Setting Incredible Resolutions

Posted at January 27, 2010

Goals Series

What if you decided to set goals so ambitious that everyone around you thought of you as crazy? What if  you feared you might be crazy for setting such goals? Then fast-forward 12 months later. How would you feel if you actually went ahead and achieved most of your incredible goals?

Some people claim that setting new years resolutions is useless; they say that they tried it for a few years and it did not work for them.

2009 Resolutions

I have always set new years resolutions but always achieved less than I set out to achieve. But I achieve more than I would if I did not set them. The same would be true for companies that set annual goals. They may fail to achieve their goals, but they fare better than they would if they did not have any goals or guiding principles.

For example, in 2009 I set a goal of publishing 300 blog posts.  I was however only able to publish 185 blog posts. A part of me felt really bad that I did not hit the target. But I also realized that had I not set that goal, it is likely that I would have published less than 100.

It was my first year of blogging and I learned a great deal. My only regret is that after I realized that I had very few days to go to keep my promise of 300 posts, I froze. I could not get myself to write anymore.

There are no unrealistic goals, just unrealistic timelines. What I should have done is to adjust my timelines instead of being paralyzed into inaction.

Up the point I launched the blog, I had been making a living on the Internet for 7 years anonymously. I wanted to give back to the people who had unknowingly supported me over the years. On top of that, I wanted to connect with people and document my success and challenges.

Looking back, my 2009 goals were easy to achieve, yet I did not achieve all of them. This year, I am going to up the ante and for good reason. I always achieve just over half of my goals. What if I set out bigger goals? Would you prefer a full rabbit or half a goat?

2010 Resolutions

If 2009 was the year of coming out of the woodwork on the Internet, 2010 will be the year of PPP. In high school, we had a club called “People, Places and Plants (PPP)” from which I will draw a lot of inspiration this year.

The People

I am very lucky to be blessed with a great loving family. My sister and two brothers are with me here in Perth. We speak almost daily but see each other about twice a month. I will endeavor to spend more time with them, and keep in touch more with my family in Kenya.

If you are just joining us, please read a series of blog posts I wrote about people and relationships.

If I could sum up my plans and hopes for 2010, I would put it in one word “RELATIONSHIPS”. I am going to enhance my existing friendships, develop new friendships, business relationships and intimate relationships.

I have never consciously earmarked an entire year as my relationships year. Everything I do this year will be geared towards developing relationships. I will learn all there is about people, and develop relationships with them.

My writing, marketing and programming skills will come in handy as I develop community sites that will help people connect on this blog. I will learn to listen more and better maintain friendships than I have done in the past.

I have a huge list of goals and ideas for 2010 and 90% of them will make me a social animal. Maybe I should focus more on business but stuff that. I want relationships. I want to get intimate. I want to get deep. I want to help people connect. To inspire people and to make people feel better. I want to have a positive impact on the lives of people I interact with. I want to be a friend in need, a friend in deed.

In my previous lifetime, I had once developed software for relationship marketing online. 2010 sounds like a good year to revive that project.

Most of the relationships I will have in 2010 will be “long distance”. This blog has helped me reach out to people in 5 continents and I will continue enhancing those friendships electronically.

I realize that I have more in common with people across the world than some of my next door neighbors. But there is nothing that beats the physical presence of a friend. For this reason, I will be logging out of my computer more often to meet up with friends here in Perth. Perth has been home to me for 12 years and without a doubt, some of my best friends are within the metro area of Perth.

2010 will be one big party for me; hanging out with one friend today, and the next one tomorrow. I will be going to a friend’s party today, and inviting friends over at my place the next week. Am ready to meet and mingle. I have never been this open to new possibilities.

In short, 2010 I will spend 90% of my time and efforts pursuing relationships. Me reckons I will have a blast. I will keep you posted.

The Places

Try spending 12 years in the most isolated city in the world and you will feel the itch to move around. That is exactly how I feel right now. Perth is a beautiful city, but it is the most isolated city in the world. A whopping 2692 km from the nearest city of Adelaide.

