungs, our beating heart, it's a gift.

And we are the only people that can really make sure that we're cherishing that and we're appreciating that.

The next change is to make a no complaints commitment.

Complaining about stuff is kind of pointless.

I'll touch on the one potential point it can have in a little bit.

But firstly, the argument for no complaints.

Either something that you're complaining about is something that is within your control, which case go do it.

Sort it out, you can feel empowered to take action and actually solve it.

Or if something is out of your control, in which case complaining about it is purely adding negativity to yourself and also others because I guess the definition of complaining is that you're complaining to somebody else about something.

And so you're involving them in the sphere of complaining and negativity.

And so what's the point of that?

What's the point when it's either something you can just sort out and have the self-efficacy to just be like, I'm just gonna do it.