Happy New Year my fellow earth dwellers (shout out to those from off the planet that may be reading via RSS). Here it is January 1, 2009 8:32 Central Time. I am catching up on my RSS feeds, Twitter Feeds, etc. and sitting here wondering what the New Year will bring me. I am also thinking about what I will accomplish in the coming 365 days.

Have you thought about that? Yep… those trendy New Year’s resolutions that are so popular to talk about. You made them yesterday. Now it is time to ‘Cowboy Up’ and dig in and do them.

Don’t even bother.

Because you did not write them down. In the past 30 days if you verbally or mentally built a list of items that you want to accomplish in 2009 and you did not write them down you wasted your vocal cords and burned some brain cells that could have better been used elsewhere.

Don’t get me wrong. I love New Year’s resolutions. As human beings we love to set goals that start on a major time period. Every morning when we wake up it is a new day and most of us feel it is a new time to start over and do something with our life. The same goes with Sunday morning  and the 1st of every month.  The New Year is a very large milestone in each of our lives (we usually get less than 100 of them) and therefore it is natural that we want to set very lofty goals for the next 12 months. It is also a great time to measure what we have accomplished in the past 12 months.

But if you did not write them down so you can see them then they might as well not exist. Writing them down is the equivalent of making a personal contract with yourself. Thinking about it (the gentleman’s handshake) is one thing. But we all know that handshake contracts can be  dangerous.  Actually writing it down make you legally bound with yourself to actually perform said services. Plus you don’t ever want to break a contract that you can see taped to the bathroom mirror every morning so you?

So the question to you is: Did you write them down? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Happy 2009 !

Another part of my presentation in Oklahoma City on Leadership:

–

If you look around the world today you will see that most people are on auto pilot.

- This means that most people wake up every day at the latest possible time that they can to get to school
- They drive the same route to work as everybody else
- They arrive at the same time as everybody else and go to the same desk that everybody else goes to
- They work the minimum numbers of hours they have to to get done what needs to be done
- They drive home the exact same way that they came
- They go to bed so they can wake up and do it all over again in the morning

Doing the same thing every day is very comfortable and very safe. It makes us feel good to know exactly where we are going and what is waiting for us once we get there. If something ever disrupts this comfort it scares us. For example : If something blocks our road on the way to work we don’t know what to do for awhile. It makes us squirm. We have to adjust.

Occasionally you find someone who thinks that we can be doing something in a better way. That person believes that we can learn a better way in school. Or we can do something in our community or our neighborhood to help another group of people. That person sees a problem that has existed for a long time and has found a new way to solve.

That kind of person is a leader.

And good leaders are hard to find . They are rare because most people just want to do the same thing because it is safe. We need more people like you and you and you that are not happy with being comfortable and safe. We need young people such as yourselves to stand up and say “Hey… I think we should go to the mountain top. And I know a great way to get there. It may be hard. It may take longer than the other way. We may stub our toe every now and then or scrape our knees. It is not going to be the same way that all of the other people are going. But we will be much better people by the time that we get there.”

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I offer a sincere thank you to those who read and comment. We have some other things in the pipe as we continue to grow and offer more services to our readers. Stay tuned! And feel free to share the site with your friends if you ever feel it may help them in their life.

>???????? the type of person who wants to constantly better myself. One of the area I am focusing on is physically. This week I have taken some major steps to get on track with my weightlifting. I am not attempting to break any records in this world. But I do want to get on a program of consistent progress to achieve a fixed measurable goal. My thought process on this is in line with how you should be approaching all of your goals:

1. Plan out the steps in detail
2. Every day/week take that step
3. Did you take that step? If so celebrate the accomplishment and start focusing on the next step.

This is the only way in life you will get anywhere. It does not matter what you want to improve on or what area of your life you want to improve in. Financially, Spiritually, Physically, etc. The path is always the same.

Did you take any steps this week? Today? This morning? If so I’d love to hear about them. Your steps and your progress will help the rest of the people reading this blog to take their first steps. Those first steps are always the hardest. But once you get rolling it is hard to step.

Have a great weekend. Make sure you leave a comment below with what you accomplished this week.