Designing Your Breakthrough Year: How to Start Now

I'm going to share about designing your breakthrough year and how you can start now. We don't want to wait until we're well into the new year. We want to get a jump start on it right now!

Imagine waking up every single day in 2025 feeling clear, confident, and completely in control of your life. 

• What would that look like for you? 
• What would that feel like?

Many times I talk to people in my day-to-day life, or at events, and they tell me about the goals they want to achieve. Then I see them again, and they haven't achieved their goals yet. 

• Or they say, “Oh, I'm so excited about this year to be over - 2024 sucks. I can't wait for 2025!” Yet, they're not necessarily putting in a plan to get them to where they want to be.
• Or they're creating goals but not a full plan. 
• Or they're creating the whole plan, feeling like, “Okay, this is going to be it, this is going to do it,” but the process through which they created the plan isn't helping them. They didn't do it properly, and then they create the plan, and they don't implement the plan because they've got nothing to support them on the way.

I'm going to share the things you really need to do if you're going to have 2025 be THE year - the year for you, the year for you to have that clarity, confidence, and control, for you to reach your goals, for it to be an amazing year. Then you’ll get to the final day of the year, and you’ll say, “Oh, I don't think I could have squeezed anything else into the year. I don't think I could have achieved anything else. It was such a fulfilling, big year for me - this was THE year!”

First Piece: You don't want to miss out on that motivator, which is achievement. 

A lot of times, I see people having the same problem. They wait for the perfect time. 

How many times have you told yourself, 'I'll start planning' or 'I'll start doing things” or “I'll start reaching my goals when things calm down, when things ease up, when I'm not so overwhelmed or busy”? But here's the truth: there's never a perfect time, except right now, to get going on things.

It's important that when you choose to do plan, as I mentioned before, we want to make sure we have the right process, the right 3-Phase Process to go through. 

Don't wait for the perfect time, and then don't just willy-nilly make goals or a plan without a proper process and reflection. I’ll share more about the process that I go through and have been going through for 14 years, and one that I take my clients through. It’s crucial. 

Reflection and intention are so important. Otherwise, we just do the same things over and over again, and most people rush into the new year without reflecting on the past year. That's why so many resolutions fail - because they're not the right ones, and they're not rooted in clarity, not rooted in purpose.

If you don't have clarity and purpose, you're going to choose the wrong goals, or you're going to choose the goals, and then you don't have enough motivation behind them to have them work. 

Reviewing my year is always the first process that I do, and people say to me, “Well, Diane, why bother reviewing? It’s a new year, new you.” It helps us to celebrate what we have achieved. You don't want to miss out on the greatest motivator, which is… achievement. ​

As adults - and I see this in my clients or the women in the audiences that I speak to, and I see it in my friends, people I network with - we have successes, but then we skip past them to get to the next task or the next goal. We don't celebrate at all. 

When we don't succeed, or we don't do it exactly how we want, we'll dwell on our failures. We're reviewing our failures. We're beating ourselves up because of these failures, and we can't seem to get going again.

People who are successful and satisfied (key thing: successful AND satisfied) - and companies that are doing extremely well know the benefits of reviewing your year. I don't just mean reviewing your financial statements, your fiscal year, your target numbers and such, but reviewing more about it, like how it felt, what you were proud of and even the soft skills.

Second Piece: You don't want to make the same mistakes again. 

The biggest wasted resource in learning is not learning from our mistakes. We’ll often finish a project, an event, a launch, and we'll review that process. We'll review what we did to see where we can do better next time, but we don't always learn from our regular everyday experiences or the culmination of the whole year and all those experiences along the way.

Instead of capitalizing on this wealth of knowledge, it just seems to slip through our fingers, and it's usually just forgotten. Often we just jump into the next year. We set up some big goals, and we end up making the same mistakes again, and we wonder why we have similar results. If you're saying, “No, I reach all of my goals all the time, no problem.” Okay, well, what would be the next level? Where could you actually get to if you put in the time to review? 

The 3-Step Results Process

If you want 2025 to be like THE year for you, your breakthrough year, then you need a three-step results process. It's the one I follow, and this helps me to create my plan every single year.

Step 1: Reflection

I talked about reviewing, but we're going to use the word 'reflect' so that we're not coming at it from just an analytical space. Reflection brings in the emotions a little bit more, so we're going to be able to gain some clarity by looking back so that we can move forward more intentionally and powerfully.

We're going to look at, 

• What worked?
• What didn't work?
• What brought me joy? 

We're going to acknowledge the achievements, the wins, the lessons learned. Then acknowledge the disappointments, the lessons learned. We're going to let those go. We're going to uncover patterns and let go of anything that no longer serves you. 

Now, the purpose is this is to give you clarity, and self-awareness, to build a strong foundation for your breakthrough year. 

Step 2: Redefine

Many people create goals by default, like whatever just comes to them, rather than actually redefining what's most important to them. We need to do this to be able to set the foundation for your breakthrough year by redefining your vision of success.

A lot of times, people just look at success as achievements - what they get, what they earn - rather than satisfaction. I want to create a plan that has both. I want to be successful AND satisfied. In the pursuit of my success, I want to be satisfied every single day on the way to success. Does that not sound better than just being satisfied on the days that you actually have success? 

