Fresh Year – Fresh Start

Happy New Year and hope your holiday season was great. I am one of those people who expected to get a lot done during the holiday downtime in terms of catching up on my personal goals and planning. Yet, what I actually accomplished during that time was less than what I had anticipated. The remaining time, I ended up relishing the holiday season with family bonds and friendship ties. And I have no regrets whatsoever. It was time well spent. We cannot predict every single circumstance of our life, even with the best planning, life can get in the way. But we still are in charge of choosing the direction we are headed in.

The beginning of the New Year is a perfect time to summarize how the past year went and a perfect time for setting the tone for the new page in our life.  How do you want 2018 to go? What area of your life would you like to focus on more? Is it your health that you want to improve or maybe the quality of the relationships in your life? Is it a new job you are looking for or any other new beginning you are looking forward to?  I am not a big fan of making laundry lists of New Year Resolutions, mainly because, if we set too many goals, none of them becomes a priority. And most of the New Year resolutions are notorious for not lasting beyond somewhere around March anyway. It’s better to stick with one or two main goals that align best with the core of who you are, what makes you happy or brings you closer to accomplishing your big dreams.

There may be other, smaller goals you are working on as well, but if you want to feel accomplished, the key is not to stretch yourself too thin and not to get bogged down with projects that don’t align with your best self, take away from your family time or don’t help you advance towards your big dreams. There will always be temptations of being drawn to too many shiny objects, pulled into too many different directions, but setting your priorities straight will guide you in the process of making sure that everything you spend your precious time on supports in a big or a small way your main cause.

Crystal clear definition of your goal is a good place to start. Secondly, make sure you have a trusted group of a few individuals who you can always rely on for honest feedback and the much-needed outsider perspective. And finally, learn to go beyond your normal circles as needed and ask for support. You don’t have to be alone on your journey. And honestly, even if you could accomplish all your goals alone, none of it would matter anyway, if it wasn’t for other people around you.

A year ago the goal I set for myself was to start this very blog, build the audience and keep in touch with you through my weekly publications throughout 2017. I am grateful for my experiences, for the people I met along the way and for the lessons I learned while doing so. Planning for this New Year, I have decided to scale back on the frequency of my posts and will be posting bi-weekly. My new goal is to spend more time writing my book, “Quality In Quality Out, How to Create a Caring Workplace that Inspires People to Do Their Best Every Day”, that I cannot wait to share with you.

Life always has its way of intervening and making little corrections to even the best and the most thought-through of our plans. But that’s what makes it all even more interesting – the surprise encounters, unexpected opportunities or those coveted aha moments. So don’t let the slightest detour from your plan bring you down. Instead, believe that all of the surprises 2018 has for you will be joyful and the lessons it’s going to teach are exactly the ones you need.

What are some of your aspirations and goals for the year that has arrived? Please share as we always love to hear from you.