With the New Year fast approaching, it’s time for that annual checkup of achievements, shortfalls, and goals ahead.
Are there new things you want to accomplish in 2012? Old dreams you want to rekindle? Bad habits you want to bury?
Motivational speaker Stephen Gower has a simple, three-step process to help you get a strategy for success in place. Addressing a law enforcement audience at the IACP annual conference in Chicago this fall, Gower outlined what he calls “an agenda for growth,” which requires answering these introspective personal questions:
1.) What do I have and what do I want in its stead? What frustrates you about yourself? Here you identify aspects of your life you’d like to change and candidly consider your strengths and weaknesses regarding those elements.
2.) What is keeping me from getting what I want? Isolate only those factors you can influence. “Strike out what you can’t control,” Gower says.
3.) How do I respond? Design a specific, practical action plan — “what, why, and how,” Gower says — that takes you out of the merely wishing-it-were-so mode.
“Anticipate detours on your journey” to goal success, Gower advises. Unexpected barriers or setbacks will inevitably arise. “Learn what you can from them, readjust your plans, and continue moving forward.”
In the process, Gower cautions, don’t focus solely on the achievement you wish to attain. “Enjoy the trip along the way,” he says. “Commend yourself for the effort and for the decision to “soar by success rather than live the certainty of misery.”
[Stephen Gower heads The Gower Group, Inc., of Toccoa, Ga., and can be reached at: 706-297-7678 or at SMG@stephengower.com.]
