Okay… I know… I’m about 2 weeks late on this one… but we have been talking about New Year’s Resolutions amongst friends and I started to ponder the problems with said resolutions… it’s not that they are too big… it’s they are too small…let me introduce strategic resolutions.

Strategic: important in or essential to strategy.

Resolution: a resolve or determination

By NO means do I have this all together, but for years I would develop a beautiful set of New’s Years resolutions and achieve some… but have a sense of failure for not hitting them all. Sure… we can use a grading scale…85% equals a strong “B,” or 45%… and we are stuck thinking… well…”there is always next year…”

Around 2005 or so… I found a great set of resolutions, wish I could remember where… but I took them, modified them and stared at them for about 6 years…wondering how I could possibly complete or measure them.

— Love God more than you fear hell.

— Once a week, let a child take you on a walk.

— Make major decisions in a cemetery.

— When no one is watching, live as if someone is.

— Succeed at home first.

— Don’t spend tomorrow’s money today.

— Pray twice as much as you fret.

— Listen twice as much as you speak (never got that one).

— Only harbor a grudge when God does.

— Never outgrow your love of nature.

— Treat people like angels

I still like all of these… but I realized these are not really things I could put on a to-do list, these were sort of a way of just being…I sort of like the concept…and I let it grow.

And… I started asking questions…What are my priorities?

What are my goals or broad areas for improvement?

This of course leads to deeper questions… at least for me

What is your dream? It’s okay for this to be very malleable, fluid, flexible, don’t you think?

How am I (you) going to live a life that matters?

What is your mission?

What is your life’s work? Remember… there is no exit strategy from your life’s work… this is NOT your job…it’s your life.

Another great one… Jason Womack asks this one often… what is your perfect day? How you define this will say a lot about all of the above..

I guess you could say it is about a vision for the new year? Vision is a story told in goals and what we believe about our life, our goals, our plans. Vision is how we lay our goals out into something we can accomplish. Goals are a way of knowing we are headed in the right direction and creating/living the right story. Plans and milestones make up the goals and if those are not on our schedules we have close to nothing.

Finally… this is probably the absoulte best article I have read since the end of December 2012 on New Year’s resolutions… it’s My 3 Words for 2013 by Chris Brogan.

If we can sum up our vision, goals, and resolutions in three words… wow…that’s MONEY! Give the article a read… my three words from 2013… encompasing the three priorites and focus areas above… comes from a quote from Albert Einstein.