Achieving Goals

For the past five years at least, I have been putting in writing goals for both my personal and professional life. This started while I was in Georgia, I think. I hated the idea of a "New Year's Resolution". They always seem to be focused on the negative rather than a positive start to the next 365 days.

I have found myself struggling this year to put down the objectives for 2009 for both sections of my life. I want to blame this on a number of things. Today, I have gone from being excited to a bit depressed over the need to put these down. I am very lucky to have a manager that completely believes in the goal setting process. I think this may help me this year. Typically, I am the one writing them and then trying to get a friend to join me in the activity and setting up meeting times to review our progress or lack there of progress.

My dismay in writing these goals has been building over the last couple of days. I want to actually NOT have to put the same ol' goals on the list for 2010. I want to knock them off once and for all or get to the next step. I have been reading over and over the lists from 2006, 2007, 2008. Some years, I was very detailed and put steps in place. Last year, I was very vague and tried to keep the list short and manageable. This year... I am going to do a mixture of both.

My general themes are around:

• Health and Fitness


• Networking and friends


• clean house and happy family


• Financial success and hitting financial targets

I have made fits and throws at the health and fitness goals. For example, I joined a gym here in New Milford in late April. I went faithfully until we got Fiona and came down with Lyme disease this Summer. All progress stopped. I started again in October only to have another medical issue come on the scene. I am back at the gym again but fear that I will stop going again. The best I can say to that goal is that I haven't given up on it. It is still important to me.

Networking and friends.. Over the past three years, I have had goals about establishing a network of friends here in Connecticut that don't have anything to do with our family or Mr. B's cycling. I have certainly tried! Here are some of the things I have tried to build the network:

Knitting classes, Book clubs, movie club, puppy obedience, charity events, joined the gym, joined the New Milford Republicans.... Short of adopting a 6 year old child, I am at a bit of a loss.

Clean house and Happy Family... Well, my home is cleaner than my parents (not a hard thing) and not as clean as my in laws. I will always fight to get the laundry done. There is nothing in this world that is going to make me enjoy cleaning the bathroom. I am going to be happy with the efforts I make moving forward. I will be adding to my professional goals making enough money to justify having a cleaning service again.

Finally, financial success is my own to master. I need to hit my daily and weekly targets for activity and staying motivated. To date, this is seemingly easy because I am loving every minute of working at SelectMinds and more importantly the conversations I am having with prospects.

I am wondering if others have trouble writing goals. If so, let me know. I will be posting a sample of the 2009 goals here to my blog. Please feel free to keep me in check. My primary goal this year will be to have progress on each of them and to check some hangers off the list in 2010.