2010 came and went. Now it’s time to reevaluate where you’re headed and what you want to achieve.

This year though, it’s time to try something different to help you achieve your goals. Here are seven fresh approaches to New Year’s resolutions. You certainly don’t have to do all the approaches, instead choose to follow those that best fit you and what you’re pursuing.

1. Take the month of January to conceive of goals

Perhaps one of the biggest reason people can’t stick with the goals they create is because they think of them too quickly. They come up with them when they’re still in holiday mode or while they’re half-drunk on New Year’s Eve.

Instead of tossing together your goals in the last week of December, take some time, maybe all of January or longer to perform some soul-searching to figure out the aspirations that come from farther down.

2. Conceive of goals, not dreams

Another mistake individuals seem to make is that they turn their resolutions into dreams instead of goals. Dreams are what people want to achieve but there isn’t much of a plan or foundation behind them so they’re more easily given up on. Goals have a base to rest on and a plan of steps to walk on.

3. Roll over goals from the past

Each of us has a goal or probably many goals that we didn’t achieve in the last year. We can either let them go, or roll them over to the new year. So instead of coming up with new goals continue with last year’s and conceive of new plans of execution. Your goals may be great, but your execution may be the weak that is keeping from achievement.

4. Help others with their goals when you can

Help someone else pursue their goals whenever you’re able to do so. Who knows what you’ll get out of it and what goals of yours you’ll be inspired to achieve.

Do you think it’s selfish to want to help someone and benefit from it at the same time? Well it’s human nature to think about what you’ll get out of helping others and it’s the paradox of being selfless: you’ll benefit from it too.

5. Start tiny and build momentum

Simple enough and therefore, overlooked. Go for the smaller goals first and build momentum to tackle your bigger ones.

6. Train your mind

One surefire way to never give up on a goal is to train your mind to never let a day escape you without thinking about the goal and the current step you need to finish to achieve it. Training your mind to focus is going to take just as much persistence as accomplishing the goal. But once your mind reaches a certain point, nothing, not even the biggest obstacles, will stop you from believing that you can and need to achieve the goal.

*Just a side note: While training your mind (and after it’s trained) to never let go of a goal and the steps towards it, don’t forget to live in the moment. Enjoy a beautiful day, your family, and the simple things.

7.  Don’t even worry about New Year’s resolutions

Don’t get caught up in the hype of creating resolutions. Stay focused on your life’s goals. You might not need any new goals or any edits to your plan of action, but rather what you do need is continued perseverance and conviction to stand by your goals.

What are some of your goals? Have you used any of the approaches above yourself? Post in the comments below or head to our Facebook fan page here: http://www.facebook.com/lyved, click “Like” and join in the discussion.

Other articles that might interest you:

- The Vengeance of Unfulfilled Dreams

- What do you want on your headstone?

- 75 questions to ask yourself

- 7 ways to change your life in the next 7 days

Sun and mountain image by prakhar

Some people say that you can be anything you want to be – if you just work hard enough. But science tells us that is not true – we aren’t great at everything. But we are great at some things. So, if we could discover what we are great at, and we knew how to assess and evaluate our world, we could always find those places, in work and life, that allow us to use what we are great at. We would feel capable and competent. We would feel excited and passionate. We could find our best fit.

It’s in the DNA

Hardwired in our brains, delivered through our DNA, are our talents, strengths and passions that make us good at some things and not others; we love some things but not others. We have no more control over these than we do selecting our gender. But what we do have control over is our effort to discover these unique attributes to know how to use them to invent a life that is meaningful, successful and happy for us. Know ourselves. Know our world. Find our fit. This is our responsibility.

Why it’s all changed

We are now in an intellectual or service workplace. Much of manufacturing moved offshore; most of today’s businesses provide service, not products. This means employees are no longer behind machines, but are now face-to-face with customers. This changes everything about performance. Now, to be great in a job, we must be naturally good at it and like doing it. If not, the customer sees it and it impacts their loyalty and our success. Not everyone is right for every job and customers know it. We have to know ourselves, know what the job needs, then assess whether the job is a good fit for us. This is how we succeed or fail. Fit matters in the workplace.

Fit at work

You go into a retail store and the person behind the counter is busy reading something and doesn’t look up, come over or even greet you. First, what do you think? The guy’s a jerk or an idiot. Actually, the guy may be an exceptional person but isn’t naturally social. He may be the best at managing the inventory but is horrid with customers. Good person. Bad fit. If he knew himself – his talents, strengths and passions – he may have selected a job that allowed him to use what he is good at and interested in doing (details, analysis, precision). His performance would improve. His happiness would improve. And in the process you could have become a loyal customer instead of being pissed off. All because of fit.

Fit in life

Your parents want you to be an attorney. You want to be a park ranger. But you study law because you come from a family that knows how to dole out the guilt. You barely make it through school because it doesn’t come easily and you don’t like it. You barely graduate and now the great law firms aren’t interested in you. You are good, not great. They want great. You hate the job and your life. Fit matters in life.

