Coachamatic

You know how most folks, around December 31 of each year, feel a burst of motivation to get on a mission of self-improvement? Not me. Thankfully, I am immune to the New Year’s Resolution frenzy.

What gets me, though, is my birthday, which happens to be today (yay!). I’ve always taken my birthday off from work. It’s a sacred holiday for me, a time for playing and dreaming about the year ahead.

Since I’ve been very reflective lately and in a goal-centric state of mind, when I saw Stacy Brice talking about setting goals over at Virtualosophy and referencing the website 43 Things, I had to take a peek.

43 Things is a lifehacker’s playground (lifehacker–someone on the continual quest for self-development). When you participate in 43 Things, you share 43 of your goals with the world and keep the world updated on your progress. You also give advice to others who have goals you’ve already accomplished and give support to those whose goals you admire. A very cool concept.

Of course I had to start my own list, so feel free to check it out. (Yes, you now know that my online alias is “redkitten”–long story.) I just made this list out last night, so there’s only 39 things on it so far.

Writing out my lifelong goals and sharing them with the world made me realize three things: 

1) My biz is not my life. As I was making out the list, I was suprised at how few items on my “What do you want to do with your life?” list concerned my business.

I mean, these days it seems to me as if everything revolves around my biz in some way or another. I was writing a friend a letter, and she had asked me “How are YOU doing?”, and my reply was (sadly), “My life is pretty much wrapped up in getting my biz launched…”

Unfortunately this “launching” process seems to be taking forever–I mean, almost a year now. This is fine and normal (it takes most businesses years to get going full steam), but it’s way too long a span of time to focus on just one thing.

2) Work has hardly anything to do with who I am. As I started writing down my goals, I suprised myself by coming up with stuff like: learn how to knit, research my family tree, create a board game, throw a great dinner party, etc. Remembering these other aspects of what I like to do and what interests me was like running into an old friend.

3) If you expand your vision far enough, you’ll find a kindred soul. My favorite part of 43 Things is seeing what other folks’ goals are and thinking, “Oh, great idea– I want to do that too!”

Also, when you post one of your goals, you can see how many other people in the world are pursuing the same goal. For example, when I said I’d like to create a board game, I was suprised to see that 91 other folks in the world are striving toward that same goal. Who would’ve guessed?

It’s kind of comforting to think that no matter how eccentric you think you are, that you’re not alone. We’re really in the same boat with everyone else in the world, dreaming, imagining, full of ideas and striving to express ourselves.   

So I wonder, what would happen if folks around the world were able to band together and harness their ideas and energy in the pursuit of similar goals?

Perhaps a butterfly effect of positive momentum would start to generate across the globe. As with everything else in life, this is a fun experiment. Who knows where it will lead? 

Posted on Oct 23rd 06 by Sharon Sarmiento.

Sharon Sarmiento owns Streamline, the Virtual Business Management company. She works with internet tech & web media companies by managing the daily operations of online businesses and streamlining processes to maximize personal and business productivity. For free resources on productivity, creativity and virtual entrepreneurism, visit => http://www.eSoupBlog.com/

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