It’s that time of year when most folks wind down the current year and begin to think about the New Year.  As we begin yet another trip around the sun, I think it is healthy to think about what we want to accomplish in the coming year.  And goals are a way of organizing our thoughts about what we want.

But this year I am doing it a little differently than I have in the past.  You see, I think the answer to having a successful year does not lie in the list of things we want to be, do or have.  It comes from the story of our life we write moment to moment.  Our life really isn’t a list, is it?  It is an unfolding story and as such our goals and objectives should be written the same way, as a story.

So, here is what I did.  I wrote a story about my life in 2010.  I pretended that I was reflecting on the year that had just passed (as I will do a year from now) and wrote about everything that had happened in my life that had significance.  The cool thing about this is that it required me to be infinitely more creative and expressive about my future than I would ever be with a list.  And more importantly, the process was filled with much more emotion than it would have been had I merely written a list.  And this is the key to the successful attainment of the things we want to be, do and have in our life…to wrap them up in some positive emotion.

Because, in the end, it is not really the thing we want to be, do or have that we are striving for, is it?  Nope.  It is the feeling or emotion we think we are going to have as a result of being, doing or having something.

So don’t write a list of goals to check-off…write and live a story worthy of the miracle of you.  You deserve nothing less.