As we enter the New Year, many creative entrepreneurs are planning and making commitments to the goals they want to accomplish in the year ahead. Are your goals carved in stone, or written in sand?
This year 2013, I will celebrate my 60th year! Thirty-five of those years I have been an entrepreneur and self-employed creative professional. For me, these milestones serve as markers in time on my life’s journey. As a look back over that period of time, it’s hard for me to even imagine. Time seems to move faster with each passing year.
It has been nearly five years since the beginning of the “big recession”. Conditions in many business categories are still tight and cautious. But despite the economy many of my clients find themselves in, they’re making bigger plans and positioning their business for a much bigger future. They believe in their future more than the boundaries and limitations of their current circumstances.
I love how entrepreneurs use their passion and laser focus on their desired goal and the creative energy they produce to achieve it no matter what. It’s simply awe inspiring!
Success, however you define it, is created first through thinking, then by action. You think of an idea, instantly it is formed in your imagination, and through focused effort sustained by passion, in time, the idea becomes a real thing. As I have written before, ideas take their own sweet time coming into form. Since most of my good ideas have taken much longer to realize than 12 months in a year, the ritual of annual “goal setting” seems irrelevant.
What seems to work for me each year is to “check in” with myself on the big picture, the general direction, and the momentum and speed of my goals coming into form. I ask myself “is this (goal or set of goals) something I really want to accomplish”? Is it still worth the price of its realization? Am I still pumped on this idea and willing to go “all in” on it? Is this goal carved in stone or written in sand? I make an annual assessment of my continued commitment to the goals that are as yet un-achieved.
2013 marks the fifth year pursuing my “new direction” in life. In 2008, I made a decision that I was going to go in another direction personally and professionally. It was a total and complete “do-over” on every level. I set some goals at the beginning of that year towards the achievement of success with this new idea.
But alas, the process has been painfully slow–much slower than I ever could imagine. So slow in fact I have at times along the way questioned my own capabilities. So each year, before I commit to following any new goals, I ask myself if the goals unattained are still worthy of pursuit.
Until the goal is abandoned or realized, I don’t set any more goals. Here’s what I’ll be passionately working on in my business this year:
- putting priority focus, energy and time toward my health and well-being
- growing (doubling) the revenue in my management consulting practice
- conducting two Quantum Leap Workshops on Competitive Advantage
- complete my book proposal and prepare for a publishing deal
- building the readership to this blog
2013 is shaping up to be an amazing year. I can feel the momentum building! I want to thank you all once again for continuing to follow my work and musings here on the White Hot Center. I hope you find it useful in your own pursuit of your desired success.
I wish you inspired success in the coming new year!
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Thought provoking question asked by this thought provoking blog: “Are your goals carved in sand or written in stone?” I’m at the age where my game clock is rapidly running down. (You’re dead-on that time passes more quickly with age. A terrible truth that I began to painfully realize around the age of 45.) Therefore, I now prefer to write my goals in the ever shifting sands of time. I feel it gives me more flexibility. Really enjoyed this blog Thomson. I now have some deep thinking to do. Well done.