Jinny Ditzler - Your Best Year Yet!: Make the next 12 months your best ever!

YOUR

BEST

YEAR

YET

J INNY D ITZLER

To Tim,
With my love and deep appreciation.

But there is such a thing as genuine love, which is always considerate. Its distinguishing characteristic is, in fact, regard for personal dignity. Its effect is to stimulate self-respect in the other person. Its concern is to help the loved one become their true self. In a mysterious way such love finds its truest realization in its power to stimulate the other to attain their highest self-realization.

R OMANO G UARDINI

I invite you to have your best year ever year after year for the rest of your life.

The Best Year Yet experience is designed to reach the core of how you think and perform, and to empower you to new levels of personal effectiveness and fulfilment. In a three-hour process of self-discovery, you stand back, take stock and then plan the next year of your life. The exercise of answering ten simple questions helps you to clarify your thinking and make sure your next year is the best it can be. At the end of your personal workshop youll have a simple one-page plan to guide you through your next twelve months.

This format has been used by hundreds of people over the past fourteen years and together we have shaped and simplified the annual life review and planning process to a point of profound power. Yes, weve been able to improve our ability to make things happen, and many, many of us are more successful financially, in our careers and in our relationships. But more important, were taking the time to gain an overview which gives us a better chance to give meaning to our lives and what we do. It brings us to a new level of consciousness and awareness in the way we live and direct our own lives.

Many, many people have carried out this exercise on an annual basis for years; it has helped them to create a fundamental shift in their lives and given them the satisfaction of achieving the results that really matter to them. As one friend says so eloquently,

I saw that I wasnt living the way I wanted to be and now Ive stopped postponing a lot of things that are dear to me.

So many have learned to take the lead in their own lives its a beautiful sight. Ive used this same process for myself and Im astounded at what Ive achieved and how Ive grown as a person. Every year since the first has somehow, in some way, been my best year yet. So, as I often say to participants in the workshop, If a school teacher from Nebraska can do it, so can you!

Again, I welcome and invite you to join us on your own journey of increasing self-respect that comes from living your life in a way that reflects what matters most to you.

The public workshop is an all-day event, but over the years many people have been doing it on their own, usually taking about three hours to get through the ten questions. Watching them succeed so well on their own helped me to realize that this really is a simple do-it-yourself process.

Many people create their Best Year Yet plan in January so they can plan the calendar year ahead. But the process of reflection and planning can be done at any time of the year with equal success. Dont think of this as a book thats only about January to January if youre reading it now, then nows the time to answer the questions, believe you can do it and get on with it.

This book is divided into three parts:

PART ONE: An introduction to the principles on which Best Year Yet is based, as well as a sharing of the experiences of many people who have participated in the process.

PART TWO: Each of the ten questions has its own chapter in which I review the background material and provide further explanation to help you to answer each question for yourself.

PART THREE: Your own Best Year Yet Workshop, with space for you to answer each of the questions and write your own one-page plan for the next twelve months.

You will of course have your own style for doing things; depending on what that is, pick your approach to Your Best Year Yet from these options:

1. Turn immediately to PART THREE and start answering the Ten Best Year Yet questions. If you want help or explanations as you go along, turn to the chapter in PART TWO which relates to the question youre working on.

2. Read PARTS ONE and TWO as preparation for your workshop, perhaps making notes as you read. When youve finished, set aside three hours and write your answers to the questions in PART THREE.

Whatever your choice, enjoy the journey!

The idea started on New Years Day in 1980, when my boyfriend (now my husband) Tim and I woke up in our flat in London. Wed been working in Britain for less than a year and living together only a couple of months, having met shortly after we both arrived from different parts of the US the previous spring.

Perhaps I needed a bit of a distraction as Id given up smoking the night before and had made such a public fuss there was no turning back. Or maybe it was the thought of the new decade ahead. Who knows? But for the first time for ages I began to think a bit more seriously about the year ahead. And before we even left our bed, I suggested that we run a marathon, and Tim agreed.

This was the only goal I remember setting that year, probably because we hadnt decided to stay together and thinking ahead was a tentative business we werent really at the point of planning a life together.

We picked the Paris Marathon, scheduled for May. The goal may not seem unusual today, but 1980 was a year before the birth of the London Marathon and the sight of a runner on the road particularly a woman was still cause for staring and pointing.

We started to train and, although wed been in the habit of jogging a couple of miles several days a week, we were told we needed a new regime, working our way up to over 50 miles a week in the last month before the marathon. Gradually we began to lengthen our pre-work circuit of Bishops Park in Fulham to runs over Putney Bridge, up the towpath, under the Hammersmith Bridge and on until we reached whatever point was halfway to our target time for the day, then turning back towards home along the same route wed come.

By mid-March we began to see the end of the winter mornings and were starting to feel better about it all. As we talked with friends, some of them became interested and soon what began as a ridiculous conversation on the first day in January started to have a life of its own. In the end nearly a hundred of us went to Paris in two coaches, had a great time and raised thousands of pounds for charity.

But it was painful beyond belief I thought it would never end and for Tim it was even worse. We ran the entire marathon side by side. At one point he was in such agony and so delirious that after a water stop at Mile 20 he started running back towards the starting line! But we did it. And the feeling of confidence and elation at having set and achieved such an outrageous goal lived long past the finish line. I learned, above all, how to keep going regardless, and in doing so found new strength and an ability I hadnt even known I had. I would never have discovered this if I hadnt forced myself to do so by going for this goal.

By the following New Years Day in 1981 we were engaged to be married, still in the same rented flat and starting to think about planning the year ahead. Wed had a good year. The marathon was definitely a big thrill, but little else had really changed. Late in 1980 we decided to try to buy a place of our own, and in the process discovered that between us we had a