This step is going to help you create the pieces. That's what I go through with my clients, to create all the pieces for your Breakthrough Blueprint. 

Theme:

We start by creating a clear, bold theme for your year to set the tone and direction. Now, a lot of people, what they do is they go, “I like that word,” or “This word came to me,' or 'That's my favorite song, and I like that word that the song is titled.' That is a stupid way to come up with a theme. I'm sorry if this is how you do it, but these are really lightweight, surface-level themes. What you really want is a bold theme that has come from doing the reflection in the first section that's going to help to set the tone and direction for your whole year.

Guidelines:

Then establishing some clear guidelines - these are personal rules and boundaries. They're going to support the theme, and they're going to support all the other pieces that you put into your breakthrough blueprint. ​

Now, a lot of times with guidelines, people are like, “These are things I need to learn. These are boundaries I need to create.” But they haven't come from that reflection process because, as I mentioned, most people don't bother reviewing or reflecting - they just jump into the creation process or the planning process, but they've missed out fully on this bit before.

Values:

When you get to do this, you start redefining success on your own terms. I guide you through uncovering your core values because they help you make authentic decisions, stay motivated, and build confidence in what truly matters to you. You're aligning your goals with your values.  

Paradigm:

We now have theme, guidelines, values, then we need to support ourselves by having a new paradigm because otherwise, going towards these goals, and wanting to honour the rest of it, the limiting beliefs are going to step in the way, and they're going to break up your chances of being able to achieve your goals.

Having that new paradigm is going to help you to not only break free from old beliefs that have been holding you back but let you grab the reins again so that you're in control so that limiting belief isn't really focusing or pushing your decision-making anymore and limiting what you can do.

Creating Goals from all areas

The fifth and final piece is creating our top goals by looking at all areas of life. Now, we're not creating 100 goals, we're creating like three-four goals, but we look at all areas of life. Otherwise, my business owners, you're probably going to create 10 business goals. Or, my high achievers, you're going to create 20 goals that you want to achieve in just a couple of areas of life. We don't want to do that.

By doing this redefining process, this really ensures that the plan is rooted in intention, authenticity, purpose, so you can confidently pursue a life that excites you. 

I'm done with people having dull lives! I don't mean that people are boring, but what if we took a stand for having things in our life that excite us - more passion, more purpose, more resonance? That's the type of life I want for all of you.

Step 3: Realizing

After we go through the reflection, the redefining, creating that breakthrough blueprint, we're going to go to the third phase. Now you might think that this is like, “Well, now I'm going to get results.” Okay, hold on - it's more that realizing is the process through which you achieve everything on this blueprint.

You're going to turn the vision that you have, that we've created for the ideal life, with inspired and intentional steps, rather than just, “Here's the next thing I have to do, here's the next task I have to do.” 

• That's boring. 
• That is not motivational. 
• That is not inspiring. 
• That is not going to take you where you really need to be and stretch beyond.

When we can set some actionable, meaningful goals, they're going to align with our theme, our values, our new paradigm, our guidelines, and we can use this breakthrough blueprint to create a step-by-step plan that prioritizes your progress towards your goals. Key thing here: without overwhelm. Because these other pieces are like tools, supporting the goal, helping you to get there.

Then in order to realize your goals, we can't just stop at making that plan. We have to have some accountability. A lot of times it comes through coaching, community support, regular check-ins, so that you not only just say what you have done or haven't done, but you get to celebrate your wins. You get to course-correct when needed.

Did you know that a plane is off course 95% of the time? Course correction, course correction, course correction. You need multiple course corrections throughout the year to make sure you're staying the course and to make adjustments for things that come your way. Planes are adjusting to wind, weather, storms, and other planes. The same thing happens to you. You need to course-correct when needed. Sometimes you know that yourself. Sometimes you need a coach to call you out on it.

Now, in this realizing stage, the main purpose of it is to help you to take consistent, purpose-driven action to bring your breakthrough year to life. This plan is a living blueprint, a living plan, they're living goals, meaning they are going to continue to change and grow. Do you know what's really cool? As you up your confidence, as you have more clarity, as you have more achievement, oftentimes, what is possible and what this blueprint can do for you - it expands and grows and stretches so that you actually have more success than you thought, in the beginning, you could achieve. Pretty cool!

Wrapping Up

I'm announcing a special invitation: if you're ready to stop waiting, start creating your breakthrough year, I invite you to join me for The Breakthrough 2025, and together, we're going to plan a life that feels bold, intentional, purposeful. We're going to get you not only to be at the end of the year feeling really good about what you've accomplished but feeling good every single day - with clarity, confidence, and feeling like you're in control. You're taking action to get the results because of the three-phase results process.

Got questions? Email me at [email protected]. Otherwise, join The Breakthrough 2025. I hope to see you there. Make sure you don't willy-nilly create your plan this year. Make sure you start now because I know that it's possible for 2025 to be your breakthrough year. 

Read my other blogs:

1. From Reactive to Proactive: Designing a Life You Love
​2. How the Negative Belief of “I Am Not Enough” Sabotages Your Happiness
3. How Far We’ve Come: My Journey and Evolution on the Dynamic Women Podcast