You’ve probably read plenty of headlines hawking that you need to plan your year wisely with success in mind.
new years
You’re told to make new resolutions that fix challenges, and you’ve heard the pumped up messages intended to inspire change by remarking on your point of pain. There is a load of advice on what you should be doing and the myriad of ways to make it easy to do. The notion that successful people pre-plan their year, and start their New Year spot-on-task, with affirmative resolutions paving the way to their goals, is misleading.
May I suggest a different approach?
The truth is that you do need goals and a strategy to reach success. However, instead of focusing your efforts and energy on the final run to the finish line, pay attention to the inches you need to gain from all of your efforts to win. It’s the entire list of activities, and the people who carry out the actions that make up your game play book.
Any winning sports team puts their energy into the whole experience of winning from the team make up, through their practice, and along every yard lost or gained. They focus on their fouls and fumbles to learn how to improve their performance, and they study their opponents to align their strategy. Learning is an important member of their team.
Start making your annual plan by claiming where you are in reference to your finish line, and with the people you have around you.
Take a look at your team. Who are they? It doesn’t matter if you’re a corporate team or working from home. You have an assemblage of people, services, and skills that make up your team. Take the time to accurately record your team members. Be honest about the state of your affairs and yourself — where are things currently? What’s working and what isn’t?
You can make this year your special year by building on what you have to work with and focusing on the team that will help you achieve what you set out to do, learn from your failures, and cope with challenging circumstances. It’s the playing of the game that matters, not the star quarterbacks, trophies, scores, or winning runs.
I’ve created a number of posts about how you can create a winning team and fulfill your personal or professional plan for success, from my book Ask Power Questions: A Practical Guide to Help You Get What You Want in Business, Life and Friendship. In this series I’ll break down the powerful steps to assemble your players and share tips to make yours a winning team, the importance of people in setting goals, using cheerleaders, and the role you want to play in your success.
Sandy Nelson is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire.
The online feature magazine, JenningsWire.com, is created by National PR Firm, Annie Jennings PR that specializes in providing book promotion services to self-published and traditionally published authors. Annie Jennings PR books authors, speakers and experts on major high impact radio talk interview shows, on local, regionally syndicated and national TV shows and on influential online media outlets and in prestigious print magazines and newspapers across the country.
