Goal Setting That Works

Earlier this year, “The Secret” made the rounds. If you happened to be off planet and missed it, it’s a web movie and book that tout the law of attraction. I blogged about it here. It’s tricky because although I don’t believe we create our own reality, at least not in the way the movie spells it out, I am convinced that my beliefs about myself and my world do have a real influence – or at least my perception about myself and my world does. Which brings us to goal setting.

Although the end of the year is a traditional time for goal setting, not every writer needs to set goals. You might, for instance, be just at the beginning of your freelance writing career and simply not have enough experience to set realistic goals. It’s my experience that setting unrealistic goals undermines the whole process. Or, you may have writing contracts set up so you already know, at least roughly, what the next few months will bring.

Before I start to set goals, I spend some quiet time to make sure goal setting makes sense and isn’t a result of fear or pushing. It turns out that for me some gentle goal setting for the next year is appropriate. First of all, I’ve come very close to meeting my income projections for the year. I want to look back and see what I did that worked, what didn’t, and what kind of effort I want to expend to duplicate or even better the results.

Next, as a result of my work with Mark Silver (www.heartofbusiness.com) my business is changing. I’m adding teleclasses and at least one product. I want to take some thinking time to see how those are likely to fit into 2008 for me.

I also truly want a larger space to live and work in, but am experience confusion about how to go about that.

Over the next week or so, I’ll spend some serious time listening to my heart about all this… both my heart and, as Mark would call it, the heart of my business. I’ll probably come up with some specifics, which I’ll share with you.

The advantage of listening first to my heart and the hart of my business in a quiet, meditative way, is that I’m much less likely to come up with goals that are pure wishful thinking or come out of greed, fear or what I think I “should” want.

Are you setting goals this year? How are you going about it?

Write well and often,

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