So. It’s 10 to 3 in the morning and I can’t sleep. Big day tomorrow (today) of teaching. There must be something on my mind. Hopefully this post will help clear it.
Goals. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately, and I guess it is getting to that time of year where I reflect on what I have achieved and begin to look forward to the new year.
The change of the calendar year is traditionally when people sit down and take stock of what they hope to achieve. You know how it works… New Year Resolutions and all that…. Sure, it is customary to ‘review and predict’ at New Years, but for some reason the date has always felt artificial to me.
For me, the new year starts somehwere in September(ish). I say somewhere, because every year it is different. You see, for me the New Year begins when Spring does. Now, officially Spring begins on September 1st, but for me there is one magical day every year when I decide that Spring begins. I know it is Spring when I walk outside, and the world feels different. There is something in the air… the trees begin to show new growth, the weather s subtly different, maybe it is the wind blowing from the North… Whatever it is, I always feel uplifted and ready to take on new challenges.
This year, I have achieved a lot. I am not going to go into all the details, but I had five main goals that I wanted to achieve and I have hit four of them and am well on my way to completing the fifth by Jan 1st.
Don’t worry – I’m not gong to use this post to outline what my goals are for this year, but I do want to talk about how I see the process working. Why it was that this year I was successful in ways that I haven’t been in the past.
I guess to begin with, I don’t think of the things I want to achieve as “goals”. I think of them as: “The Five Awesome Things That I am Going To Do This Year That Will Have A Massive Impact On My Life Forever”.
Five. Not four. Not Six. Five.
Five is an achievable number. I can break it down into manageable chunks. I only have to do five things in a twelve month period. Easy. Anyone can do that.
Five Awesome Things. If I am going to do something and invest the time, money, effort and pain to achieve someting worthwhile then whatever I do has to be AWESOME. Now Awesome is a relative term. What is awesome to me might be just so-so to someone else. That’s ok. We all start from different places.
I need someone to hold me accountable. Without someone else holding me accountable for my actions (or lack thereof) I can find a million excuses for not doing what I said I would. I am lucky that I have a good friend who I trust to tell me like it is. He is suportive when I am doing the right things, and he nails me to the wall when I am being lazy and come up with excuses. Everyone needs someone like this if they want to make Awesome Changes in their life.
I also need a system where I can write down what I want to achieve in a twelve month period and then break that down into monthly targets. Small things that I have to do that when you add them all together they create something Awesome in my life. I then give this to my friend and we review it monthly in a face to face meeting over coffee, dinner or a drink. Don’t get me wrong, these get-togethers are focssed on achievement. We can talk about ’stuff’ some other time. During these regualr catch-ups we are focussed on what needs to get done in the next 30 days and finding solutions to problems.
I think the secret is to write the Awesome Things down and then work on them steadily and have a review and accountability mechanism that is independant, honest and supportive.
I’m not saying that it is easy. Achieving Awesome Things often requires sacrifice. But the sense of satisfaction have about this year, and the sense of optimism I have for next makes it all worth it.
I wish everyone who reads this post an Awesome 2008. Dream big and them make it happen. You will be surprised at what you can achieve if you take the first step…
