Wow, another year gone, it’s amazing.  Another year goes and another comes and if I don’t stop and look at what has happened in the past year, I just go on to the next. Just another year, no big deal…

I sat after a great meal with friends and my partner and we wrote down everything we wanted to pat ourselves on the back for in 2008.  After we wrote them down, we shared them with each other, and witnessed each others as well.  What an experience it was to participate in each others successes.  We all were so excited to verbalize our successes and hear about each others triumphs.

Then we proceeded to write our goals for 2009 and share them.  It just made them real to us, especially because we were sharing them out loud.  Try this with your family or friends. If you have teens, invite their friends over and guide them through this, it is very empowering.  If you want to take it a step further have them do a vision board after, about what they would like to create in the year to come.

I do this in my groups with teens and it’s amazing how things start manifesting in their lives. It really is exciting.  You get to see what you wanted and if you made it happen or not.

I am excited about another year and all of the exciting options I have laid out for myself.  The years go by fast, so don’t stall. I wrote my on a pretty piece of paper and actually decorated it. Have fun, bring in the New Year with all of your wonderful intentions.

If you have any other ideas, I would love to hear about them.

So, I set a goal of getting back into my exercise routine more 3 weeks ago and one thing lead to another and I fell a bit short on that goal, well actually I only hiked once, so I fell really short of my goal.  How do I feel?  Personally, I feel a little disappointed with myself. Am I going to let that stop me from setting another goal? Nope, not a chance.

I’m not even going to beat myself up about it. I’m going to look at the reality of the situation no matter what it is, meaning, I’m going to be real with myself about why I did not reach my goal. If I’m honest about why I didn’t reach it, even if it’s as simple as I just didn’t want to work out, I can explore the reason why, and set another goal that I may have a better chance of reaching. If I’m not honest about why I didn’t reach it, the possibility of not reaching it again are pretty high. It’s important to know what obstacles were in your way, so you can remove them.  For me it was because I didn’t schedule my workouts in my date book so the days just got away from me.

One thing I did do was reset my goal, and because I knew what the obstacle was, I removed it and now I have a better chance of reaching my goal.

A big goal last year for me was becoming an Award Winning Author, with My Feet Aren’t Ugly. I had to do a lot of prep work to get my book in front of the right people and it was very intimating and I was afraid of rejection.  I kept at it for 10 months and yes there were some rejections, but there were some huge successes.  I won 4 Awards for my book.  I can tell you that winning the awards was amazing, but what was really important for me was setting the goal, following through with it,  and succeeding and seeing the results show up for me like they did.

Setting goals and obtaining them, help you build your confidence and the actual process helps you learn so much about yourself.

Here are some tips on goal setting:

1) Set the goal by writing it down
2) Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t reach it
3) If you don’t reach your goal, write about it, explore the reasons why
4) When you do reach your goal celebrate it
5) When reaching your goal, explore how you did it
6) If you didn’t receive an award object, create one, display it and be proud

Here is one of my awards that I am very proud of, it is the Nautilus Book Award Winner for Non Fiction Young Adult. Tell me what impact goal setting has had on you lately.