Theme for 2009: Growing Roots

I am going to experiment with something new this year.  Instead of setting New Year’s resolutions or going through a goal setting process like I’ve done in some of the previous years, I’m going to try something a bit different for 2009.  I’m going to set a theme for the year instead.

Why Set a Theme Instead of Goals or New Year’s Resolutions?

Frankly, I’ve never been one for setting New Year’s Resolutions.  The reason for this is not because I’m not into goal setting or because I don’t think I can hit a goal I set, but because I’ve never been one for one-year goals.  I personally prefer to set longer term goals like 3-5 year goals and then have short term goals like weekly goals, 30 day goals and 90 day goals.  I find for certain things the 7 day, 30 day and 90 day goals work wonders, and for other things 3-5 year goals work best.  I’ve never found anything to really fit properly in the 1 year space for me.

For example, let’s say I wanted to set a goal to get in better shape like many people do as their New Year’s resolution.  Well, I would rather work with a 90 day goal for that, and then reset and start another goal after the first 90 days, and couple those 90 day goals with a longer term 3-5 year goal.  I have always found that if I set any kind of one year goal, I end up procrastinating until the last 90 days anyways.

So, I typically don’t bother with one year goals and actually I never really have.  However, I do like the idea of setting a theme for the year instead.  A theme is independent of any goals I might set during the year.  The theme simply becomes a part of the way that I go about accomplishing my goals or it helps me to even select the types of goals I might want or the types of habits I might want to develop.  I’ll go through the theme I’ve selected and it will probably make more sense what I mean.

My Theme for 2009 is “Growing Roots”

I spent a lot of time thinking about choosing the right theme for this year.  It wasn’t easy because I wanted to pick something that would help me grow in an area that I have not previously devoted a lot of energy into in the past.

Although this is the first year that I am setting a formal theme for myself for the year, I could easily think back to the last ten years and with the exception of 2006 where I devoted a large portion of energy into getting married, I could easily say that all the other years pretty much all had the same theme: Personal Growth.

I’ve gone through a lot of personal growth in so many areas of my life over the last decade and I love growth.  It’s fun.  Growth entails a lot of change and a very fast pace in life which I thrive on.  However, I now feel the right direction for me is to slow my growth down a bit and take some time to establish new roots and lay a much stronger foundation for future growth. 

While I find many people are guilty of over planning, and spending way too much time on getting prepared and laying foundations and establishing roots in life and never really getting going mostly due to fear, I’ve kind of been doing the exact opposite for a long time and I think it’s time for me to focus on growing stronger roots and laying a stronger foundation.

Why Did I Pick This Theme

While at first glance this may seem like a theme that is going to slow the growth and advancement of my life down, I don’t see it that way at all.  The roots and foundation that I’m going to build this year because of this theme are going to become the springboard for my future growth.  Not only that, but I actually anticipate that things will grow and advance in my life even quicker even though I’m not going to be focusing on growth at all.

In alignment with my this theme, I have identified five areas of improvement which I’m going to focus my energy on this year.  I may decide to focus on other areas throughout the year, but the first five I want to tackle are:

(1) Health, Strength and Confidence

One area of my life which I want to devote a lot more energy to is my health.  I’m not unhealthy right now, and I can’t even remember the last time I had to go see a doctor for an ailment, but I am definitely not treating my body as well as I could be.

Even though I have extensively studied nutrition and have a diploma in Advanced Nutrition and earned the designation of Certified Sports Nutrition Consultant (CSNC) back in August 2007, I haven’t been eating healthy at all lately.  I’ve mostly been healthy throughout my life and in my younger years I had a metabolism that allowed me to eat absolutely anything and everything I could ever want and not gain a pound, so I’ve never really had a strong enough reason to put in the energy into establishing proper dietary habits. 

The nutritional studies I began a few years ago was the first step in establishing a healthy diet, but I only got to the point of knowing exactly what I should be eating, and not fully implementing it yet.  I have started a whole bunch of different diets and have actually had a lot of success with them.  It’s not difficult for me to lose weight if I really want to.  If I set a goal to lose 5lbs or 20lbs, I can do it and I have done it.  The problem is that it takes effort and energy to maintain a really healthy lifestyle and I’ve always given priority to other projects in my life, until now.

