Goal Setting - Happy New Year

Last night our waitress said, "I've been wanting to ask you something...what are those little pieces of paper are for?"

My wife replied, "It's the start of our annual year-in-review and next year's goal setting discussion."

You see, every year, on New Year's Eve (this year it was over a bottle of Malbec wine at The Belvedere Inn in Lancaster, PA), my wife and I talked about our personal and family highlights from 2011. We each had a little list of

our Top 11 Highlights.

Here are mine:

1. I have a happy and healthy family.
2. I directed the high school musical, Les Miserables, at Red Lion Area Senior HS in Red Lion, PA
3. I have a staff of dedicated people working on StageofLife.com.
4. I got two new suits (it's important to look good when it counts).
5. I still have my hair (for who knows how long...it is receding!).
6. I have an awesome relationship with my wife - a woman with whom I just celebrated my 21st New Year's Eve celebration.
7. I volunteered my time (and writing) as a Community Columnist for my hometown's Sunday paper - York Daily Record Sunday News.
8. We got some new curtains for our living room and bedroom (little home improvements can go a long way).
9. I created an iMovie with my daughters called "A Silent Movie - The Christmas Monster."
10. I accompanied my daughter, Raina, on guitar while she played piano during her 1st recital.
11. I had a wonderful vacation to North Carolina and Minnesota with my three girls.

We both feel it's important to look back and acknowledge the highlights in our lives...it helps ground us and remind us of why it's important to engage life to its fullest, each and every day.

While we talk about highlights on New Year's Eve, every New Year's Day, we then talk about the future and our goals for the next year. So this morning, like we've done for the last 20 years, my wife and I sat down to talk about our next year's goals over coffee (and waffles). We discussed our health & wellness goals, our financial goals, our education goals, travel goals, home improvement goals, community and philanthropic goals, career goals, family goals, personal goals and of course, long-term goals.

All of this goal setting talk may sound daunting, but we developed a simple, 10-step goal setting worksheet that walks us through the entire process. We've been sharing this goal setting worksheet on StageofLife.com for the last few years, and every January we get messages from people who have used it and shared with us that our goal setting worksheet tool has been tremendously helpful.

Whether you use our Stage of Life goal setting worksheet or come with up with something different, I encourage you to sit down today or sometime this week, by yourself or with a loved one, to talk about both your highlights from the last year and set your goals for the coming year.

Till tomorrow...

Eric

CEO, StageofLife.com