How do you have a breakthrough year, especially after one of the toughest ever? Start living, your life, like a pro and get free of all the distractions that are holding you back. As we prepare to move into a New Year, I encourage the people I serve to take time to assess where they are now, and where they want to be.

I also suggest THE most crucial shift in their approach to achieving their goals—and that is to change, improve and optimize the way you live (your lifestyle) for performance so that it works for you and what you are up to in the world.

Do that and 2021 can’t help but be a breakthrough year towards fulfilling your God-inspired mission, goals, and vision.

For starters, without a clear understanding of how you are doing in each area of your life—whether Physical, Career, Financial, Social, or Community (described in Gallup’s Research as “The Five Elements of Wellbeing,” which I have found to be super practical—how do you set relevant, meaningful and actionable goals for yourself?

To genuinely succeed in life and achieve our most significant dreams while maintaining the quality of life, we must consider that every element of our lives is dependent on and connected to others.

It’s All Connected

But here is where we MUST dial this in further.

If you are having an incredible year at work, blowing past your goals and setting new sales records, yet your health is at an all-time low with poor energy management, lack of nutrient-rich foods, zero time to exercise, and enormous levels of stress from lack of clarity and overwhelms on where you’re going, why and how; the success you are achieving in one area of your life, will be limited in the longer-term and negatively affect the others.

It’s because gaps in the various aspects of your lifestyle will sooner or later negatively affect all areas of your life.

• “Areas” of life are the big domains, and as stated, Gallup’s research did a great job in clarifying these as The Five Elements of Wellbeing, which I illuminate further below.
• “Aspects” break down the areas of your life into the essentials.

The part of The Five Elements of Wellbeing that I take to task is physical. I think this should say “Lifestyle” because it takes a whole lifestyle approach to maintain one’s energy, health, and performance capacity to achieve their goals in any area of their life. I think we’ll all agree, all of that is essential to “wellbeing” and probably the foundation.

But that is not necessarily how most people perceive the term “physical,” which often gets passed off as merely a matter of working out, dieting, and maybe getting more sleep.

When it comes to setting goals, your lifestyle is how you achieve your goals. Just think of the way “Athletes” do it. All aspects of their lifestyle enable them to perform, look, and feel the way they do.

That’s why I don’t recommend turning aspects of your lifestyle into areas of your life, which is so common today.

For example:

When working on your goals for 2021, consider the following point about context.

The traditional approach is to set goals in the various “domains” or “categories of improvement” of your life as people like Steven Covey, and Tony Robbins have promoted.

Another very well-known thought leader, whom I also have tremendous respect for, put it this way.

“That’s why when it comes to setting goals, I set aside the time to look at all ten domains of life— Spiritual, Intellectual, Emotional, Physical, Marital, Parental, Social, Vocational, Avocational, and Financial and determine which areas need improvement. This allows me to get a comprehensive picture of what specifically I need to work on the next year.”

Good luck with that. The thing is, it can be overwhelming. It’s out of context as well.

If we refer back to The Five Elements of Wellbeing—spiritual, emotional, intellectual, and physical capacities and experience are direct byproducts of your Lifestyle, which is the foundation of wellbeing. Parental is part of Marital/Family wellbeing; avocational is part of Social/Community wellbeing, and vocational, is an aspect of Professional/Career and Financial well being.

Simplifying how you look at the aspects of your lifestyle and the areas of your life including the goals you want to achieve in each area, is the start of having a breakthrough year.

You don’t want to be scattershot.

Like you, I set aside the time to look at the dominant areas of my life (with my take on the 5 Elements of wellbeing) and my goals in each area—Lifestyle (formerly physical), Marital/Family, Professional/Career, Financial/Investment, Social/Community. We can then break these domains down further if and when we need more detail.

But most people (like 99%+) don’t understand the different aspects of their lifestyle beyond fitness, nutrition, and maybe getting more sleep, none of which are areas of your life. They are aspects of your lifestyle that are essential to have in practice and gain mastery of if you’re going to have energy, health, and performance capacity to achieve your goals. If we don’t we can suffer from the unmet resolution curse.

Sleep, nutrition, and fitness alone account for less than 25% of a whole lifestyle approach, as I’m illustrating below. When you don’t have all of these dialed in, you can be sure that you will have several distractions holding you back, from achieving your goals.

These are The 12 Lifestyle Habits You Need to Know to Live Your Life Like a Pro©. When you get all of these dialed in and change how you achieve your goals, watch your breakthrough happen!

It’s called a Performance Lifestyle®, and it changes everything for the better when you are no longer relying on a half-baked approach to how you achieve your goals, and falling back into the lifestyle gaps or “hidden lifestyle challenges” that crush your breakthrough performance and productivity.

When you combine a performance lifestyle approach to relevant, meaningful, and actionable goals that round out your wellbeing, what I’m describing herein prevents overwhelm and allows us to get a comprehensive picture of what we need to work on in the coming year.

In terms of your lifestyle, you’ll avoid making goals out of aspects of your lifestyle that are not actually goals but essential objectives that make your goal achievement probable.

A breakthrough year isn’t just about succeeding in one of life’s great domains. That doesn’t create well-being. We need to be clear on all of them and address them all to the extent we can so can spiral up.

—As illustrated above, 1. Lifestyle (our approach that promotes spiritual, intellectual, mental, and physical well-being) and the achievement of our goals in each of the other domains as well– 2. Marital/Family, 3. Professional/Career, 4. Financial Growth, Social/Community.

I understand that many different frameworks are available for organizing and prioritizing energy, time, and focus. You just read years of work behind this approach from many organizations, including mine. And it works because it’s simple, emphasizes your approach, and links your lifestyle with the achievement of your goals.

When the way you live (your lifestyle) is aligned with and supports what you are up to in the world (your mission, goals, and vision), 2021 can’t help but be a breakthrough year.

I want to help you have that year by having you be a founding member of the Performance Lifestyle® Academy that will help you get free of every distraction that’s holding you back from achieving your goals and living the quality of life you want.

I’ve applied the same strategy I’m going to share with you to the enormous decades-long project of bringing you the Performance Lifestyle® itself, and will never stop applying it.

To learn more about the performance lifestyle approach to having a breakthrough year in 2021 and beyond, click here.

Go all-in on this strategy and watch how unstoppable you become in 2021!

JAM is a leading Lifestyle Coach and authority on living a Performance Lifestyle® with an online training academy that teaches people how to manage their energy like the pros do and optimize the way they live for the health and high- performance they need to flourish. Located in Florham Park, NJ, he and his team run a Performance Recovery and Wellness Center.