You are who you are

The quality of your life is based on your ability to know yourself and to align your work and life to the things you are good at and passionate about doing. You don’t want my life. I don’t want yours. Yours should be invented around what matters to you, as mine should be for me. We each need to find our fit.

Check in often and change the world

This review for fit is something we must continually do throughout our lives. As we change and the world changes, what will be right for us will likely change. To build powerful, extraordinary and meaningful lives, we must always assess our fit – to find those places that let us make our greatest impact – to be in our zone – our greatness zone. And when we are at our best, we bring our best to the world. We transform the world.

So to have the most amazing life, get into your greatness zone – know yourself, know your world and identify the places that let you be the best you. Then each day you will wake up thrilled by life and make a profound difference. And isn’t that the way it is supposed to be?

Written by Jay Forte

Jay Forte is a business and motivational speaker, greatness coach, and author of The Greatness Zone – Know Yourself, Find Your Fit, Transform the World and Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition. He teaches organizations how to attract, hire and retain today’s best talent. He coaches students, parents and professionals to discover and play to their personal greatness, to maximize their impact, success and happiness.

He can be reached at www.TheGreatnessZone.com and at 401.338.3505.

Article image by Will Clayton

This is a guest post.

We spend so much of our time at work! Our work comes to define us, and what we get done at work turns into quality of life outside of work. And yet… Once we’re at work, we can easily get caught doing things that aren’t very effective. Sometimes for years at a time. That’s all because we rarely work on purpose.

Humans are funny creatures. We have dreams and lofty goals—a meaningful life, security for us and our families, launching a new brand of toothpaste into third world markets. We plan how we’ll get there. We even start implementing our plan. So far, so good. But then the great cosmic joke begins. Once we’ve started along the path, we forget our original goal. We end up enslaved to the path, even if it stops taking us where we wanted to go. We’ve lose our original purpose and become wedded to our daily grind.

At work, this makes bureaucracy. Our boss likes weekly written status reports, so we dutifully spend an hour each Monday writing the report. We get a new boss and keep writing the reports. Our new boss is perfectly happy to receive them, but she would be just as happy with a five-minute chat. We keep spending 52 hours a year (that’s an entire work week) writing the reports, because we’ve lost our original goal: having a good relationship with our boss. When the boss changed, our behavior didn’t.

Work on Purpose by Asking Why

Reconnecting with purpose is a cinch: just ask Why. Why uncovers the larger purpose to what you’re doing. You can ask why to that purpose to get the goal of that goal. Ask why several times and you’ll uncover a whole ladder of goals that go from the tactical all the way up to the grandiose.

What if you did this while writing your status report? You might uncover a goal ladder like this.

Ask: Why am I writing this?
Answer: To update my boss about my actions.
Ask: Why am I updating my boss?
Answer: To keep my boss informed about what I’m doing.
Ask: Why do I want to keep my boss informed?
Answer: Because if she’s informed, our relationship will go more smoothly.

You’ve made it from your actions to your purpose: keeping the relationship going smoothly.

Make Sure You’re Aligned by Asking How

Asking Why uncovers your motivating purpose. It tells you where the energy is coming from that’s propelling you forward. That doesn’t necessarily mean that what you’re doing moment to moment will work, however. Maybe you set your high-level goals a long time ago. They may be out of date, or you may be able to find better ways of reaching them than what you’re currently doing.

Double-check your goals by starting at the top level purpose and asking “How can I achieve this?” Your answer might be the same as the next lower goal you identified on your way up the goal ladder. If so, great! You’re in alignment! But often, the answers don’t match. Then you know your subgoals and actions aren’t serving your higher goals.

During a Saturday radio interview, I asked my interviewer why he worked weekends. We traced up his goal ladder: “I want money,” he said. “Why?” I asked. “So I can afford time to spend with the people I love.”

Then we started at the top and went back down the ladder. We asked “how could you spend time with the people you love?” The answer, much to his surprise, wasn’t “I should make money,” but “I should ramp down my work efforts and spend Saturdays at home with my family.” The very path he’d chosen to his goal was the one thing keeping him from it.

Check Your Inner Teenager

Working on Purpose is the key to keeping yourself on track for your highest goals. Double-check your to-do list every so often. Make sure your actions are aligned around really reaching your highest goals. You needn’t just work on purpose; you can also try Living on Purpose. Reconsider how you volunteer, how you spend your leisure time, and how you use your life outside of work. Do you really want your 35-year-old life following the path made by 15-year-old you, no matter how smart and well-intentioned you were at the time? Yet many of us do just that (I know I do!). We set our ambitions early, chart a lifelong course, and never think to re-visit it. A session of Why and How is simple, but can profoundly reconnect you with the life you should be living.

Keeping your actions aligned with your purpose means everything you do will be moving you towards your goals. Align your work and your life by asking “Why?” to discover your driving goals, and then ask “How?” to make sure you’re not just working, but you’re working on purpose.

