2009 is rapidly coming to an end.  For some of us it was a terrible year, The Economy" didn't do "well," we lost a lot of people who were important to us. Some of us lost our jobs and some of us lost our homes. For some it was a great year, Babies were born,People started businesses and some graduated from high school or college.  It is interesting that whether you think it was good or bad, it was the way that it was and what’s important is to leverage what happened in 2009 so that future years and the rest of your lives are lived with fulfillment.  Does that mean that every moment of our lives can be a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, no it does mean that you will have a blueprint to follow to tell you if you are on track or not.  This first step is to enter 2010 with a context of gratitude.  Then we can look at what we want to accomplish in 2010 and put together a plan to accomplish this. So this is my Prescription for ending off 2009,

1)     For the next week, every morning write down one event in your life that happened in 2009 that you are grateful for.  Communicate this to at least one other person.  If you have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or some other social media presence, you can communicate it through your social media.

2)     Write down anything that happened in 2009 that you would have rather not have happened. Forgive anyone that you were blaming for those situations.  Realize that there is nothing you can do tokeep those things from happening.  These situations are in your past.

3)     Write down on a different sheet of paper, what youl earned from those situations.

4)     Take the sheet of paper that you wrote down the situations and shred it.  You want tokeep the paper with the lessons though, so if you didn’t follow what I said above, write the lessons down on a different sheet of paper.

5)     Envision yourself at the end of 2010. (If you really want to think long term you can envision yourself at the end of 2019, ten years, or even 2034 twenty five years, but if you do that remember to also do it for 2010)  What are your results?  To make this even more powerful, write them down as if they have already happened.  Results should be SMART. (See the entry, JimRohn on Goal Setting )

6)     To get those results, Where do you need to be at the end of each quarter, start with where you want to be on September 30^th,June 30^th and March 31^st.

7)     Write down the actions that you need to take to get the results; there are actions that you need to take at one time, daily,weekly, monthly, by monthly, etc.

8)     Schedule these actions into your Blackberry,I-Phone, Planner or whatever you use to manage your schedule.

9)      Track and Tweak:  Monitor your results on a regular basis,Revise the plan based on your results and any current events.  These plans are not written in stone, they are alive and if your results are not where you want them to be, you are going to need to change something.  Also,current events may force a change in your plans. For example, if you sell health insurance, or have a business where you have employees, I am sure you will need to change your plan based on what the final health care plan that congress passes.

10)   Celebrate! You have just completed another year in your life, celebrate your achievement by doing something that you enjoy doing. Me?  I am going to have a glass of wine and watch videos.