What's your LIFE Plan for 2009?

By Don Hutson

 Re-Define and Re-Fire: A 2009 New Year's  Resolution Strategy that works!  

              As I attempted to organize a pile of papers on my desk and begin 2009 with actually being able to see my desktop, I came across some archival material from a speech I gave twenty-five years ago  and laughed as I read this one-liner:  “The biggest problems we have in America today is that we are 8 ½ pounds overweight, and can’t find a parking place!”  Things have changed, and today we average being twenty-two pounds overweight and can’t find our 401K!

                Which begs the question for all of us at this point of our life calendar…What are you doing about managing your affairs in this new normal we have had thrust upon us?  Setting personal and professional goals and new year’s resolutions are now more important than ever.  We will be expected to do more with less both at home and at work, and if we simply do what we have always done it will likely be insufficient in this new pressurized environment.  Not only are new and better skill sets required as the bar of excellence has been raised on all of us, new mindsets are also required to compete and prosper in all arenas.

                Studies prove that if you methodically and purposefully set goals you will increase your chances of leading the pack.  If you don’t you might well fall behind those who are vowing to capitalize on the negativity of the masses by finding what’s right about their current opportunities!  What are your plans to develop yourself?  You can’t just work hard on your job – you must factor in working hard on yourself to turn untapped capabilities into the currency of results.  Many of us have no idea of how far we could go if we would just get focused and go after the rest of their potential!

                A recent study revealed that only ½ of one per cent of the employed American work force has their goals in writing.  With the myriad of extraneous distractions we endure in today’s media hammered attention span, we need to get a little help on clear focus. We all have a sub-conscious mind, and the means by which we program it for higher achievement is to have written goals and resolutions.  When we write them down we increase our commitment and probability of achievement three-fold.  If we write them down and assign a time frame for accomplishment, we quintuple our resolve and results.  Why would anyone want to defy those odds?  I think the reason is that in great, rich, beautiful America, we haven’t had to.  Things have been too good for so many for so long.   As we now attempt to refit ourselves and our careers to the new normal, we need to clarify our areas of focus and turn on our after-burner to climb to new heights!

                Napoleon Hill (author of Think and Grow Rich) defines goals as “Anything you want to do, be, have, or achieve.”  So here is the goal-setting process I recommend:  Rule #1 is Work from  document, not just thought;  get a legal pad or get on your computer and get your goals down, and the more detail the better;  the next guideline is to embrace the readily accepted eight goal categories for high achievement:  Career, Family, Financial, Social, Physical, Community, Education, and Spiritual;  most  visions can be put into one of those categories;  Next I suggest you do a “current assessment” by scoring yourself on a one to ten scale as to how you are doing in each of the eight categories.  You need to know where you are starting from to genuinely make progress.  For example, if you give yourself a 7 currently in the physical category, you are now in a position to decide what you want to be one year from now.  If you say a nine, great - you are now positioned to add details, specifics and processes to your physical goals and go to work on your improvement process!

                So where does the passion you need to achieve your goals come from?  Passion is the degree to which you are energized to take action!  It’s also called “Fire in the belly”, and is the emotional driver which propels us to push ourselves to the next level.  Important fact:  The deviation between your present self-image (a seven in the above example) and your projected self-image (a nine one year from now) is the source of your “Fire in the belly”!

                If you use this process, you will have, in effect, turned your sub-conscious mind into your super-conscious mind and opened up new vistas you never dreamed were there for you.  The time to start is NOW.   My friend, Vancouver billionaire (who cares that their dollars are worth a little less than ours?!), Joe Segal, says we should consider our “Runway of Life”.  How old are you?   How much runway do you think you have left?  Obviously, none of us know for sure, but I’ll bet we could agree that it would be nice to maximize the success and impact of our life regardless of how much runway we have left.

                So here’s a tried and true formula for a new outcome in 2009:

·         Don’t focus on your fears.

·         Focus everyday on your possibilities. 

·         Re-program the achievement aspects of your belief system, and vow to be the best you can be. 

Who knows, with a little luck a year from now you may feel that your biggest problem is finding a parking place!