Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Happy New Year

The Lord is great and greatly to be praised. Greetings from the personal space of Rhonda McKnight Nain. I pray this will be a year of awesome blessings for you. I am expecting great things from God and preparing to see the bounty of a great harvest.

What type of preparation am I making? I've developed personal plan with goals for the New Year. No, it's not your typical New Year resolution process. It's much more involved. You may ask why does a person need to set goals? By setting goals on a routine basis you decide what you want to achieve and then move step by step towards achieving that goal. It's a pretty simple process. You've done it in college or highschool. You had a degree completion plan that told you what classes to take when. The goal was to finish the program, the plan was the method to accomplish it. It's done in the work place. Your employer may have a strategic plan which includes goals the organization wants to accomplish over time. Each goal has strategies and allotted resources for accomplishing it. By the way, you, your mind and manpower is one of them. The company engages the management to go about implementing the strategies to accomplish the goal. Why not make this process work for you?

If you need help getting started, here are my suggestions.

1. Begin with prayer. Ask the Lord to show you your purpose, gifts, talents and resources.
2. Don't be selfish. Your goals should include blessings that will abound to other people. Make sure whatever you want to do will bless others as well.Examine your motives.
3. Write down your plan, every word of it. The word says in Habakkuk 2:2 "Write the vision and make it plain".
4. Develop strategies to accomplish your goals. Include the hows and whys meaning methodology and timeframes. This is a time to be exacting. It's your life so work out the details.
5. Don't overwhelm yourself with too many goals. Unrealistic expectations have a way of killing motivation.
6. Share your goals with at least one other person. Ask them to hold you accountable.
7. Begin today, there is no better time like the present.

In setting goals remember you need several. Some of mine are: Spiritual, family, health, career, relationships, financial and academic.

Once you set your goals and develop your plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating to-do list on a daily and weekly and monthly basis. Focus. Make adjustments as necessary. Have short and long term goals so you can celebrate the small victories along the way. Do celebrate, reward yourself and thank God for successes.

Blessings to you,

Rhonda