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 4^th. On December 31^st, 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.

Good Luck and Happy New Year!

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My family is my goal; my income is just a means to the goal

So many people miss the point.  They work hard to make money and then work some more.  To get lucky, you need to define your priorities and goals and then work toward them.  You can’t let anything get in the way of your goals.  Working 100 hour weeks for 40 years and then retiring is not normal.  You need to take a step back and enjoy what you have.  There is no point in making money that you will never use.  “He who dies with the most toys is still dead!” 

Tim Ferris has it right when he advises to take “mini retirements”.  If you wait until you’re 65 years old, you may never get what you work so hard for.  Look at the big picture and enjoy life.  Don’t miss the forest because all the trees are in the way.  However you want to put it, don’t get lost on your way to fulfilling your goals.

Don’t get me wrong; I love my blogs, marketing, social media, meeting people, consulting and everything else I do, and people should love their occupation, but it is my family that really gives meaning to it all.

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I’ve been away for a little while and I want to apologize since I didn’t plan to stop posting while I was away,  I just didn’t have the chance to really sit down in front of my computer for more than a few minutes at a time.  I spent the last week and a bit with my family in Beautiful Montreal, Canada, where I grew up, checking out the community again.  My family has been looking to move out of New York for the last while and we finally decided on Montreal.  Now that we have three kids and our oldest is starting school, we were looking for a simpler life with more grass (and parking spots). 

This is going to be the first short post in a series on my decision to move to Montreal.

Change your location and your luck changes

There is an old saying that if you change your location, your luck will change.  I am a firm believer in the saying since it has everything to do with Luck.  In my description of “Luckortunity” I mentioned the comparison of finding “luck” to an apple orchard where if you collect apples from the same area each day, it will eventually run out but you can always move onto a different section of the orchard and find more apples.  If you stay in the same place for too long and do the same things over and over again, your luck runs out.  To get lucky again, you need to change things up and look for your luck in a new untouched area.

Luck potential is everywhere

When you’re in a new city, the luck potential is unlimited.  Everything is new and fresh for you and the opportunities hit you in the head if you’re open to them.  You can look at how people live and do business and then you can compare everything to what you are used to.  Then you have twice the tools to build your own business.  Sometimes it is so obvious to an outsider what can be done to improve the situation.  For example, I was looking for an apartment to rent and most landlords in the area that I was looking didn’t advertise.  That’s a perfect opportunity to build an online community poster board for that area.   You can also notice that services that are offered in your old city are unheard of in your new city and you can take advantage. 

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Not long ago I made myself a few lists of goals that I wanted to accomplish over the next few months, year, 5 years, 10 years and 20 years. I was very proud of myself for getting them down on paper and making a list of things that I think are actually realistic. One of my goals was to build up this blog and post articles regularly. For the next few days after writing down my goals, I looked at them every morning and thought about how I would bring myself closer to my goals each day. After a few days, I stopped looking at my goals every morning. Maybe I thought that I had them committed to memory, maybe I got lazy but the realization that I came to is that “out of sight, out of mind”. I couldn’t believe it, the days that I looked at my goals in the morning were very productive and the days that I didn’t look at them were just the opposite. I think that was my problem for most of my life, I didn’t write down my goals and I certainly did not look them over each day. I wrote my goals in the first place because I woke up one day and realized that although I have had some accomplishments over the last whole bunch of years, I have not even come close to my potential especially financially.

I can’t take all the credit for my realization above, it was pretty much my 3 year old son that made me realize that I need to keep looking at my goals every day. My wife made a 3 foot tall chart for my son and hung it next to his bed so he knows what he needs to do every day from the time he wakes up to the time he goes to sleep. The chart is nicely decorated with pictures so he knows what everything is. He wakes up, goes to potty, brushes his teeth, eats breakfast and so on. His day ends with brushing his teeth, reading a story and going to sleep.

On Friday night, my sister in law was over and went to lie down in my son’s bed. My son went over to her and said “if you sleep in my bed, you have to follow the chart”. He then told her exactly what she needed to do. At that point I realized if you want to build up good habits and accomplish your goals, you need to have them written down and very visible. It also helps if they are in public view because when other people know about your goals, you become more motivated to accomplish. Many people don’t mind failing when nobody else knows about it but if other people do know, they try harder to show that they can accomplish.

Kids are some of the best teachers out there, they make you see things that are right in front of your eyes but you just don’t notice. Another thing my son can do is tell you every time a TV show says the word “stupid” because he knows that “stupid” is a bad word. I watch the same shows and don’t even notice.

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I realized that if you are traveling, you need a starting point and a destination and then a map of how you are going to get from point A to point B. The same goes for life, if you don’t have any goals, you’re not going to get anywhere, mainly because you won’t know where to go. After this discovery, I used an entire 70 minute commute home from work to jot down some goals. I made five separate lists of goals for short term, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years and 20 years. I made sure that each list paved the path to the next set of goals. Most of the goals have something financial to do with them but I also put down losing 40 pounds this year. I know it is a lot but I am only so overweight because I eat like a pig late at night and always push off exercising. In my short term goals, I just put down to exercise and in my 5 year list I put to stay under 190 pounds. I put the same for the 10 and 20 year lists.

I plan on using these goals as a road map for my life. I placed the lists in my wallet and plan on looking at them every day to make sure I stay on path, just like I would look at the mapquest directions when I’m on a road trip.

Note: Writing these blog articles are on my lists and that is why they are getting done.

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Since you are extremely determined and organized, you whip out your laptop or a notebook and start making charts of what you need to do, how you are going to track yourself and set clear goals. You feel great about yourself and completely prepared for January 1^st when your new lifestyle will start. You are going to be great!

Well, you still have a week and a half to go until you have to change your lifestyle so you might as well enjoy yourself while you can, after all, you won’t be able to indulge yourself for a long time.

A few large meals later, maybe some late night drinking, snacks in bed while watching a movie and holiday dinners, you look at the scale and are somewhat disappointed that you now have an extra 5 pounds to lose. You’re not as optimistic about your new years resolution at this point but you are still determined.

New Years Eve comes and you find yourself at a party with food and drinks going late into the night. You may choose to partake thinking that “the diet starts tomorrow” or you may hold back which can be the ultimate temptation. Whatever the case, the next morning is going to be very hard and keeping to your new program will get harder each day. The percentage of people that come to this point and stick to the program are (from my experiences) very low.

LUCKORTUNITY

The Luckortunity over here is to always start things right away. Never push things off because they will get harder and harder as time goes on. The greatest chance you have at succeeding is moving ahead at full force when the idea hits your head. A new idea, whether it’s your own or someone else’s, can give you a high that will give you the extra push to get things done. If you start on that note, you have a better chance of building momentum to keep going toward your goal.

My new year’s resolution for 2008 is to get lucky. Lucky in general, in everything I do in life, from business to social to family and everything in between. This post is the beginning of me keeping to my new year’s resolution. I know that it’s not January 1^st yet but I figure a few things; first, if I start now, it will get me in motion so that by New Years I will already be well on my way and have enough inertia to keep going. Second, if I start now, it will be pretty pathetic of me to not even make it to New Years for my New Year’s resolution so I will be forced to keep it up. Lastly, starting early, working hard and being persistent are some of the keys to getting lucky.

I wrote on the Luckortunity (or introduction) page that there is a major difference between “chance” and “luck”. “Chance” is winning the lottery, something people can hope for but “luck” is something people can strive for. I am convinced that every single person in the world has the potential to be lucky on a regular basis. Through this blog, I am going to go through my own personal luck and give you tips on becoming lucky yourself.

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