Andreas Widmer Offers A Novel Approach to Goal Setting for 2013

My good friend, Andreas Widmer, has just published a fascinating take on “goal setting” for the New Year.  The article appears in www.community2business.com.

"The New Year that’s about to start is like a big empty glass-bowl waiting to be filled with sand. Only instead of sand, we’re filling it with time. On January 1^st, we’re all starting to fill our bowls with 12 months, 365 days or 31,536,000 seconds of activities, events, happenings and doings. The question is: are we making good choices with this finite resource?

Many people would advise you to start with a goal for next year, with setting out specific achievements and accomplishments. I suggest you to take a different approach. Instead of pursuing any specific achievements, start by thinking about the kind of life you want to live. What’s important to you? What values do you want to be present in your life? What virtues do you want to practice in your life? I find this approach to planning my own life much more effective, and it gives me the ability to keep perspective.

After all, it’s too late to look back at your life when you’re on your death bed and think: gosh, I wish I would have paid more attention to the people I really loved, I wish I would have done more of the things that make me more fully human, I wish I would have lived a more spiritually fulfilling life…. So let’s not wait till then! Start with that this year! I’m going to share my most effective methods for planning the year ahead, and I invite you to join me in planning out 2013.”

Andreas continues the article by expanding on this idea of planning around values, and offers up his own plan for 2013 as an example and template for this approach.

Andreas Widmer is an entrepreneur, speaker, and author. His most recent book is "The Pope and The CEO: Pope John Paul II’s Lessons in Leadership to a Young Swiss Guard."  He teaches entrepreneurship and business at Catholic University of America.

To read the entire article, follow this link:

http://www.business2community.com/leadership/tis-the-season-to-be-planninga-different-approach-to-goals-and-the-new-year-0365900

Best wishes as you plan for - and live out - the New Year.

Al