Traditionally, the New Year is all about goal setting. We all know: Goals are standard, healthy, and good for us — both individually and as organizations. As entrepreneurs, creators, writers, and people of thought and action, we plan and set goals regularly. But sometimes life gets in the way, even at the start of the New Year, and we find ourselves not creating or revisiting solid goals.

Have you set goals recently?
No worries.
Today’s a good day to do it.

Even one goal is worth your time, this week.

As you set a date with yourself to create New Year’s goals, consider:  To set deep, meaningful, accomplishable goals, we need quiet. Quiet is where our minds speak the clearest. The place of being aware. Of listening. Of uncovering what’s holding us back. Because we all have things holding us back. And quiet can be hard to come by.

Right now, I can’t sit on a beach like the person in the photo is doing. Michigan’s snow and ice takes me to a place like this:

The coffee shop. It’s not quiet. It’s not private. But it’ll do, for now, until I can get to the beach or the woods or wherever my soul can listen. You and I can blur out the coffee shop’s surroundings and focus for a short time. We make it work.

Within quiet, you and I feel, hear, and see things we don’t usually feel, hear, and see. Through quiet, we’re able to open and examine whatever’s blocking our ability to act on our hopes and passions. Quiet has the power to lay bare the ropes entangling our souls.

We all have ropes. History. Emotions. False beliefs. Each of these ropes causes confusion, not clarity.

To focus, create, and repeat,
we must have clarity.  

So as you get into your place of quiet for clarity’s sake, know that I and others who are reading these are doing the same, this week. Because getting to healthy places, with goals and dreams and desires — and actions — is what we do.

Raising my mug to you,
Happy New Year and may it be highly successful
for you and yours,
* Thup