SET-UP YOURSELF...

A few days ago, a friend and fellow colleague of mine walked up to me for advice with which he hopes to properly start up the new year. He was particularly concerned about not wanting to make either a wrong or poor start to this new season. And I understood why he had that concern.

Usually, the way you start may not necessarily mean you'll end that way, but it does really matter because it often helps to set-up the foundation for the rest of the journey. So, all things being equal, if you start well, there's a great possibility that you'll have a good journey and subsequently eventually end well. I don't know about you; but this year, for me, has to bring in better dividends than last year did, and am very eager to see that happen.

My eagerness, however, is one thing. How I go about achieving it is another. In my first blog for 2014, I did outline a few things I said I was hoping to achieve this year. And I know that am not the only one carrying dreams full of possibilities for the year. Still, except we take out time to properly plan, we most likely won't see anything positive happen.

I call the time for proper planning SET-UP TIME. It's a very crucial period when we should sit down and take proper stock of our lives, our potentials, our hopes, the possibilities, the constraints...virtually all the factors that could play vital roles in our march to achieving what we want and desire for the year. The Set-Up Time is actually the Thinking Time.

Quite a number of people hardly do this in the New Year. Yes, they are filled with expectations but such expectations are nothing more than mere wishes because there are no plans backing them up. We have to stop acting on whims and yet expect concrete results. Our outputs can never be better than the level of our preparation. I heard of a study that said, "Only 5% of the human race think. 15% think they are thinking, and the remaining 80% will rather die than think."  Now, that may sound a little bit too far-fetched to you, but do please calm down and take some quality time out to think through your expectations and plans for this year. It will do you a whole lot of good.

By setting up yourself properly for this year, you would actually be leading yourself right. A lot of the time we view leadership as "Me leading others,"  when in truth it has to be first "Me leading myself." Once am able to properly lead myself, I now stand in good stead to be able to lead others and also take charge of what I need to so that I can properly control and direct the affairs of my life. Living a life of chance is definitely not what I plan to do this year because an achievement is more fulfilling when I see the results I had planned for. Nothing beats that.

Take out quality time to plan your goals. But spend a good chunk of that time to do some very good thinking.

  You will definitely come out with a solid structure upon which you can now ride on for the rest of the year. Your mind is carrying the building blocks of all the success you can ever achieve in 2014 and am eager to celebrate with you when we all get to the end of this new season.

This is the year you and I have been waiting for, so let's take the necessary steps that we should and that will lead us gradually but definitely to where we want to be.

Set-up yourself for your success this year.

Take out some time to pause and ponder on this thought....