Everyone loves to make New Year’s resolutions.It’s a new year and time for a fresh star so we load ourselves up with all sorts of goals or resolutions.Lose weight, exercise, quit smoking, get a raise, start a business, start a blog, read more, and the list can go on and on.
I find that there are so many things that I want to accomplish or start doing and my list is a mile long.If you have too many things to think and worry about or to try and change, you will not accomplish any of them.That is why I am introducing and following my new goal accomplishing system for 2009 and encouraging you to do the same.
The 2009 New Year’s Resolution Goal System
The system is very easy and makes you wonder why you never tried something like it before.Here are the steps for the 2009 New Year’s resolution goal system:
Make a list of all of your goals.
1.Make a list of all of your goals for this year from major feats that you would like to accomplish all the way down to little changes you would like to make (like reading for 30 minutes instead of watching one of the TV shows in your routine). Try to come up with at least 12, one for each month.
Organize your goals.
2.Organizer all your goals in order of importance.The most important at the top and the least important (or the “it would be nice if I did it”) goal at the bottom.
Start working on your first goal.
3.On January 1, start working on your number one, most important goal.Work hard at it as if it is the only goal you need to accomplish this year.Each day in January do something that will bring you closer to your goal.
Evaluate your progress.
4.At the end of the month, evaluate how well you’ve done.Did you accomplish your goal? Did you get close?If not, what can you do to help yourself achieve your goal over the next 30 days?If successful, skip to number 6.
Evaluate your goal.
5.If you didn’t succeed, try and figure out why you didn’t.Was it too hard and should take longer than 30 days?If so, keep working on it for as long as it takes.Just make sure you evaluate your progress at least once a month and don’t give up.
Sometime you may find that the goal isn’t even right for you and that there are more important goals to focus on.If that’s the case, over the next 30 days, try the next goal on your list.It’s ok to decide that one or two of your goals were not right but if you find this happening with too many goals, try and figure out why and how you can make better goals that you can achieve.
Move on to your next goal.
6.Once you’ve accomplished one goal (or are comfortable enough with your progress), move onto your next goal.Work for the next 30 days to accomplish your next goal while maintaining your progress of your first goal (unless there is nothing to maintain since the goal was a one time thing).
Evaluate once again.
7.Go back to step 4 and repeat the steps over and over each month.
Keep doing this until next New Year and see how many goals you can accomplish.Next year try adding more goals and shorten the trial period.You can always assign different amounts of time to goals of different difficulty.Challenge yourself each year to see how many goals you can accomplish.
Over time, you will get better at disciplining yourself and maintaining your progress.Last year, without even noticing, I started using this system.If you look back to my first blog post, I wrote about starting my New Year’s resolution of blogging about “luck” on December 4th.On December 31st, I wrote about starting my next goal of creating personal financial statements every month, which I have also accomplished.Throughout this past year, I have started and accomplished many personal goals such as moving to a bigger place to live in a new city, quitting my job and starting my own company, spending more quality time with my family and many more. Looking back, it took about a month or so for each of them.
You will never accomplish all of your goals overnight but if you take baby steps and do them one at a time, you can be successful.Just remember, it takes 6 years to become an overnight success, so start working toward 2015.
I hear so many people saying that they will not start item “B” until item “A” is accomplished. For instance, “I will not get married until I have a job”, “I will not have kids until I am comfortable in my career” or “I will not start my own business until I have at least 5 years of experience”. Sometimes it’s good to wait but make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. If you ask me, you don’t need to get your ducks in a row; you just need to get your ducks while you are able to.
Idiocracy
The “not having kids” example reminds me of the movie Idiocracy where they show the difference between “educated” and “not so educated” people when it comes to having kids, which ultimately leads to the population of the earth. If you don’t know what I am talking about, Please watch this 3 minute video:
I am not telling you to go ahead, get married, have kids and start your business right now. I’m not even saying that you should do any of the above. What I am saying is that everyone has at least one thing that they are pushing off because the time doesn’t seem absolutely right. It may be making that sales call, asking your boss for a raise or asking someone out on a date.
The time will never be right so why not now?
The time will never be absolutely right because when you pass one hurdle, another comes along. In Idiocracy, first they want to focus on their careers, then the market is bad, and so on. Life is funny and it doesn’t always give you what you want when you want it (like Harvey’s does) but it does give you the opportunity to go out and get what you want. It may mean that you have to be a little spontaneous, you may have to improvise and you will have to rethink everything every step of the way but at the end of the day when you look back it will all be worth it.
You will regret not doing more things than you regret doing
Someone once told me and I happen to agree “you will regret not doing more things than you regret doing”. At the end of your life, you will look back and ask yourself why you didn’t jump on more opportunities.
Life is all about learning
Life is a learning experience. You will have to learn to deal with each situation that comes up and the more you learn, the more prepared you will be to face tomorrow. So, why not force yourself to learn as much as possible? You could get “lucky” and end up with everything you ever wanted.
On Saturday night I had the privilege of going to a hockey game with my brother to see the Montreal Canadiens play the Washington Capitals.Although the Canadiens lost with a couple minutes left in the game, I did come away from the game with a valuable lesson.
There was one beautiful play where one of the Canadiens (can’t remember which one) broke through the Capital’s defense and made it all the way down the ice, a little past the blue line when he decided to pretty much pass the puck to the Washington Goalie.When I say pass, I really mean it.The entire game, the Canadiens were slapping the puck at the net and on this play, it couldn’t have been going more than 5 mph.