I know this sounds really stupid, but a part of me has been using the excuse that I’m healthy right now and if I ever got sick with something and needed to lose weight or improve my diet, it’s not hard to do that for me so why bother with it for now?  Why not dedicate more energy into something like building wealth, or growing spiritually, and worry about my health later.  I know, it’s not a smart thing to do and that’s why I want to change things this year.

So, as part of my theme this year I want to develop the healthy eating habits and devote the energy I need to devote to purify my body more and get it into tip-top shape so that I can stay healthy for many years to come, instead of waiting until I’m forced to take my health more seriously due to some disease or something.

This also goes beyond just healthy eating.  I also want to devote energy into things like improving my flexibility, building my strength and endurance through exercise and strength training, as well as heading back to my martial arts training.  It’s been almost two years since I’ve done any martial arts training and I’ve really missed it.  I’m really going to enjoy getting back into it.

The focus on improving my diet, coupled with exercise and martial arts training will help me to develop a much stronger foundation to grow from in the future. The increase in mental clarity and the massive amount of energy I always seem to have when I’m exercising regularly will definitely make a difference in everything I do.

(2) Home/Office Improvement and Organization

This is a big one for me.  Anyone who’s seen my desk will say that it looks like a bomb went off on it because everything is all over the place.  One of the reasons I have never really devoted a lot of energy into staying organized or keeping my desk clean is because I have an excellent memory.  Even though my desk can look like a sea of chaos, I pretty  much know exactly where anything is.  I can put a calculator down, then dump some papers on top of it the next day, then something else and basically bury it with crap, and two months later if I’m looking for the calculator I’ll still know exactly where
that calculator is even if I haven’t seen it for two months.

The great thing about having a good memory is that you don’t really have to waste a lot of time organizing everything and putting things where they belong because you always remember where things are.  The only time I can’t find something is when someone moves something on me.  Then I’m completely screwed.  I keep going back to the spot where I remember it being and it’s no longer there and then I have no idea where to look and it drives me nuts.

The second reason I have never really devoted a lot of energy into getting organized is due to constant change and growth in my life.  Let me give you an example.  Back when I was in high school, we had woodworking class and for each station the teacher had this wooden board where he created these outlines of every tool.  So on this board you would see the outline of a hammer, and a straight edge, and a chisel and all the other tools we had in class to use.  At the end of each class we would take all the tools we had and we would hang them up exactly in the spot where they belonged for the next group of students to use them.

That’s a great system to have if you have a set number of tools and they never change, and you’re always using the same tools all the time, but my life has been changing so much it’s a lot harder to do that.  Imagine if all of a sudden we added two new tools to the mix.  The teacher would have to find room on the board and create outlines for the new tools.  What if one of the tools we added actually replaced one of the old tools?  For example what if we replace a ruler with a tape measure?  What if we replace a level with a laser level?  Now we have to make new outlines again?  What if we now have to add twenty more tools?  And then, just for fun, we change from woodworking to metalworking tools?  What if the tools changed every week?  Would there be any point to creating a new board every week?

Well, that’s kind of how my life has been.  So much change that it hardly made any sense to organize anything because things have been changing so much.  I’ve actually been looking and searching for examples of organizational systems and I pay attention to how other people organize themselves in their homes and it’s actually pretty hard for me to find good examples to follow because not a lot of people I know are like me. 

For example, let’s take books for example.  When I visit some of my more organized friends and family members I can take a peek to see how they organize their books, but the problem is that they may have 20 or 30 or 50 books occupying a small bookshelf in a corner somewhere and that’s easy to organize.  What if you have 1,000 books like I do?  That’s a totally different story.  Then on top of that, I am always buying new books and the books that I am interested in change over time so it’s not very easy to organize them in a way where the ones I want to read are easily accessible.

Another example would be the different businesses I run.  I once asked someone how they organize their bills and accounting files and they told me that they hole punch the bills and put them in a binder.  That would never work for me.  The volume of paperwork that I have and keep track of with the different businesses that I run and have run in the past is insane if you tried to organize it by hole punching and putting it into binders.

