Welcome to 2012 and a Happy New Year to all of you! I hope the festive season was a happy one with lots of quality time spent with the ones you love.
So now that 2011 is behind us and the fresh new dawn of 2012 awaits…I ask you…why have you waited until now to decide to do new things or to stop doing certain things?
Making New Year’s resolutions, generally speaking, almost always end up in failure. Why? In my humble opinion it’s because we put ourselves under too much pressure and in the spot light of our friends and family by emphasizing what goals we are setting ourselves at the time that everyone else is and we tell everyone. We usually set ourselves huge tasks with unrealistic timeframes. So why have you decided to do them just because it’s a new year? If they are that important to you, why have you waited? What stopped you? If you want to set goals, set them throughout the year, spread them out, set short term, mid-term and long term goals with checkpoints along the way.
By introducing goal setting into your daily, weekly, monthly life, you will become used to setting realistic goals and, more importantly, reaching those goals and achieving self-success. Those around you will be used to seeing you ‘doing’ and not just ‘saying’. So if you do decide to set some new goals around the turn of the year, when you tell people what they are, you will have a proven track record and people are more likely to believe that you will go through with them…and more to the point…YOU will believe in yourself.
So what kind of goals have I set myself? Some I can share, some I can’t, but that’s ok…it’s cool to have public goals and private ones.
A new house, a new car, pay off some debt, learn a new skill, help others more, develop my career…these are just some of mine…the key thing is that once you’ve decided on what it is you want…you need to understand what it is going to take to achieve them. If they are financially associated, where is the money going to come from or are you just being unrealistic? If all it is going to take is some hard work to achieve them, then that’s a fair trade right? Why should we get things easily? It makes us become complacent and unappreciative. The harder we work for something the more satisfying it is. This fuels self confidence in your own ability to deliver on your promises…it proves to no one else but to yourself that you have the ability to focus on something and make it happen.
Oh…I finished the Alan Sugar and the Theo Paphitis books…now there’s an achievement…a small one and one that might seem insignificant to some people, but never the less, I set out to read and learn and that I did. Goal achieved. But what did I learn? Well, from Alan, the first thing was that in this particular book, he can’t half talk… it does drag on a bit about his day to day life so you have to stick with it and take out the key points about how he made himself into a success. #1 Hard Graft and listen to your employees, they are what make you successful, It’s no good having the best product in the world if the people around you aren’t passionate about making it, marketing it and selling it!
As for Theo, he gives a great insight into inspiring his staff, making them feel like they can make a difference…he engages with all employees at all levels, right down to the shop assistants to find out what’s working and what isn’t and getting them to share their ideas…so it becomes a team effort. The more you get people involved, the more they will care about it and ultimately, the more job satisfaction they will have… quite a simple rule really… and yet one that gets lost and forgotten in most companies.
Too often, senior management come in, stamp their authority on the company and flex their corporate muscles. Hiring new people, firing people, changing things around, without truly understanding what they have walked into. They feel their thoughts and views are the only ones that count and he who shouts loudest wins. Well…not so, because all that will happen is that employees will become disheartened, bored, frustrated…and leave… and so does the experience and knowledge.
So I challenge you to take a look at yourself, what you do, who you are, how you treat people and the decisions and goals you make. There is not a single one of you that cannot set some small goal that you can achieve…achieve one…set another… achieve that…and so on… and before you know it… the snowball effect happens and you will be on a roll of positivity and true self-success!
Good luck and if I can help in any way… drop me an email leebo89@hotmailc.com
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