Create a Breakthrough Goal for the Year. A well-formed goal is both powerful and measurable. Specifically, a goal must quantify something, and it must list a specific date for completion. Because a breakthrough goal has the power to transform your life, it also has the power to make this year your best year ever.

Take some time to think about all of last year’s experiences, and more importantly, hold on to all the lessons you learned from those experiences. Understand that everything that occurred last year was simply a result. Don’t get caught up in labeling those results as good or bad – as successes or as failures.

Learn from any mistakes you made and make a commitment not to repeat them. Learn from your successes but don’t let yourself get too complacent or overconfident. The actions that made you successful last year may not be the same actions you need to take this year. Be open to new approaches.

It’s hard to plan for the future when things from the past are still pulling at you. If you’re starting off the new year with unfinished projects from last year, you need to clear those projects from your plate as soon as possible. By getting rid of the old, you make room for the new. 

Anything that is worth achieving is worth putting in writing. Make a list of the major goals that you’d like to achieve this year. Each of these goals should represent a significant milestone in the long term vision for your life. Once you have your goals in writing,put them in a place where you will see them everyday.

Exercise is not something you “have time for”. It is something you make time for. It is also the one thing that provides you with strength, energy, and vitality to be more effective in all the other areas of your life. Exercise is an investment in your health, your life, your longevity, and your productivity.

The people you know and work with have helped you get to where you are. To get to a new level, you will likely need to surround yourself with some new people. Make it a priority to cultivate new relationships with positive people both inside and outside of your industry.

Build new relationships. Successful people know the value of a good network. They spend years building and cultivating their network, and as a result, they are presented with fruitful opportunities, and better positioned to take advantage of them as they come.

Learn new skills. New goals require new actions, and new actions typically require new skills. Take a moment to identify some of the skills you would like to acquire this year, and begin looking for the people and resources that can help you acquire those skills.

Dissolve relationships that don't support your success. Understand that you become the average of the people you spend the most time with. If the attitudes, philosophies, and behaviours of the people around you are not aligned with those of the person you intend to become, you must begin dissolving those relationships.

Make balance a priority. If this next year is truly going to be your most successful year yet, then it must be successful in all the areas of your life. And remember that it’s not about the amount of time you give to each area, it’s about the quality of the time you give to each area.

As is true of all living things in the universe, they're either growing or they are dying. There is no stagnation. If you're not continuously learning and growing, you're falling behind. Creating a personal development plan means committing to nourishing your mind with new, empowering information on a consistent basis.

To ensure you make this year your best year is to hold yourself accountable.Lack of accountability is one of the single greatest reasons for failure. If no one is holding us accountable for the consistent implementation of new habits or behaviors, we are more likely to fall back into our old patterns. 

The secret to holding yourself accountable is to have a system. Without a system for tracking your daily and weekly activities, and then measuring those against the new standards you’ve set for yourself, failure is almost inevitable. What gets measured gets improved.

Start Taking Action. As you plan each day’s activities, ask yourself:  What one thing can I do today that will move me in the direction of at least one of my goals?  Taking small steps in the direction of your goals will result in huge gains over time.

When you make your New Year’s goals, be sure to be as specific as you can. That is one of the keys to your success.

Don’t think about making the coming year your best year ever. Just do it. You might not even notice that it is your best year yet until the end of the year.

Take a minute to reflect on the past year for yourself. Then give it a bow of gratitude, and say goodbye.

Remember that the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your thoughts.

The project that most scares you is the project you need to do first.

Small daily improvements are the key to staggering long-term results.

Stop being busy being busy. This New Year, clean out the distractions from your work plus life and devote to a monomaniacal focus on the few things that matter.

In a world where technology is causing some of us to forget how to act human, become the politest person you know. Be Polite!

Remember that all great ideas were first ridiculed. Remember that critics are dreamers gone scared.

Every morning ask yourself: “How may I best serve the most people?” Every night ask yourself: “What 5 good things happened to me this day?”

Don’t waste your most valuable hours (the morning) doing low value work. Leave every project you touch at work better than you found it.

Your job is not just to work. Your job is to leave a trail of leaders behind you. A job is not “just a job” Every job is a gorgeous vehicle to express your gifts and talents – and to model exceptionalism for all around you.

Get up at 5 am and take 60 minutes to prepare your mind, body, emotions and spirit to be remarkable during the hours that follow. Being a superstar is not the domain of the gifted but the prepared.

Set 5 daily goals every morning. These small wins will lead to nearly 2000 little victories by the end of the year.

Remember the secret to happiness is doing work that matters and being an instrument of service.

Prepare for success. Find out what do you need to start doing, stop doing, do more of or do less of – in order to achieve these goals.

Commit yourself and get support. Find out WHO can support you and HOW and ask for that support.

If our nation wants to reduce global warming, air pollution and energy instability, we should invest only in the best energy options. Nuclear energy isn't one of them.

King Charles, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor, lived and worked in hard bare rooms with no carpets, crowding to the fire in winter, using the window's sunshine in summer.

Have gratitude for the things you're discarding. By giving gratitude, you're giving closure to the relationship with that object, and by doing so, it becomes a lot easier to let go.

If we pursue this matter further, we shall be told that the stable object is unchanging under the impact or stress of some particular external or internal variable or, perhaps, that it resists the passage of time.

Is self-interest a bad thing? We want our leaders to be pure and good, but at the same time we want them to be effective, and to be effective you often have to be ruthless and not bound by ideology or the same morals that we pretend to hold ourselves to.

You can't run with the hare and hunt with the hounds

Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing.

Congress should just do its job and pass a transportation-infrastructure bill - a regular bill that doesn't borrow money and mortgage my future.

History furnishes thousands of examples of men who have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impossible by those less resolute. Prompt decision and whole-souled action sweep the world before them.

After every bath, I make sure to moisturize my entire body. I'm obsessed with Diptyque: people love their candles, but their body products are also amazing.

I've always been conscious of my weight.

The laptop computer is a workhorse. The tablet is just a display.

I believe that nothing enjoys a higher estate in our society than the right given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments freely to practice and proclaim one's religious convictions.

The human intellect has not been able to conceive of anything more noble and sublime in the history of the world than the teachings of the Upanishads.

Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.'

You can do two things at once, but you can't focus effectively on two things at once.

I started out being a stand up and writing my own material. That took me to 'Talk Soup,' where I was writing and performing for TV.