Thank you for reading this week’s Operation Melt update.

Operation Melt started as a blog to share my personal transformation and weight loss story. After achieving success with that goal, Operation Melt has evolved into a platform to help inspire, motivate and equip people to achieve their own personal and professional goals so they can live their best lives.

I am trying to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.

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Happy New Year!

2020 is finally over and a new year is here filled with promise, opportunities and a clean slate. I wanted to dedicate my first post of 2021 to sharing my 2020 recap and my goals for 2021. I am hoping this encourages you to set some goals for this year too.

Please feel free to share your goals with me as a way of helping keep yourself accountable. Other than writing them down, sharing your goals with somebody else is a great way to ensure that they become more than new years resolutions that fail before Valentine’s Day.

2020 Recap

Not to under-sell it, 2020 was an odd year and was not the year that I had planned. Like many people, I had a few wins but they were quickly overshadowed by other events.

At the end of the year, I looked back over all of the ups and downs and completed a personal 2020 retrospective. An annual review of sorts. I looked at what went well and what didn’t go well across multiple dimensions or facets of my life.

• Love & Marriage
• Mental Health, Spirituality, Joy
• Wealth & Financial Security
• Health & Fitness
• Career & Contribution
• Personal & Knowledge Growth
• Environment
• Social Connection

The result was a laundry list of items that I wanted to celebrate and some where I simply wanted to move on. But, instead of just sharing the list, I paused to reflect on the items. I wanted to find a broader meaning for this difficult year.

After processing the events of this year, I had a bit of an ah-ha and asked myself a big question.

Biggest Lessons for 2020

What are the biggest lessons I learned from all of the events of 2020?

After some careful thought, I identified six big lessons that I have gleaned from 2020.

1. Gratitude: Many of the things in our lives that bring us joy and happiness and those things that we take for granted are fragile and can disappear suddenly. Plus, my worst day is somebody else’s dream. It is important to express gratitude and enjoy all of the aspects of your life while you have the opportunity.
2. Control: I have influence and not direct control over the results I achieve in my life, but I do have direct control of the steps I take to achieve them.
3. Consumption: What I consume matters and that doesn’t just mean calories. The quality of what I allow in my body whether it be food, drink, news, ideas or other forms of consumption matters greatly. I have the power to properly nourish my body and mind to achieve the performance and feelings I desire.
4. Investments: By making smart investments of my time, energy and money, I will earn dividends that will benefit me for a long time.
5. Identity: Identity is a tricky concept. If we live our lives as chameleons or define our identity based on our achievements, the roles we play in life or external measurements, we can find ourselves struggling to rediscover who we are when any of those things change. Investing time in getting to know our real selves pays huge dividends.
6. Killing It: Regardless of whether the trend lines are going in the right or wrong direction, I am doing great. I am killing it at life! I have value to add, stories to tell, inspiration to share and lots more marks to make on this world. My ongoing personal development journey is about enhancements and not about fixing anything that is broken. The opinions of my critics, especially the ones in my own head, cannot change that.

I plan to review these lessons every day in 2021 to ensure that I am actually learning from them and not just moving on. I want them to mean something to me. Plus, I am using these lessons as part of the foundation for my 2021 goals.

Goals for 2021

I am not approaching 2021 with a “new year, new you” mentality. As I said above, I am killing it. I am taking a little different approach and focusing on one big goal / commitment for the year.

In December I read the book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin. Actually, I listened to the audiobook and then went out and bought a physical copy at my independent neighborhood book store. I want the physical book so I can use it for reference and make notes in it. A key quote from this book entered my brain at exactly the right time and became the basis for my 2021 goals.

There’s a practice available to each of us – the practice of embracing the process …. The practice is not the means to the output, the practice IS the output. The practice is all we can control.

Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work

In 2020 I let myself get frustrated based on results that were essentially out of my control. For 2021, my focus is going to be on what I can control.

My goal for 2021, more of a strategy really, is something I am calling “Cs Every Day”.

Instead of getting hung up on a series of checklist items or specific, measurable results, I am going to focus on my daily practice. These are the disciplines that help me live the healthy, happy and productive life I want to live. Then I will trust that the results will follow and will adjust as needed.

I call this strategy “Cs Every Day” because it is comprised of 9 daily practices, each beginning with the letter C, that will help me continue to unlock the life of my dreams. These Cs include:

• Contemplate: reflect, process and find peace with the events in my life putting them in the proper context
• Complete: get shit done! Maintain an increasingly effective system for efficiently tracking and achieving goals and tasks
• Consume: continue to make good eating choices including tracking and managing calories and macros
• Condition: push myself daily to perform at my physical and athletic best and to shape my body
• Create: create something to express myself daily
• Contribute: make my mark on the world
• Connect: connect with new people and improve connections with those I love.
• Control: manage my brain to give myself the moods, feelings and confidence that I want
• Construct: build new skills, knowledge and abilities every day

Within each of these Cs, I have a series of intentions of things I would like to accomplish and a much smaller number of commitments for how I will know if I am staying true to my practice.

For example, under the Contemplate heading, one of my intentions is to upgrade my daily journaling practice. Two of my commitments are to continue journaling daily and to start reviewing (and revising if needed) a page of my 2020 lessons, vision statements and affirmations daily before journaling.

Every quarter I will reevaluate my practice and make any necessary tweaks and upgrades.

This “less is more” approach to my goals for this year will be very different for me. But I am confident that it will help me make 2021 a year for my personal highlight reel or a star on my walk of fame.

What steps are you taking to make 2021 your best year ever?

I Need Your Help

Before you go I would like to ask you for a favor. I can’t build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness on my own. Please consider helping your friends find today’s post by sharing to your Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram feeds.

While you are at it, I’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s post, your goals or anything else on your mind. Send me a note via my Contact Me form,

Thanks again for reading today’s post and here’s to achieving your most important goals!

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