So, why a blog? As fate would have it the first card I drew was:
Tell all your friends and family about your goals to keep you accountable.
Well, since my friends are pretty well scattered to the winds, this seemed like the best way to at least try to share. Hopefully some of you are reading this. As I said previously I have about 100 challenges that I intend to complete and I hope to gather a good chunk more in the coming days as I really gear up. Most of my current tasks are courtesy of a blog called livebold&bloom, http://liveboldandbloom.com/ . On this site, “100 Ideas for Bold Personal Growth” is posted. I stole probably 90 from that document – a few just were not applicable or are already a part of my practices. I intend to gather others from some of my favorite self-help books such as The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey (it is much more accessible, in my opinion, than his father’s original version) and Get Out of Your Own Way At Work by Mark Goulston . Both have small tasks to be completed incorporated into each chapter. If you have any ideas about where else I might get ideas, let me know.
Which reminds me, my second challenge is to:
Remain open and approachable to others.
I like to think this is something I am already pretty good at, but I have been caught off guard more times than I care to think about by comments regarding me seeming unapproachable, unfriendly or intimidating. At the end of the day it is the message received that matters, not the message sent, so I am going to try harder to demonstrate to people that I don’t bite. I don’t have a clear “task” in mind for how to go about this (and would welcome any suggestions you might have), so for now I am going to reiterate my desire for this to be a dialogue. I am not interested in the feeling of talking to myself in an empty room. I want your reactions. I want to know if you think I am going about something wrong or perhaps even doing something right. Have suggestions? I want to hear them. If I was interested in only my own thoughts I would be journaling.
Oh, BTW, here are my 5 New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Give up on dignity. I am clumsy. I speak before I think. Regularly, calamity befalls me in a brutally public fashion. In short, I am embarrassing and mortifying things happen to me, so it is time to embrace it, stop worrying about the disaster around the corner and just laugh off the humiliation. I bequeath my dignity to someone who actually has a use for it.
2. Go to the gym regularly. I know this one is a cliché, but it is what it is. I need to put down the Funions, get off the couch and introduce myself to the local elliptical machine. I’m paying for a membership, so I might as well be using it. Shooting for a minimum of 3 days a week, but we will see how that goes.
3. Donate more stuff. More specifically, by the end of the year I would like to say that I gave at least 24 bags of stuff to charity – and that no longer means Goodwill. I am a little mad at them, here is why: http://www.bizjournals.com/portland/print-edition/2011/10/07/goodwill-ceo-highest-paid-in-state.html?page=all Call me childish, but it isn’t like there is a shortage of worthy organizations, albeit less convenient ones, that aren’t throwing money at their executives.
4. Give out at least 1 business/calling card a day. There are two reasons for this. The primary one is that I need to get better at networking. I hate even thinking about “working my contacts”, so this is definitely an area for improvement if I want strong professional growth this year. Handing out a card at every opportunity seems like a good starting point for this challenge. Secondly (and secretly probably my primary reason), I want as many people as possible to see my awesome business/calling cards. I made new ones a month or two ago and I love them. Like crazy love them. I designed everything about them and could not be more satisfied with the result.
5. Meet one new person a week. I am such a homebody. And I hate strangers. This makes strong social networks and making new friends tricky. I also think it is time I stop being such a sissy. So I am going to try and pick out an interesting person each week and attempt to start a chat. This will probably be an epic fail most of the time, but if it’s not, by some miracle, I will give them my card.
What are your goals right now? What did you resolve for 2012?
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