Well, here we are again. Yet another New Year is dawning, and most of us are taking a look back at the previous year, and a look ahead at what the next 12 months will bring.

Taking inventory of what you've done in the past is always a good idea, and proper goal setting for the future is the most effective tool that you have at your disposal for future success. 

Here's the thing though:

Most of you will not accomplish what you set out to accomplish.

Doesn't seem right does it? Here you are, reading a blog about self improvement and personal development, yet you are being told that you're going to drop the ball on the attainment of your dreams and desires.

Photo Credit: Arjmage Why? Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but most of you are simply too comfortable in your cages to do what it takes to break out. 

1) You're overweight, and you know how to lose weight, but you keep coming up with really great reasons not to actually do it.

2) You're broke, and you know that attaining wealth is possible, yet you still keep finding ways to barely pay your bills every month.

3) You're in an issue-laden relationship, and despite your unhappiness, you have still managed to end another year without fixing those issues, or moving on with your life.

Do any of those scenarios ring true for you?

No, wait - let me guess:

• Yes, you're overweight, but you've had so much going on with your family and/or your job that you just haven't had time to exercise.
• Yes, you're broke, but you have a job that leaves you no possibility for advancement, or you don't have the skills or the time to learn a new trade, or to start your own business.
• Yes, you're relationship is on the rocks, but hey, it's better than nothing, right? After all, he/she isn't THAT bad, and it sure could be a lot worse.

Should I go on, or are you getting the picture?

If you're life is not what you want it to be, it is no one's fault but your own!

Stop blaming other people or sets of circumstances for the fact that you aren't willing to do what it takes to make permanent and positive changes in your life.

Stop putting off your health or happiness because you've got things that you feel are a higher priority.

Stop allowing your less than successful past to automatically paint your future.

Stop living in a cage!

Personally, I choose an existence that is full of challenges, but also allows me to reap the rewards of overcoming every challenge that is put before me. For me, excitement about the future is an almost physical entity that surrounds me, and it powers everything that I do.

Can you say the same, or are you still living on the wrong side of the cage?

If you want to share my level of enthusiasm, here is the list of books and programs that are presently powering my success and my energy levels -

Audio Programs:

• The Million Dollar Mindset
• Infinite Possibilities

Video Programs:

• Manifestation Mastery
• 5K Per Day Subliminal Videos

Books: 

• A Touch of Greatness
• Who Moved My Cheese?
• Helping Me Help Myself
• Don't Ask Stupid Questions : There Are No Stupid Questions

You can check out those books and programs, or a list of your own making. The actual tools that you use are not as important as the commitment that you make to yourself to truly attain your goals.

You can talk about goal attainment all day long, but talk is cheap. Don't tell people what you are going to do…

…show them by doing it.

Related Content:

• 3 Ways to Accomplish Anything by Writing it Down
• The Fast and Easy way to Build an Empire
• Telling the World to Take a Hike

 Discuss this post at Personal Development Partners

People have been saying for years that writing down a goal is one of the best ways to ensure success in attaining it. However, as with so many success systems, it sounds so simple that people don't really believe that it works.

Well, it DOES work, and by understanding the process, you will gain confidence in this simple, yet very effective method of attaining your goals.

Photo Credit: WoodsyThere are 3 ways that writing down a goal will help you to accomplish it, and the beauty of this system is that you benefit from all 3 of these each and every time that you write it down. By making a daily practice of writing down a goal, you will automatically get 3 benefits from one simple effort.

Conscious Statement

Whenever we first decide that we want to accomplish something, we tend to be very excited about it, and very motivated to do "whatever it takes" to get the job done. However, over the course of time, we tend to lose that enthusiasm because we are not frequently reminded of whatever it is that we wanted to accomplish.

By making the daily effort to write down our dreams and desires, we remind our conscious selves of the commitment that we made. By writing down a goal every single day, it becomes quite impossible for us to lose sight of it.

Rather than allowing our hectic lives to get in the way of our success, the constant written reminder of what we want causes us to create our daily lives around the attainment of those desires.

Subconscious Programming

Even more powerful than the conscious reminder about what we want, writing down a goal very effectively programs our subconscious mind to work "behind the scenes" on the attainment of our desires.

The subconscious mind has constant access to all knowledge, memories, and experience, and it is able to manipulate that information in such a way that - quite frankly - our conscious minds could never even hope to compete with. Our subconscious minds control 90%-95% of our lives, so programming that massive super-computer is a guaranteed method of getting what we want out of life.

I recently started writing down my primary goal at the top of a piece of paper that holds my to-do list each day. In less than 5 days I had no less than half a dozen really good ideas about how to attain that goal.

Here is the kicker, though: Each idea came to me completely out of the blue while I was doing something totally unrelated to what I want to accomplish. My subconscious was simply chewing on my written down desires each day and sending me inspiration as new ideas or methods were discovered.

It doesn't get any easier than standing around doing nothing while your subconscious does all of the heavy lifting! 

External Factors

How many people in your life know what your goals are? One, maybe two people? Not even that many?

The simple truth of the matter is that people often have trouble defining exactly what it is that they want, and even fewer actually share their deepest desires with others.

How are other people supposed to help you if they don't even know what it is that you want?

