A fresh start to the year?

I've been busy with mostly planning for myself for 2009 so far. What about you? Do you have your goals for 2009 finished?

About this time year, it seems like everyone has written a blog entry about how to make plans or how to lay out and achieve goals, etc. So, I'm not going to take the usual track of business planning. I'm going to call it life planning. Stick with me here, I'm hoping this won't get too mushy for you all...


My wife is reading the "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" for a class she's taking. I read it several years ago. I can't say that I liked or disliked it. For me, at the end of the day, it's a self-help book. I was able to take something from it, but it did not convert me into a vocal advocate or naysayer (as these books tend to do for some folks). It was just another self-help book to me.
Anyway, she read a passage that she really likes and shared it with me. The passage was about how the word "love" used to be a verb, but now thanks largely to Hollywood its considered more passive, a feeling, and therefore its not something you "do" (well, except maybe after dinner and drinks, but that's a whole different blog!).

I've also been hearing a lot recently about "The Secret" (yeah, I know both of these are older books, The Secret is from 2006 I think and a movie now, but I've been hearing a lot about them just recently). Now, I have to admit, I couldn't bring myself to finish this book. I'll give you that there's something to this theory of the "Law of Attraction" when it comes to human interaction, but the whole theory that the law of attraction will make you thin (see above link for book excerpt) or rich, seems... well, a little far-fetched to be useful. You may also be thinking that this is counter to the Seven Habits assertion that you have to "do" something, and I can't argue that.

The point is that there is something to take from both of these, and here's what I got: You gotta do something to get what you want, and positivity breeds positivity in your life. This is not really a change for me - for those that know me, know that I'm generally always positive and I've never thought you could just sit around and wait for stuff to happen to you.

So, those are the glasses that I'm wearing as I look at goal setting. Positivity can only come when my life is happy, so that's part of my strategic planning for '09. I can only be positive when I take action, so that's part of my plan too. Sales numbers for your business or department are easy to set, but how you get to those numbers require a lot more thought. So, I encourage you to think about the "whole" you, as you set goals for 2009.

Happy Planning!