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PERSPECTIVE

Viewpoints from the frontline of content.

How to plan for success in 2020

By Remy Blumenfeld 20-12-2019

Have you had a successful year? How do you know? Going into 2019, did you set yourself clear goals for the year ahead? Or are you measuring yourself against what your peers have managed to achieve? It’s so easy for us to think we’re not successful because others in the industry have achieved more.

For me, success simply means living up to an intention, honouring a commitment or achieving a personal goal. It’s also about balance. That’s right, even for TV and film professionals, there is more to life than work.

If you’re wondering which area of your life has been a little out of balance in 2019, take three minutes to fill out your personalised Wheel of Life.

Now is a great time to start focusing on what you want for the year ahead and directing all of your energy towards whatever it is you want to attract and achieve. I encourage all my clients to make five separate lists for the year ahead. And, of course, I do it too. I’ve been seeing amazing results.

Each list covers a different area of life:
• Career and Finances
• Health and Personal Growth
• Family and Friends
• Romance and Home
• Travel, Adventure and Fun

Photo: Marco Verch (original photo & licence)

Pick one area at a time – let’s start with Career and Finances. Imagine what it will feel like, a year from now, when you’re looking back at the success you’ve had in this area. What milestones, achievements and events would make you feel, a year from now, that you’d enjoyed real, staggering success in the area of Career and Finances? Now write down a list of specific measurable targets, complete with numbers and dates.

Next, take on a new area. Let’s say it’s Travel, Adventure and Fun. What would great fun in 2020 look like to you? Twelve months from now, having had a fun-filled year, what adventures will you have had? What trips will you have taken? Go ahead and list them out.

If your list feels easy, you haven’t been ambitious enough. At the other extreme, if you’re thinking ‘Help! I’m NEVER going to achieve any of that,’ then the list you’ve made isn’t right for you either. Everything you write down has to come from a place of pleasure and pride for you.

Each of your five lists needs to be specific, measurable and a real stretch. And don’t hedge your bets by being vague.

When you’re done, read all five of your lists aloud to a good friend and to your partner if you have one. Don’t skip this part, it’s important.

Now, file away the lists under ‘2020 Wish Lists’ or if you’ve written them by hand, put them away in a drawer, where you can find them later. In one year from now, you can look at your lists again and see how much of what you listed has been achieved.

There are two important aspects to this exercise. If you don’t dream it and declare it as what you want, it has very little chance of happening. If you don’t achieve everything you dreamed up, that’s not failure. In fact, unless what we’re striving for is so easily within our grasp, reaching for it wouldn’t qualify as striving. Besides, we inevitably need to fail multiple times in order to succeed.

I have failed many times. I have launched businesses that floundered; I have produced TV series that flopped. I have failed, in small things, several times just this past week. According to Harvard and some of the world’s most successful founders, my failures – and yours – do not make us less able, less qualified or less alluring.

Dubbed the Queen of All Media, Oprah Winfrey was the richest African American of the 20th century. She believes: “There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”

How would it feel to proudly own all your failed attempts in 2020. Sharing with others what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown could even make you a more human, stronger and effective leader.

I’ve found from experience that while not everything I wish for happens, it certainly is true that if I don’t set my intention on something it’s very unlikely to happen.

At the end of 2020, if you’ve achieved just some of what’s on your amazing lists – and I guarantee that you will – then you’ll have had what you dreamed of as a successful year. And what could be better than that?

Catch up with Remy via his website, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube Channel.

today's correspondent

Remy Blumenfeld Life Coach Vitality Guru

Remy Blumenfeld co-founded UK indie Brighter Pictures in 1991 and sold it to Endemol UK 10 years later. He left Endemol in 2005 and joined ITV Studios in 2008 as director for formats.

After leaving ITV, Remy worked for French broadcaster TF1 as a format consultant and later launched production outfit Thinking Violets, which produced shows for BBC4, Sky and Arte.
Named by The Independent as one of the 20 most influential gay people in the UK, Remy retrained as a coach. Today he writes a fortnightly column about creative leadership for Forbes magazine and works mostly with the founders of content companies who want to grow and sell.



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