What are you anticipating for the coming year? For many people, November is a time of busied frenzy as they and their businesses struggle to meet their year end goals, hit those fourth quarter milestones, and begin to reflect on accomplishments for the year.

For others, year end signals a future focus. This is a time to consider ramping up business strategy, launching new projects, or engaging in new assignments to complete in the coming year.

But how many of us think about the person we will become in the new year. What new mindset, attitude, or personality will we need to adopt to become the person who will reach those goals we have set for ourselves. Or in a different light, what wisdom will the new you in December 2019 impart to the current you in December 2018.

As I consider this, I envision my future self telling me to be bold, be fearless, ask those questions, talk to that person, give that speech.  My future self is telling me not to play small, but to live larger than I can even imagine.  Such thoughts are equally scary and exciting. How many times do we not accomplish our goals because we are afraid. We look to the past to tell us how to do the things required to become our future selves. Yet how can the past help us to navigate our course through the murky waters of our future? It cannot.

We must navigate the waters of our future from the future. We must try new things. As we begin to clearly see the goal and believe we can reach it, then the resources we require to achieve it will begin to appear. As I think about networking and telling people that I am a life coach and offering them my services, I cannot look to the past to tell me what to say or how to approach people, because I have never done anything like this before. I could ask someone who has done this and is successful how they did it. But doing it their way does not guarantee my success.

My success will come as I do the actions I know to do. As I do the things that my future self told me. I must be fearless, bold, outgoing, and assured. In a word, I must become a badass.  Who will you become in 2019?