Every year around this time hear people professing “New Year, New Me!” or that this year is going to be “My Year” or “I’m going to accomplish *Fill In The Blank* this year”. I often wonder why these folks have the same mantra every December. What did you forget or neglect to not make last year or this year “Your Year”? What is it about the New Year Holiday that makes people want to make lists of resolutions or decrees to change their lives? Is it the bombardment of articles and stories about New Year’s Resolutions or peer pressure to get on board with the latest fad diet? Every year its the same story, people make resolutions and don’t keep them. According to Forbes only 8% of people actually achieve their New Years Resolutions.
What ever happened to right now? Procrastination? Every day is an opportunity to grow, learn and walk in your purpose. Procrastination only keeps you from achieving your greatest potential and limits your happiness. How many times have you ever said “I wish I could do ___________ , my life would be so much better.” Most people’s resolutions fail because they are unrealistic, and people get discouraged too easily from achieving their goals. Instead of motivating themselves in a positive way they use guilt or fear as motivation, which leads them to not following through on their goal. Many people fail to achieve their goals simply because they set goals according to what other people want for them instead of what they actually want for themselves.
You can start defining your passion, vision and goals today, no need to wait for the New Year to come.
1. Define Your Passion
Your passion is defined by the things that you think are important. Passions emerge from the interests and issues that you are motivated to spend time learning more about, participating in, recruiting others for or paying a price to pursue. It is the reason behind your vision and what makes your vision important.
2. Determine Your Vision
Your vision is what you see as possible to accomplish . It is your overall theme of what can be possible in your life. It provides you with focus and helps you determine your path and what goals you can achieve.
3. Profess Your Purpose
Your purpose is why you are here, and what you are here to be. It is your driving force.
4. Manifest Your Mission
What we are here to do: Our specific actions, tasks or goals to realize our vision and purpose. It’s what must be done
Keys to Setting Priorities and Goals
- Keep your focus. Focus on things that are important to your vision and mission. Each priority in your plan should have corresponding goals and action items. Attempting a huge laundry list of goals can seem daunting and can discourage you from actually accomplishing anything, staying focused will help you along the way.
- Make your goals SMART. Goals should meet the following five criteria.
- Specific—Goals should identify exactly what you want to accomplish in as much specificity as possible. Each goal should answer Who, What, When. Where, Why and How.
- Measurable—Make your goal something you can quantify so you can determine with certainty when the goal is met.
- Attainable—Identify goals that are things that can be achieved. You will be able to easily achieve your goals when you have developed the necessary attitudes, abilities, skills, tools and financial capacity. When your goals are attainable you begin seeing previously overlooked opportunities. Make sure your goals are not too lofty and can be accomplished.
- Realistic— To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work towards.
- Time-bound—Your goals should each have a deadline associated with them. When do you plan to deliver on that goal? A goal without a date is just a dream. Make sure that every goal ends with a completion date.
- Write your goals down. This is important. There is power in writing your goals down (Habakkuk 2:2) even if you never develop an action plan. When you write goals down, you are stating your intention and setting things in motion.
- Review your goals frequently. While writing your goals down is a powerful exercise in itself, you can gain insight by reviewing your goals on a regular basis. This is what turns them into reality. Every time you review your goals, ask yourself “What do I need to do to move toward this goal. You can review them daily, weekly, or monthly. The key is to let them inspire and populate your action plan and daily task list
- Share your goals selectively. Do not to share your goals with anyone who is not committed to helping you achieve them.
- It’s OK to fail. It is better to have set a goal and not met it, than to not have set a goal in the first place. Sometimes falling short of our goals can help us to realize that our goal was not SMART and will help up with creating a better goal for ourselves.
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