Not just road trips, although I’d love to hear about those too! What I mean is where will 2013 take you, or better yet, where will you take IT? Years ago, I worked for a direct selling company, and every year there was a National Conference annual meeting that was held, filled with fun, surprises, training, and the new product line. The location was always kept a surprise until the beginning of the year. At one of our regional meetings, the esteemed leader of our group, our Sr. Regional VP, who was insanely successful and made an even more insane amount of money, asked the audience, “Can anyone tell me how to get to National Conference?” Because the location had not yet been announced, the answer throughout the crowd was, “We don’t know where it is..”
“Exactly”, she replied. “How do you know how to get there if you don’t know where you’re going?”
She proceeded to talk about setting goals, defining where we wanted our business to take us. Perhaps by now you’ve heard this phrase many times over, but on that day, almost 20 years and half my life ago, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Of course. It made so much sense. Unfortunately, years would pass and I floated through life not only not knowing where I was going and how to get there, but not even knowing where I wanted to go. Luckily, I found my way, and have also since then found many other passions that I can’t wait to focus my time and energy on.
Driving home from work on New Year’s Eve (yep, had to work but we were released early) it came to me, and this year, I started a new tradition. New Year’s Day will from now on be spent deciding, clarifying and illustrating where I will take the upcoming year. The whole day, if it takes that long. There is a great book called The 5 Book, recommended to me by a dear, longtime friend, Liysa Callsen. It’s a great tool, and there are also many other resources online. So I spent today outlining each area of life, family, relationships, career, education, health, etc., and wrote goals for one, five and ten years out. This will be a work in process, obviously, as life happens, and new situations and options arise. But it will be fun to watch how it all unfolds and progresses.
How about you? Do you set goals every year? What are your year end or new year traditions?
[…] Interesting how these three words resemble the quotes I listed above. So, take just a moment, what are your three words? Build on them; because once you write them down they will take you through 2013 – just like Kathleen pointed out. […]