Every new year comes with its own excitement. While many of us are expectant of our dreams coming to pass, many more are so certain things will be better just because it is a new year.

Unfortunately, nothing changes in a new year except the calendar. A day is still made up of 24 hours. 7 days still make a week whether it is a new year or not. Until we change our habits in 2020, thus, nothing about it will be any different from 2019. Until we resort to new strategies and inculcate new habits, we will keep getting old results.

If you have made some resolutions this year, the key to achieving them is having a clearly mapped strategy. However, until one is committed, no strategy will ever work. Until one gives up some old habits, they will keep making New Year resolutions year after year in vain. If you want to see great development in your life in 2020, give up some old habits!

Stop depending on people!

Many of us have great plans. Indeed, we have great dreams we have set to achieve this year. Unfortunately, most (if not all) of these dreams will still remain dreams at the end of 2020 because we have tied them to people. We are waiting on others to help us help ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with seeking help from others. However, there is everything wrong with not making a move because such people withheld their help from us. Until we stop making others the oxygen of our dreams, those dreams will continue to be lifeless!

Start from where you are. Start with your little while waiting for much from others. While waiting for that cheque, make use of the little you have. When we rely on people more than ourselves, we tend not to even value what we have been blessed with.

The bosom friend of expectation is disappointment. If you keep looking up to people before you take a step towards that dream, you may only end up frustrated and disappointed. The only person responsible for making that resolution becoming a reality is you. Don’t outsource that power to anyone else! Learn to plan and stick to timelines!

It is laughable to have resolutions without a plan. Plans come with strategies and strategies come with deadlines. A dream only becomes a fantasy if it has no deadline. If there are no timelines to abide by, it may take eternity to have some dreams become a reality.

Timelines set us on our toes. When we know our resolutions are time-bound, we treat them with urgency. If it is smoking we want to quit, we give it some seriousness if there are timelines. If it is a reading habit we want to adopt, we become more proactive about it if we have deadlines.

This 2020, give timelines and deadlines to your dreams. It all begins with a plan. It all begins with how to achieve what. After drafting your plan, you stick to your timelines. Without such, new years will keep coming but our lives will always remain the same.

Put value on time!

It doesn’t matter what your resolutions for 2020 may be. You need time to achieve them. Regardless of how lengthy or scanty your dreams for 2020 may be, you can’t skip time to achieve them. If time is that important to your resolutions, you need to value it.

To migrate from poverty to riches, one thing everyone must learn to put value on is time. If you don’t respect time, you will keep drowning in poverty. Observe the rich nations. They always have something to do with value for time. Observe the poor ones. Time is their least priority.

In this New Year, be conscious about how you spend your time. Be intentional about what you spend your time on. If it will not make you a better person, it will make you worse. If it will not get you any closer to the fulfillment of your dreams, it is distracting you from fulfilling them.

The value you put on time will eventually reflect in the value of your life. If you want to see greater things happen to you this year, place value on time. Every other thing will fall in place. Filter your friend list!

A new habit you should inculcate in 2020 is the habit of being intentional about the friends you make. The people around you influence you more than you can ever imagine. Indirectly, they put a glass ceiling on your dreams and aspirations. They influence the language you speak. They even influence how you think.

Every person soon becomes a reflection of who and what they spend time with or on. This is why you should be intentional about those you are going to call friends. Friends that are worth keeping are those that are wealth giving. If your friends are contributing to the poverty of your mind and pocket, you had better let them go before it is too late.

In this year, purge your friend list. You are where you are today largely because of those who you have surrounded yourself with. You need to, thus, surround yourself with people who think and act like those you aspire to be. Have an awesome year ahead. Cheers!

Kobina Ansah is a Ghanaian playwright and Chief Scribe of Scribe Communications (www.scribecommltd.com), an Accra-based writing firm. His new play this 2020 is “Emergency Wedding”.