Written by Stever Robbins

Stever Robbins is a serial entrepreneur, the author of Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, host of the #1 iTunes business podcast The Get-it-Done Guy, and an adjunct lecturer at Babson College. He is currently working on his 11th startup.






Article photo by a4gpa

They may always seem like they’re saying; “me, me, me” but they’re not selfish. These dreams just want you to help them grow so that in return they can help you.

You’re the caregiver of your dreams so it’s up to you to feed them healthy food and meals. However, perhaps you feel like you aren’t providing that well enough. So to help you, here are six healthy foods to feed your hungry dreams.

1. A story

Nothing nourishes your dreams like feeding your mind and senses. Even if all you have is five minutes you can read, watch, and listen to a story that will inspire and motivate you even longer than the time you spent listening, reading, or watching.

Some great places to start are at Good News Now – a news site dedicated to only positive news, GivesMeHope – a site that shares life stories that ignite hope, and even on Youtube. Here are three excellent videos from Youtube worth bookmarking:

- Moments
- Famous Failures
- A Story Of A Sign

2. Frustration and failure

It might taste bitter to you and your dreams but frustration and failure contain essential vitamins and nutrients that will strengthen, motivate, and create perseverance.

3. A worthwhile purpose

Just like you, your dreams need purpose to live. And not just any purpose; a noble purpose, an authentic purpose, a worthwhile purpose.

Purposes that are rooted in earning as much money as possible or in garnering fame cannot sustain a dream for long.

Dreams need purposes such as to help others, whether they be strangers or your loved ones, or to leave a legacy.

4. Criticism

Criticism is just as bitter as frustration and failure, and because of this you’ll want to shield your dreams from it.

You and your dreams need to instead feed off of criticism. Sometimes critics have decent advice worth noting, and other times they spew out criticism that is so infuriating that you want to keep moving and working harder to “show them.”

Give your dreams a little bit of the criticism to chew on once and awhile. If they really don’t like it, they can always spit it out.

5. Time

Every single day, even if it’s just for 10 minutes, work on your dream. Don’t let yourself get distracted or let “life” get in the way.

You can’t neglect your dreams, because they will quickly die and begin to haunt you.

6. Success

You’ll often feed success to your dreams in different sizes. Sometimes it’ll be a meal, sometimes a giant banquet, and most often it’ll be a little snack. Even though it’s a little treat, it will energize you and your dreams so don’t overlook it.

Have any other “meals” or “foods” that you feed to your hungry dreams? Please share your “recipes” below.

Photo by StephenMitchell

These myths and misconceptions are negatively effecting you and are most likely holding you back from achieving your desired dreams and goals.

Here are 5 myths about achieving your dreams and goals.

1. Dreams = goals

The words dreams and goals are often used interchangeably, but they’re really very different. Dreams often don’t have a deadline attached to them or a plan for how to achieve them. Dreams are seen as “some day.” And goals are something that is a work in progress.

2. Continue chasing it even if you’ve lost the vigor for it

What if you turn a dream into a goal and during the pursuit of achieving it, you find you’ve lost the passion for it? Do you continue as is, even if you don’t enjoy it? I say no, but I also don’t think you should just give up. There are three options you can explore instead.

1 – Take a break – perhaps you’ve just lost steam (everyone does) and need time to recharge. That time could be anywhere from a few weeks to maybe even a few years.

2 – Evaluate the goal – figure out what it is about the goal that you don’t enjoy. Is it the hard work? If so, then you shouldn’t quit because hard work isn’t easy and you can’t escape it when achieving a goal, no matter the goal. Is it the actual goal you don’t like? Did you want to become a fashion designer but didn’t find it all that enjoyable? If so then consider the next option.

3 – Modify your goal – You might not like designing fashion but you probably still love clothes and fashion. So there are a million other ways you can pursue fashion. You could become a stylist, a trend hunter, or write about fashion. Most industries are the same way with various paths you can take so there’s no need for you to give up.

3. Deadlines can’t be changed

Every one of us has failed to achieve a goal before the deadline we set. So what are we supposed to do when that happens? Give up? No! We need to give ourselves some more time and make a new deadline. But also feel good about what we have achieved along the way, even if they’re small achievements.

4. No one should touch my dreams and goals

It’s very important that you stay in control of your dreams and goals but sometimes it’s necessary for you to hand off part of it to someone else so they can help. It’s often hard to achieve any goal without the help of others. But of course, in the end you have the most control in achieving your goals.

5. I should wait for the perfect time

The perfect time for chasing a dream; does it exist? Sure, the “perfect” time is ASAP. The perfect time is not when the kids move out, it’s not when you become rich, it’s not when the economy gets better, it’s not when you become older, it’s not past you, and it’s not really ever going to come because it’s already here.

Have you come to realize other myths and misconceptions about achieving dreams and goals? If so, please share in the comments below.

Photo by JasonRogersFooDogGiraffeBee