The challenge for me in this area of my life is going to be in establishing habits of organization that work well with an ever changing and evolving set of “things” to be organized.  This isn’t about organizing 12 forks, 12 spoons and 12 knives in a kitchen drawer.  This is about developing habits of creating and maintaining order in an environment that is always changing.

As simple as this may sound to some, this is probably going to be the toughest area of my life to work on this year.  However, I do believe that once I tame this beast it is going to have a massive positive impact on my life.  I’ve never had a clean desk in my life!

(3) Financial Stability

Another area of my life that I want to focus on as part of my theme for this year is financial stability.  What does financial stability really mean to me?  Well, there are many parts to this equation but here are some examples.  Let’s take my Blog as one example.  In the past, I have played around with various ways to make money from this Blog and have had quite a bit of success creating different income streams.  I’m very good at creating and growing my income.  However, there are some income streams that offer a more stable income stream than others. 

For example, let’s say that someone contacted me and wanted to purchase an ad spot on my Blog for 20% off the regular price, but was willing to commit to a 12 month timeframe for that purchase.  Let’s assume that most of the time the particular ad spot they are interested in ends up getting sold at regular price anyways.  In the past I may decline their offer, and take the risk that I might not be able to sell the spot a few months out of the year, but under my new theme I may end up taking the offer because not only does it offer a more secure monthly income, it also establishes relationships with clients who aren’t afraid to commit to longer term relationships.

This is just one example.  Other examples of the types of things I’ll want to improve in this area of my life may be things like establishing and updating a will, comparing and ensuring I have the best health care plan for the money I’m spending, building up higher cash reserves for any future projects I may want to invest in, improving my credit rating even more, etc.

All the specifics of what I end up doing aren’t important right now as I haven’t had time to really sit down and brainstorm all the things I will want too look into and prioritize them, but I just wanted to give a few examples of how I would implement the spirit of my theme into this area of my life.

(4) Rewards, Recognition and Relaxation

Another area of my life that I haven’t really put a lot of effort or energy into, throughout all the growth and achievement I’ve experienced in the last decade or so has been the area of recognizing and rewarding myself.  I have achieved a lot of goals in my life, and I’m very happy with what I’ve been able to accomplish, but I haven’t really taken the time to recognize and celebrate my successes as much as I could have and I want to change that.

I have a friend who is absolutely amazing at recognition and I’ve been learning a lot from watching how he does things.  I used to think that recognition and rewards are just all about stroking your Ego, but I’ve learned that it’s so much more than that.  It’s more about taking the time to pause, recognize, and create moments of time in our lives where we celebrate life itself.

You’re definitely going to see a lot more of that on the Blog this year.  I’m going to start to really focus on recognizing my achievements and rewarding myself for them. I’m also going to take the time to unplug and relax as well, which really also fits in with the health area of my life as well.

(5) Business Structure

Now that I’m focusing on Blogging and Affiliate Marketing full time, I am going to also invest a lot of energy into establishing a sound business structure around my business.  What I mean by this is creating an organized accounting system, monitoring cash flow, planning, monitoring my weekly progress etc.

This also means finishing up some courses that I started but never finished and doing a lot of testing and tweaking on my affiliate campaigns.  I’m going to implement the spir
it of my theme into my business this year by improving the stability of my income, not just growing it.  For example, having ten affiliate campaigns earning $100/day instead of one campaign earning $1200/day.  Even though the one campaign might earn more income, it’s not as stable as having your risk distributed across more campaigns.  Another example is creating multiple online income streams and not relying strictly on my Blog for income or affiliate marketing for income.

Summary

2009 is definitely going to be an interesting year for me.  The theme I picked is going to focus me on areas of my life that I haven’t previously devoted a lot of time or energy to.  This focus is going to help me to establish much thicker and stronger roots from which to grow in the future. 

As I mentioned before, I actually have a feeling that even though I’m not going to be focusing on growth as my main theme this year, the side effect of establishing stronger roots and a solid foundation is going to be automatic growth anyways.  I wouldn’t even be surprised if I grow more this year than any other year where I did focus on growth.

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