I was a little disappointed but my brother who is a much bigger fan than I am reminded me of Wayne Gretzky’s quote “You miss 100% of the shots that you don’t take”.He said that you never know but sometimes those shots go in by some fluke.
This got me thinking about many things in life.There are times where you have a chance to do something but you don’t feel that you are 100% ready yet or the timing just doesn’t feel right.If you don’t go for it, you will definitely not succeed.On the other hand, even a miserable attempt at the net can end up as a goal.A goal is a goal, no matter how it’s scored.
Go ahead, take your shots, even the ones that aren’t all lined up and perfect because if you don’t take it, it’s for sure a miss but if you do make some sort of effort and take the shot, you never know.You may score by some fluke.
Another example of this was given to me by my insurance broker.He said selling insurance is a numbers game.You will have success in proportion to the amount of phone calls you make.There is no real special trick, it’s just get on the phone and don’t stop calling.The same goes for hockey.Keep taking shots on net and eventually one of them will go in.
The more shots you take, the luckier you will get.
All the way through our schooling we are measuring how smart we are.How well we do on each test, in each subject and most of all compared to the rest of the class and sometimes even the rest of the State, Country or World.After we are done with schooling, many of us are still on the roller coaster ride of wondering how smart we are and how we compare to others.Some people are afraid to speak up because they fear looking stupid.Some people don’t take chances for fear that they will fail.I am telling you today that you have nothing to worry about.
Just the fact that you are reading this post shows, that you have enough initiative to do something with yourself and that you are smarter than a large portion of people out there.I am not saying that reading my blog specifically proves anything, it is reading anything and learning something outside the scope of your “required reading” that means something.
I have been thinking about this a lot lately as I start my own Social Media business, Flid Media .I am confident in my abilities and I know that I am more than qualified to be doing what I am doing.At the same time, Social Media is very new and is changing every day.Every single day I read blogs and articles about new elements of social media that I have never heard of before.Some are just being launched and introduced but others are new perspectives.
There will always be people out there that are better than you or know more than you but that should not deter you from reaching for your dreams.You don’t have to be the best or the smartest out there.You just have to be better and smarter than the people you are doing business with.When I say “better and smarter” I don’t mean in actual intelligence, I mean it in the scope of what you are doing.The most brilliant minds will need help in a field that they have no experience in.You may never be the Michael Jordan out there but the NBA is filled with players who don’t hold a candle to him.Besides, have you seen Michael play baseball?
As I mentioned in the past two posts, go out, learn something and become smarter than the next person.Then you too can become a consultant.
Yesterday, www.flidmedia.com, my new company’s websites was on the fritz.I messed something up in the backend and I wasn’t even able to get back into the backend to fix it.I knew what I did wrong and I had a good idea of how to fix it but I just wasn’t able to get into the area that would let me make the changes.
The first thing I did was search through faqs and forums online looking for similar problems that may help me out.When I didn’t find anything, I posted my own question.This took place late last night and when I woke up this morning there was a solution posted to my issue.The solution worked and my site was up and running again.I sent the person who sent me the solution a short note which read “thank you, you’re a life saver”.
In life there are many times when someone else’s expertise can help you out in a few second or minutes when without them, it would take you hours or days if there is even a chance that you can do it yourself.When being helped, you too may exclaim “thank you, you’re a life saver”.
It could be something as small as someone giving you better directions to your destination when you are late or having a booster cable when your car battery dies to something at the other extreme like when a doctor saves your life or the life of someone you love.
Just think.Something so easy for one person either because of his profession, his interests, his familiarity with his local area or pure chance can save you so much time, money and effort or even actually save your life.In my last post I mentioned that there is so much opportunity out there because of how fast the internet is growing, so anyone can become an expert on something.
Today I am telling you once again, go out, learn something that most people don’t know (which is easy) and hopefully one day someone will tell you “thank you, you’re a life saver”!
There once was a time where it seemed like there was a finite amount of knowledge out there.The wise men all knew the same things, had the same education and maybe had a little bit of a different expertise.Besides the few regular inventions and innovations, you could probably know everything there was to know by reading an encyclopedia from cover to cover.
Today with the exponential burst of the internet, online video, bogs, and every other type of content that is uploaded faster than the world can process it, nobody can even get close to knowing everything.Seth Godin’s article, “Warning: The internet is almost full” admits that the internet can never really be full but “we can”.There is no way for any person to process more than a tiny fraction of the information that is out there.
You may look at this a missed opportunity because if you just started your blog 5 years earlier, you could have had it made.Now, you have to compete with the millions of other blogs that are crowding up the net.I look at this as a great opportunity and an easy way to get lucky.You no longer have to be gifted with intelligence and an ability to soak up all the information that you read.All you have to do is choose a niche that you are interested in and stick to it.As the niche gets bigger, specialize and keep narrowing down your focus.There aren’t enough people in the world to have a specialist in every single area anymore.The more the internet and general knowledge grows, the more opportunities there are for average people to get ahead.
What are you waiting for?Choose your expertise, start learning and get lucky!
This self improvement blog is full of advice on how to increase your luck and improve your life. You can start off by reading 40 Ways to Increase your Luck.
