It's the beginning of a new year, the yeaur 2008 and that always seems like the time to talk about goals. We call them New Years resolutions. And we felt obligated to have them. However a few weeks after New Years they are usually fading till we finally forget about them. I used to write my goals down and found when I read them the next New Years Day that they not only were not accomplished, but they were still my goals. I think after several years of the same resolutions they either must not have been that important or maybe I just hadn't done what I should have done to achieve these objectives. I wondered about this for a long time. Why did I set the same goals each year and not attain them?

I have studied goal setting. I totally got it. I was great at this part. I decided what the goal was. I quantified it and put a date on when I would achieve it. But, next year there it was again. Still on my list of things to do. Through my reading I found that I should get rid of the goals that just weren't important enough to accomplish, like learning French. And concentrate on the ones I wanted to really accomplish like becing physically fit. Now here is the key part I was missing. First I should be making an action plan and then take the steps in my plan. What I did before was to make goala and never really refer to them again. Now I know that the only way to accomplish my goals is to live them everyday.

Here is another important part of goal achievement. What do you do if you veer off the road. It will happen many times on the way. The difference between success and failure is making course corrections and getting back on track. In Weight Watchers ©, they tell you if you overeat at a meal don't let that stop you from continuing your weight loss journey. Just jump back on the wagon.

I spent an hour in my car driving with my fifteen year old daughter talking about goals. I asked her about her goals. She is a on a swim team which she loves. We discussed one of her goals which was to achieve a time of 115 in the 100 meter breaststroke. I asked her what her plan was to accomplish this. She said she would join 2 different swim clubs that ran consecutively so that she would be practicing for several months before swim team started again. Next she was going to work on turns and starts because she knew that was where she lost a lot of valuable time. We also discussed how to compete in a race by listening to her teammates cheering to let her know where she stood in the race. I was very intrigued by how she instinctively new how to accomplish a goal. She also had good reasons for wanting to attain this objective. She not only wanted to be cause she wants the personal victory.,but because she wanted to help her team.

When we discussed this article over dinner my 13 year old son wanted in. His goals involves baseball. He had many goals for this. One was catching more fly balls.. His strategy involved practicing daily by throwing a baseball off a wall and catching it. He decided to do this 30 to 90 minutes a day till the little league season began. His ultimate desire was to be good at the sport and get to a higher level in his league.

Goals without a plan are just wishes for the future. While wishes do sometimes come true a clearly written plan with action steps have a much bigger chance of success and a clear vision for what you want to achieve with a back up plan when things go wrong and a formula for a New Years Resolution that you can say accomplished when the next New Years comes around.

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