What I Would Love To Do This Year

I have never been into New Year's resolutions. Over the years though, I have always listed my goals for the year to come and then kept them handy for ongoing review.

As I have gone on I have constantly been working on both simplifying my life and learning to allow my heart to lead, not just my mind. And this has started to play out in many areas and one of these is goal setting.

This year, I pulled up a blank word document and wrote as my heading "What I Would Love To Do This Year." The word 'love' is the language of the heart. This one word transformed my goal setting from a purely cerebral 'dry' exercise to one where I more fully engaged in the process.

In previous years when I completed goal setting exercises, I found that upon honest review, they weren't things I was really passionate about but more came out of good ideas, others expectations of me or those goals that if achieved, would make me appear more successful. Discarding this previous mind driven process has brought my goals to life.

At the top of a blank page, I wrote: "What I would love to do this year." Then, I listed the seven major life areas:

1. Family and friends
2. Social - fun and R&R
3. Physical
4. Intellectual
5. Spiritual
6. Career
7. Financial

Underneath each of these headings, I wrote the things that I would love to achieve this year in relation to the category.

I used to also detail the tactics for how each goal would be achieved. I would end up with multiple pages that gave me a headache.

The last couple of years I have simplified this process also. I simply review the goals; list the key things that I need to do this month to begin moving toward the particular goal and then schedule them for completion in my diary. What used to take days now takes a couple of hours and there is a genuine connection between what I wrote and my personal engagement with them.

Love is the language of the heart. Goals, that are driven by the heart and that reflect our highest values in life are much more likely to be achieved than those that just seem a good idea from the mind.