Give up the limitation or jail, if you will, of goals. Try targets. You hit them or you don’t. When you do, you celebrate. When you don’t, you keep shooting at them. Sometimes you change the angle, sometimes the length of the shot, and sometimes the trajectory.

Yes, there are requirements of this reality. There is also always choice. I choose to live in a city/town. Therefore, I choose to have utilities provided to me by a company to whom I must give money every month. I can choose to live in an unstructured area and provide my own water, heat, etc and therefore not have those bills. It’s a choice.

With all of your goals, where are the choices? Even my targets are choices. Especially the ones I haven’t hit, yet. It’s easy enough to look at those and choose which ones to table for later and which ones to keep shooting at. The beauty of choice and targets is the flexibility and sense of accomplishment I experience.

I am fully aware that I am here to choose and have fun! How about you?

A joyful, glorious, expansive, and fun New Year!

That took what may be one of the very first times I’ve actually acted in true surrender and faith. For me, surrender = faith = giving up my self-reliance (it really hasn’t worked that well during my 42 years on the planet anyway), and honestly, sincerely, and humbly being willing to rely on my higher power to have a better plan in mind for me than I ever set down for myself.

And, it’s not like I have any shortage of goals that I’ve not yet reached, so it won’t hurt me to take a year off of adding to that pile. (And, I use the term “pile” consciously…)

Let’s have a great 2011 everyone.

As I’ve previously said, I think you say what all of us are thinking. The legal profession if rife with this type of person – we love a challenge, we love to work hard, and we love to play hard. I always feel like if I can just work a little harder, just stay at the office a little longer, then I’ll be a better attorney. I’ll let you know when that works out for me.

I wish you the best of luck with setting fewer goals. More importantly, however, I wish you the best of luck with setting fewer, more-ascertainable goals. In the past I’ve felt like if I met a goal that I set, then I must not have set it high enough. But this is ultimately unproductive and even destructive. That’s why I love your concept of setting goals with an open top. It’s like a mini-competition against yourself. And what attorney doesn’t love a good competition?

There’s not much I can say about the concept of complete enlightenment. I often say that God is in control, and I ultimately know that is true, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking that, with enough work, I can do something by my own will.

I think the most important thing here is that we learn to be comfortable with who we are, while at the same time always strive to be better. That’s my New Year’s resolution anyway…

Great post. Thanks for the read, and thanks for the motivation. Happy 2011.

Jeremy A. Rose

Less is always better, to me. And processes that leave a sour taste, or create strife can almost always be reworked into a harmonious balance.

Asking yourself “Does this square with my core values” is part of all good decision making. A yes response to “Am I setting myself up for a let down with this goal?” warrants a re-write… Being guided by core principals seems close to the idea of following “values” where the idea of following ‘goals’seem to enable “stretch goals” that eek out performance and may be re-evaluated with a flexibility whereas re-writing principals impacts the superstructure of expressed values.

Simply stated: I value the stretch goal.

my $.02