Keeping the Promise of the New Year

Making resolutions is a tradition we all share as a New Year rolls around. Some people hate making resolutions. I embrace them. To me it is acting on the promise the New Year holds. I want to seize the opportunity of a new beginning and make it my own. It gives me a chance to stop, take stock of my past year, and make goals for the next year.  Although this is important to do in my personal life, it is crucial to do in my business life.  As a consultant, I want to work smarter, not harder. I want to be a better educational consultant as well as a better business person. The easy part is always making the goal.  The hard part is making the goal happen.  Here are some tips I have found beneficial in keeping goals.  Use these to guide you as well as you make your new year’s resolutions:

1. Bring Focus to your goals.  Don’t shoot for the moon, trying to set goals for everything you want to do.  Create a focus for your goals for the next year by selecting your top 5 goals or less.
2. Define your goals.  Compare the difference between a goal to “make more money” to “increase my income 10%”.  The first is hard to measure.  The second gives you definition and helps you concentrate your efforts.
3. Make a plan.  There is a saying that a goal is a wish unless it is written down.  Not only write down your goal, but create a plan to make it happen.  Otherwise it will stay a wish for the next year.  A plan helps you to track progress toward your goal.  This is much more motivating to you to achieve the goal.
4. Share your plan.  By sharing your goal with your office, your spouse or someone else, you bring that goal to a level of accountability and support.  Knowing someone else knows and shares your goals will help you maintain your momentum.
5. Celebrate along the way.  As you reach milestones in your plans, celebrate.  Rejoice in the progress. If there are setbacks in the progress, that is ok.  You can celebrate getting back on track too.

Using these tools will help me to make the most of the promise of 2012.  I hope they will help you too!