Goals are coming together My Wheel of Life

I haven't forgotten about setting goals. I have been thinking about them in the quiet moments of my day for weeks now. I finally have said out loud to two important men in my life, my husband and my boss. I want to write and set goals that I know deep inside myself can and will be achieved this year. In reflection of the 2008 list, I went through the motions of doing it. As a result, they got lip service. The result is I wasn't able to say I achieved my intended result.



Rob Vaughan, my boss at SelectMinds sent each of us a great exercise on giving points to goal or resolution categories called "The Wheel of Life" . They include: Family, Financial, Career, Social, Health, Mental, Spiritual, and Personal / Prestige. These equate to general areas relating back to personal happiness and success. In our discussion on the way into a client appointment yesterday, I found myself saying, "My primary objective is to set goals that are achievable and will encourage me to be a better person both professionally and personally by my own standards at the close of 2009" Here goes a quick sample of the goals I am still tossing around metrics and specifics for myself:



1) Health: I want to strive to be healthier. This means following doctors orders. Getting more physical activity. Eating smart. Taking my vitamins daily. Moisturizing! Finding positive outlets for disappointments and stress. If I am able to fine tune measurable actions to create better habits, this will stir results. I have been off to a great start this year with taking care of some nagging medical issues.



2) Family. Fiona needs to complete obedience training. I need to see my family more both my parents and cousins.



3) Spiritual - Last year I forced myself to read Eat, Pray, Love. I was surprised how much it impacted me. I would like to re read it and take notes and develop goals from it. Beyond this, I would like to do a bit of Church shopping. Although, I was brought up in the Congregational Church, it isn't aligned with my current philosophy and I don't agree with many of the edicts coming from the UCC Conference. Time to look around for a new spiritual home. I am thinking Church of England, perhaps or "Catholic light".



4) Social. For the past couple of years, adding new friends in Connecticut has been a goal. I have tried a ton of things. This year, I am going to relax this effort and concentrate on being a good friend to the people in my life already. Especially, those long lost friends from New England College I have connected with through Facebook. They were like family for four years. I am not losing them again.



5) Financial. For me, this one goes hand in hand with professional. First of all, I want to continue to build the savings account outside of my investments and 401K. Second, continue to be prudent about credit cards. Finally, I want to help others get on the path to financial success by assisting people in making smart decisions.



6) Career. I want to really have a successful sales year from a numbers stand point at SelectMinds. It is crucial to have a success here in spite of the economy. Beyond this, I want to be seen as a leader and an expect on Corporate Social Networking. I want to continue to educate myself and others by promoting the SelectMinds brand and my own personal brand in the space. NOTE: One combo goal between financial and career is to feel like I deserve my cleaning service back!



7) Personal or Prestige. This one is really about hobbies and interests. I guess I want to travel some place unique this year outside of Florida and the Cape. I want to check a new experience off my things to do and see before I die list. One thing that is already scheduled is taking a pistol permit class. Yup, I am going to be a gun toting blogger shortly.



8) Mental. Having just found this as a new category I am still formulating ideas. This is about personal growth, i.e. Professional Development courses or other education.. self help type books. My initial thought is this isn't a total priority this year. I will put some "Mental" effort to looking into possible goals.



From this, my next steps are to formalize the actions and steps for my primary and secondary list of objectives this year.

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.