by JimRaffel on March 15, 2010
Commitment is turning my choice to deliver 31 blog posts in the month of March into reality.
Delivering 31 blog posts in the month of March has required a commitment to new priorities. I made a commitment to myself that writing every day is a priority for me. Reality set in and I realized there might be days I just can’t get a post out. I added reasonableness to the commitment by wording it as 31 posts in 31 days and not a post a day.
The blogging commitment has resulted in a dramatic increase in my creative thinking. This morning I looked through my list of topic ideas and none of them jumped out at me as needing to be written. Yesterday, however, I realized just how busy I am becoming. Without continuously improving my goals, choices, and priorities I will not be able to keep my commitments to my family and my work. Presto I have a topic for today!
Commitment is about sticking to it. Growing my business is a priority. Yesterday I realized that the combination of extensive travel and the additional commitment to social media had unintentionally lowered my priority on “paperwork.” I’m committed to my business so that had to change. I made a choice to stick to it all day yesterday and get as caught up as I could. The payoff was finding a significant business opportunity that can be followed up on and turned into cash flow fairly quickly.
The key is to turn those activities you are committed to into habits. Writing daily has become a habit and I have reached a point where not writing for a day would feel weird. This reminded me that last year I developed some regular habits with paperwork so it never got ahead of me. I’m going back to some of those habits starting today. The choice to return to those habits is consistent with my goal of being committed to having a successful business.
Writing is the doing part of thinking and by writing about goals for this post I have solidified some of my own thinking. Can you see how my commitment to writing is helping me grow my understanding of goals, choices, commitments and priorities?
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by JimRaffel on March 12, 2010
Everything you do in life takes you closer to your goals, or further from them.
Without clearly defined goals you have no standard by which to judge your choices. Yesterday I shared four of the key choices I have made in my life over the past year. Each of those choices has brought me closer to my goals. There is a great deal of published material on goals. Some of it talks about specific goals with specific time lines. Other material leans towards what is working for me, broad sweeping goals.
Goal number 1: Strengthen my understanding of the relationship I have with God. Yes, I believe in God. No, I’m not a huge fan of organized religion. I can tell you almost every real, authentic and sustainably successful person I know puts some form of spirituality at the top of their list.
Goal number 2: Be the most awesome husband and father I can be. Husband is listed before father in the previous sentence on purpose. A healthy traditional family starts with a healthy relationship between the spouses. Cheryl and I devote a great deal of time and effort in our lives to the sustainable achievement of this goal.
Goal number 3: Have a rocking business that supports my family, while giving back to the community that provides that support. There are actually several communities in my case. The graphic communications industry, the Milwaukee community and this great country of opportunity that we live in, just to name a few. Working to achieve financial success, without some plan to make the world a better place along the way, seems like an empty plan to me.
Goal number 4: Share my life long journey to achieve goals 1, 2, and 3 via this blog. It just does not get any better than this. The growth I have seen in myself and chronicled via this blog is here for you all to benefit from. I sincerely hope you are able to take something away from each and every post that enriches your life.
With these goals in mind go back and look at the choices I made. Can you see how those four choices make more sense when framed by these goals? Do you prefer broad sweeping goals like I do, or do you favor the very specific and time based goals I spoke of earlier? Let’s use the comments to get a conversation going.
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