The Best (and most life-changing) of Live Your Legend 2011

02 Jan The Best (and most life-changing) of Live Your Legend 2011

Posted at 10:02h in Productivity, Stewardship & Gratitude by

Reviewing Accomplishments

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

~Bill Gates

*Important note: The below are the results of the first step of my annual goal setting process, as outlined in the totally free Goal Setting and Action Workbook that will be available for download later this week.

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I usually try to spend the week between Christmas and New Years not doing much at all. It’s mainly family time, relaxing and some pretty deep reflection.

One of my favorite parts of the year is this annual pondering. I’ll spend hours on end reviewing my events, goals, weekly planning documents and each month on my calendar. Just to let the past 12 months soak in. This is always the first step of my annual goal setting process and the first step of every new year.

You notice the quote from Bill Gates above. Well, I like the to think of that even shorter term:

Most people overestimate what they can do in one day but underestimate what they can do in a year.

It’s amazing, if not mind-blowing, what any of us are capable of accomplishing and experiencing in just a few months.

Unfortunately it seems so few people actually take the time to bask in all they’ve done before rushing off to what’s next.

I hope this year will be different for you.

As far back as I can remember, 2011 has been the most rewarding, invigorating and downright passionate year yet:

  • I experienced my first full year as a married man, which reconfirmed that I did indeed marry-up ;). I also helped Chelsea launch her vegetarian cooking blog, Food-Life Balance.
  • I rebranded this site from Reading For Your Success to Live Your Legend and over 60 amazing Living Legends helped me launch it.
  • Live Your Legend grew from 2,000 subscribers in January to over 10,000 in December, and became a full-blown business.
  • Live Your Legend was also ranked among the Top 50 Personal Development Blogs of 2011.
  • I created (with the help of all you) the LYL flagship self-study eCourse Live Off Your Passion: An Unconventional Guide to Finding Passion and Getting Paid to Do Work You Love and hundreds of people have already gotten to benefit from it. Some even shared their experience (see the comments at end of this link).
  • The Live Off Your Passion eCourse was voted the Best Personal Development Product of 2011.
  • I pushed my body to some new physical limits including swimming from Alcatraz (with a group of twelve-year-olds), completing an Urbanathalon and running an untrained self-guided “Accidental Marathon” with four close friends.
  • Live Your Legend and I partnered with the most inspiring (and personally aligned) charity I’ve found to date, impossible2Possible, to further help kids test and experience what the world tells them is impossible.
  • I coached a handful of motivated people to help them lead a more passionate personal and professional life. These folks inspire me – you know who you are.
  • I found an amazingly talented team of people at GetFriday to outsource the things I’m not so good at so I can focus on what really matters. Now I don’t know what I’d do without them.
  • I saw even more of the world with my wife and family including fly fishing through Patagonia (Chile and Argentina) with my dad, spend nearly a month in Italy in with my whole family (while still running and growing both businesses), dined in London, talked entrepreneurship in Portland & the Bahamas and was blessed to have 11 weddings to attend around the country.
  • Live Your Legend got hacked and some awesomely talented friends and mentors cleaned everything up and left us stronger than we started.
  • I Attended some of the most inspiring and life-changing events of my life including Summit Series, World Domination Summit and two TEDxSF events on rethinking higher education and alternative government.
  • We all created the first Live Your Legend Self-Guided Education Manifesto
  • And most importantly, I’ve learned that so much more is possible, both online and off, than I’d ever realized before. And we’re just getting started…

I thank many of you for the help in making many of these a reality. Seeing that list on screen is humbling.

And I’m pretty confident that very few of the above would have happened without deciding they were important to me before setting out to accomplish them.

That’s why some type of goal-setting or planning is absolutely mandatory to making most big (and meaningful) things happen. Even if you’re the “goal-free” type of person, you still have to have a system for setting the right intentions at the very least.

*Btw, I have documented the exact process I use for setting and accomplishing my yearly, monthly and weekly goals and have put it into a 13-page comprehensive Goal Setting and Action Workbook. That tool will be live and free for all of you to download in just a few days – keep an out out!

Now without further ado, here are the most popular articles on Live Your Legend from the past 12 months:

These articles either made the list because they had the most page views, got the most comments and shares or a combination of both.

In making the rankings, we had a lot more data to work with than ever before (something else I’m very grateful for). Last year you all visited Live Your Legend over 315,000 times and over half a million pages were viewed from nearly every country in the world. And among all that, 1,945 of us left comments. I can’t tell you how helpful this is in letting me know the topics I should write and the products I ought to build.

Thank you.

One thing’s for sure, the below articles caused many of you readers to take massive action in 2011 – thanks to those of you who have shared your success with us!

The Most Impactful Articles of Live Your Legend 2011

  1. Rule #1: Surround Yourself with Passionate People
  2. How Business School Killed the Entrepreneur (and some worthy alternatives)
  3. 10 Proven Actions You Can Take Today to Start Making Money from Your Passion Tomorrow (seriously, tomorrow)
  4. 57 Living Legends Expose The Moment that Defined their Passion
  5. Do Something Impossible
  6. The One Thing You Must Do the Moment You Quit or Get Fired (Purpose Finding 101)
  7. The 17 Habits of People Who Change the World (aka The Live Your Legend Operating Manifesto)
  8. How to Hate Your Job (or 16 Things Not to Do)
  9. How to Lead a Revolution: 8 Underused Tactics to Build a Massively Loyal Following
  10. From Tim Ferriss & Warren Buffett to Tony Robbins & Seth Godin: How to Create World-Class Relationships
  11. Vulnerability 101: How to Build Rapport with Absolutely Anyone
  12. Does What You’re Doing Actually Matter? (+ free workbook)
  13. How Steve Jobs Made Me An Entrepreneur: 19 Lesson and Quotes Worth Living
  14. The Myth of the 4-Hour Work Week
  15. On Modeling the Impossible and How to Do Anything
  16. The Birth of Self-Guided Education (the only real option left)
  17. The 27 Principles to Teaching Yourself Anything (aka The Self-Guided Education Manifesto + PDF download)

It was tough to choose the above, so if you want to go back and review the full list or articles from 2011, check out the archives here.

If you can find a couple extra hours this week, I recommend sitting down and rereading the above before you tackle 2012. I think it will help.

Remember, you all had everything to do with this.

Thank you and Happy New Year – this ones going to be big!

Now it’s on to you…

What are you proud of from last year?

In a word or a sentence, leave it in the comments. It doesn’t have to be something grand or even your biggest accomplishment of the year. Just list one thing you’re proud of to get the gears cranking.

The Goal Setting and Action Workbook will help you take it even further in a few days.

It’s time to be proud…

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Image courtesy of aussiegall