Leaving home at the age of 18 to travel 8,902 km from Nairobi to Perth was a major turning point in my life. Everything was so new. The culture was foreign, the way of life was different. But over time, Perth has become home for me. However, I am now extremely curious about what lies across the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Being in Australia has given me the opportunity to travel to a few Asian countries but I have never been to Europe or America. This year, I want to travel or live in one or both of those continents. My initial destination is likely to be Europe because I can visit many countries in a short time. I would love to explore the differences in history and culture that Europe has to offer. I plan to visit over 100 countries by 2015 and this is the year that I will start to seriously tick off my destinations list.

The travel bug has hit me and I am itching to fly away.

I will tie my travel with self improvement and relationships. I have met and will continue to meet people on this blog and elsewhere on the Internet, and hopefully meet them in person in Europe and America. It will be a great year to be exposed to more cultures, more people and develop intimate relationships with a whole new group of friends.

This year, I will officially become a global citizen. If there was a world passport, I would be on the application queue right now.

We have a saying in the Kikuyu tribe of Kenya that says “mundu utaumagaraga augaga no nyina urugaga”. It means that he who does not travel (not exposed) only thinks of his mum as the best chef in the world.

2010 will be my year of pushing the horizon literally. I want to meet all the other “chefs” so I can better compare. I will not settle for less just because that is what I am familiar with.

The Plants

Everyone is talking about climate change. Not to be outdone, I will endeavor to familiarize myself with this vital topic, really get familiar. There is a big debate on who is responsible for climate change and global warming, but instead of blame shifting, we should all seek to do something about it.

From my initial research on this topic, I have found that becoming a vegetarian is surprisingly one of the best personal steps we can all take to make a contribution to the environment. I really, really love my steak and it will be hard to saying goodbye to it.

So I will not be turning into a vegetarian overnight . But over time I will make the transition to be a full vegetarian. At first I will add more vegetables to my diet and cut down my meat eating days from 7 to 4. Over time I hope to cut down my meat consumption to nearly zero.

This text from the BBC website better articulates my decision to have less beef and dairy products.

A vegan in a 4×4 can do the climate more good than a meat-eater driving a hybrid car. Food for thought?


Livestock produce more greenhouse gases than all the world’s transport combined, with beef production singled out by a recent UN report as a particular enemy at the gate. Why? Because cattle belch. Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 20 times worse for climate change than CO2emissions and cattle are full of it. There are 1.5 billion cattle and buffalo worldwide, each producing more greenhouse gas in a day than the average 4×4.
Cutting off beef is a good start but I am blessed with the means to do more. My other contribution to climate change will be to financially support green companies and ventures. I will support tree planting and other environmentally friendly programs. I will also highlight issues to do with the environment on this blog.

Summary

I have publicly written down my goals for 2010 and a private action plan for their achievement. My guiding principle will be to inspire people to be the best they can be. The site will continue to obsess about making a success out of you and me. On that note, I will transform this blog into a community of positive thinkers. Together we shall use the new site as a platform for personal development and building friendships.

On a personal level,  I will be guided by the simple principle of People, Places and Plants (PPP). I be writing about those areas and share my success and challenges with you. I look forward to your continued readership and support as we continue grow and improve.

Series Navigation«What If 2010 Was Your Last Year on Earth?Sermon on the Blog»

Other articles you may enjoy:

  1. What I Learned Through Blogging in 2009 – Part Two Today we continue looking at my lessons in 2009 and how they will influence the...
  2. Guy Seeking Goal It is not too late to set a major goal in life. A good goal...
  3. What I Learned Through Blogging in 2009 – Part One In January 2009, I set out on a public self improvement journey on this blog....
  4. What is Your Philosophy? I grew up in Kenya in the Nyayo era. This was the period in which...
  5. Is your Belief System screwing you up? Today has been a very humbling experience for me. I stepped back and reflected on...
  6. The Most Inspiring Carpenter Jonah had just bought a piece of land near Nazareth and needed extra tools to...

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leaving a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader or via email.

Comments

4 Responses to “Setting Incredible Resolutions”

Leave Comment

(required)

(required)