How Your New Year's Resolution Can Be A Success
By Sharmin Banu. Posted on .
In January, the common topic of the office kitchen conversation is the New Year's resolution. Until recently I never actually did much of a planning for the year, so when asked I made up something. My standard answer was "be more organized," which hardly happened!
I was not lying though, I really felt I needed to have better control on my life, but honestly I didn't know how to do it. So I forgot about it even before I finished that cup of coffee I brought from the kitchen.
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After becoming an entrepreneur the idea of resolution made more sense to me. Unless I have a vision for myself, I don't know what direction I will be going or what avenues I will be exploring at least.
The word "resolution" doesn't fit my style though. It sounds too rigid and formal. I have chosen the word "theme" instead — it aligns well with my core values, flow and creativity. A year is a block of time and my activities for that time will be around a consistent theme.
For 2012, my theme was to build a foundation for my business that would sustain me for the next five years. I didn't have much detail of it in the beginning.
When I started talking about it with my friends, colleagues and my own coach, eventually I figured out,
- what I meant by "foundation";
- what quality I wanted for those; and
- what is my natural strength to get started on building it.
I started to write blogs and deliver webinars (none of which was too easy for me, but was a healthy stretch). Finally this year I have written blog posts at least twice a month, delivered my webinar ten times and delivered on site classes and seminars five times including twice at the Microsoft campus. And I did much more … worked as a coach for the Executive Development Institute and generated a few leads for the next year.
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Honestly, if someone had predicted all these accomplishments a year ago, I would not believe them. But now that it is done, I am thinking, well that wasn't too hard … so what's next?
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