First of all, Happy New Year to you all Hope 2012 is just as you have imagined it to be and then some! Now it’s back to business..

A while back I told a good friend of mine selling career and business related products and services that December will be an awesome month for him. He’d sell more, a lot more than in the previous months. He did not believe me, not entirely. He then told me December had been an amazingly pleasant surprise.

The truth is I drew a very obvious conclusion. Whenever a year ends and a new one starts, we start reviewing our lives and somehow see the negatives, then decide to do something about it. We start working on our resumes in December, we start planning, in our head or on paper, we buy products and services to help us achieve our goals, from business to weight loss and so on.

I suspect the seasonal extended family reunions play a decisive part, that’s why most of our planning effort happens between Christmas and New Year’s Eve! We go to face our loved ones who somehow are our biggest critics as well, tell them about our lives and have them point out where we went wrong. Or they don’t, but they start talking about their accomplishments and all we have to do is compare notes and figure where we need to improve. 

I believe there is nothing wrong with using whatever it takes to motivate ourselves. The problem is we plan and buy in December, start pushing hard in January, and by February we’ve already allowed ourselves to tone it down and take it easy, we’ve already found ways to accept the reality of our life instead of trying to change it. Things might pick up some speed around our birthday, whenever that is, but then we wait for Christmas again to find motivation to go on with our plans.

What’s wrong with new year resolutions is that we should not use holidays and the generally accepted calendar to boost our efforts and decide what our lives should be like. It applies to our personal lives, our careers and our businesses. We should always work on improving everything about us, on getting where we want to be.

As Yvonne DiVita of Lip-sticking puts it,

Here’s the skinny – your business needs to thrive all year long. Your business needs to be on the leading edge all year long. Your business should be launching new ideas and new projects throughout the year. You can time them to specific holidays, if you like, or specific calendar events. But, don’t plan them according to an ‘end’ or a ‘beginning.’

Today is a beginning. It presents overwhelming opportunity to wow your clients/customers. Tomorrow will be the same. Monday will land on your desk and do the same. The only similarity in them is… that they are all open to creative ideas that will make your customers stand up and cheer.

If you need an end and a fresh start to motivate you, try to do that every morning, or every week, or even every month. Don’t let the December-powered January fever fade away! And try to decide for yourselves what your lives should be or where your business should be a an hour, a day, a month, a year from now! Just keep at it and start fresh every day.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting more. We should appreciate what we have, but wanting more and better is not such a character flaw. We actually all do it: we want to travel more, run faster or further, get more clients, sell more products, touch more people with our words and so on.

What will you do today to achieve your goals?

There are two periods every year when I stop to analyze what has happened and figure out what I want to do next: the end of a year and beginning of a new one and my birthday. My birthday plays a more important role when it comes to personal resolutions, the new year comes with other tipes of goal settings and plans.

This year I want to state what I want to achieve in 2009, so that this post can act as a reminder, a resource to analyze 2009 when 2010 is close and as a way for me to have a clearer view of what I actually plan to do with my personal and professional life.

Blogging

Words of a Broken Mirror

• publish at least 5 posts per week
• guest post at least once a month
• have some more guest posts on WoBM
• comment more and have more comments on my posts
• get business from the blog
• increase number of RSS subscribers, be it via email or readers
• increase blog traffic, Google PR (currently at 5), Alexa, Technorati and whatever other metric makes me happy

Travel Spells

• revive the blog and post at least 3 times per week
• get constant comments and far more readers
• change the blog theme and upload the cool logo that’s waiting in your email inbox
• and of course, traffic, pr, metrics and such

PRwave Blog (for those of you who don’t know it, this is a PR and communication blog in Romania, hosted by PRwave, the first PR community in Romania. This is where I write about similar topics as on WoBM, but in my mother tongue)

• 2-3 posts per month
• have readers identify me with the blog (as I’ve recently taken over the blog, it is still identified with its former author)
• get the conversation started with old and new readers

New Cool Online Magazine for Women (this is a project I’m working on with a couple of friends, an online magazine built on our idea of what a woman should find in a magazine dedicated to her: more articles that are really based on real life)

• build a launch plan
• find a name and purchase a domain
• launch and work on promoting the magazine

Mirror Communications

In case you’ve missed it, I run my own company now and am extremly proud of it. While the company was founded in mid-2008, it’s been on stealth mode for most of 2008 and I’ve turned it from dream to reality in the last quarter of the year. Now’s the time to really get it up and running!

• Launch bilingual website (English and Romanian)
• Gain customers
• Gain more customers
• Hire people

I know this does not sound as much of a plan, but there’s a limit to what I can actually disclose at the moment. I’ll have to update this section later in 2009.

Blogosphere, Social Media & Networking

• be thankful everyday for the wonderful people I’ve met online these past few years
• Meet new people and build relationships with them
• Stay active on the news, bookmarking and networking communities I am a part of
• Read more blogs, more tweets and more of everything worthwhile on the Internet (and stay clear of the junk)

Personal Plans

• Invest more time, effort and resources in my education
• Travel a little this year
• Finalize list for wedding guest and book a restaurant for the party
• Get Kayla, my lab, the treatment she needs. Unfortunately, she has dysplasia and she will need surgery. She’s too young right now, but we hope everything will be just fine and she’ll be able to go out and play with other dogs soon.
• Keep reading a book a week
• Get back in shape
• Cook more (with the help of Dani, my wonderful fiance) as it’s a lot healthier than the massive amount of junk we both eat.

I hope to be able to reach all my goals. But one important thing I learned in 2008 was that whenever you are unable to keep up with the schedule you’ve made for yourself (due to several issues), you should stop blaming yourself and try again! I’m going to remember myself, as I am extremely hard on myself