Living By Your Goals

With the New Year's holiday only a few short weeks behind, it amazes me how quickly many of us forget our goals. With my new emphasis this year of living as if it were my last year of life, I decided to develop a set of goals to guide my year and to really stick to it. There is so much I want to accomplish and I needed a good plan in order to really have a productive year. What I didn't anticipate, however, is how quickly my goals would be challenged and how difficult they would be to keep.

Last week I received a job offer that was very tempting. While I have been with my current company for over 14 years, I have to admit that the prospect of working on my own, writing books for a company in France, was quite appealing. No more demanding clients, hectic schedules or project deadlines. No more phones ringing, time sheets to update or meetings to attend. If it had not been for the goals that I had set just days before, I probably would have taken the offer. And it probably would have been a huge mistake.

Since my goals revolved around what I really wanted to accomplish this year, I had to ask myself if writing project management books was what I really wanted to spend my time on, especially if this was the last year of my life. While I definitely have some writing that I want to do in order to leave my mark on the world, project management definitely does not rank up there as an important life topic to spend my time on. And, even though I like the subject and have the knowledge to write the books, I needed to ask myself if I am really passionate about it. As I stated in my previous entry, passion is essential for us to truly enjoy life and to achieve personal satisfaction in our endeavors. So, I gratefully declined the offer.

While some people may think that setting goals for the new year is a futile effort, I truly believe that you have a higher probability of achieving what you want if you set goals than if you set none. Even if you don't reach all of your goals, you will undoubtedly reach some and you will have more focus and ambition in your life. Setting goals also provides you with a set of guidelines for your life that can guide your decisions and make the decision process less laborious and more satisfying. So, if you really want to have a satisfying life and make decisions that are good for you and fit in with your life's goals, sit down and write up your goals for the year and what you really want to accomplish. Then, simply stick to your goals, live by them, and let them guide your actions throughout the year.