At home, are your goals written down in the kitchen, the bathroom, or other public areas? Even if your kids and your spouse consider you a certifiable lunatic for thinking that you can write a novel about The 50 Best Ways to Eat Peanut Butter and Crackers, is that goal so much in their face that they might possibly tell others about it?

• Your child may go to school with another child whose parent is a publisher of weird and unusual books.
• Your spouse might work with someone that is married to a caterer who is looking to start joint ventures with people who have unique ideas for food preparation.
• Your visiting neighbor might have experience with the cheapest and fastest ways to self-publish a book, or they may have connections in the publishing industry.

At work, is your goal of someday owning the company written down in plain view where all of your co-workers, managers, and customers can see it?

• Negative, energy-sapping co-workers tend to stay away from driven, goal-oriented people.
• Managers tend to give opportunities to people with a demonstrated and obvious drive to succeed.
• Customers tend to trust businesses whose employees openly see long-term success with the company that they work for.

In each of these examples, not only do you benefit from your own efforts, but you can potentially benefit from the knowledge, experience, or connections of people who know what you are trying to accomplish. Let other people do some of the work for you!

The bottom line is that writing down a goal is the simplest and most effective method that you will ever find to accomplish or attain anything that you desire in life.

It's simple, it's fast, and it's free. Why wouldn't you do that??

Related Content:

• Achieve-It! Goal Setting Software Review
• An Impartial Review of the Dare to Be Rich System

Discuss this post at Personal Development Partners

I've just sent for a copy of a hilarious book that takes a year-long look at the self improvement efforts made by the author, Beth Lisick.

The book is called Help Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone, and it is basically Beth's witty and real-world 12-month journey after she has decided to improve her life. She enlists the help of self improvement gurus that range anywhere from Richard Simmons, to Stephen Covey, to John Gray (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus), and many others.

I sent for the book after watching several video clips that Beth did about the book, and also reading the reviews of this book, as well as her earlier work, Everybody into the Pool.

Beth seems to have grasped the fact that improving one's life entails actually living it in the meantime, and her documentation of the journey looks to be very entertaining indeed, and a dose of humor and light-heartedness that I think the self improvement industry is desperately in need of!

I've included the links below if you want to look into either of Beth's books yourself, or just check back here for my review after I get done with Helping Me Help Myself. At a bare minimum, it looks to be some good laughter caught on paper, if not actual life lessons learned, so I'll look forward to bringing it all to you soon!

Last week I put up this post about the Power of Our Way community call in program, and at the time a conference call had been planned with all of the Thought Leaders who are part of that program.

Well, that conference call turned into such a massive amount of quality information about conscious creation and personal growth that it was decided to actually break up the call into mini interviews with each of the Thought Leaders so people could pick and choose who they wanted to hear from.

I was one of the Thought Leaders who was interviewed, and since I know that people rarely get a chance to put a "voice to the blog," I'm happy to announce that all of the Thought Leader interviews can be accessed by going to the free Power of Our Way Teleseminar Event Audios page.

If you have any plans at all to consciously create a wonderful life for yourself in 2008, please do yourself the favor of checking out that page and giving a listen to the interview with me, as well as many of the other Thought Leaders. There was some incredible information shared, and each interview is only around 20 minutes long, so you can grab some empowering information for free without taking up too much of your time.

Anita Pathik Law, the founder of Power of Our Way, gave each Thought Leader the chance to answer these 3 questions, and the answers were empowering, to say the least:

1. What do you see as the greatest opportunities today for people to “shift” within their consciousness and behavior, that when aware and managed, can make a significant difference in how we view ourselves, others and the world?
2. What is your favorite and most effective shifting ritual – essentially, this is what you personally do; some strategy, tool or practice that you utilize when you know you need to shift your energy, thoughts, beliefs, non-serving behaviors, or to move out of an energetic funk that is non-conducive to conscious co-creation or peace building?
3. What is one thing you teach that can change people’s lives and the world?

Each of the Thought Leaders had unique and empowering answers to those questions, and you can listen to my answers along with everyone else's at this page.

In addition, the Power of Our Way Community Call-in Program kicks off on January 1, 2008, and includes products from all of the Thought Leaders who were on the call, including my own very popular eBook, Energy Harmonics.

Give my audio interview a listen, and feel free to let me know your thoughts and your questions via email, or in the comments section below!

Welcome to the 14th edition of the Doing it Differently Blog Carnival!

This carnival is dedicated to the concept of stepping outside of the box and living our lives in ways beyond the "norm"!

Whether you want to learn unique ways to think or act differently, or if you want to share your own unique ideas, this carnival is for you!

There will be a new edition of the carnival posted every month, on or around the 15th . You can click here to learn more, or click here to submit a post for the next edition, which will be posted on January 15, 2008.

If you like this carnival or if you are one of the authors featured in this edition, be sure to add this post to Stumbleupon, Digg, or your favorite social bookmarking site!

Money/Success

Cyberca$hology - Costanza Success Principles

Copywriting Tips for Your Business - Your wow! introduction

BlainePower - Why should I learn to program?

Marketing & Fundraising Ideas - Why You Need to Ask

Steve Pavlina - Career Transitions

Richard Lee - Everything You Will Ever Need To Know About Business

The Business Ideas-Making Money Blog - Virtual Boyfriends

Less Than a Shoestring - Comparing Foreign Websites for Deals

Ask the Career Counselor - How to Win Friends at the Office

Self Improvement/Personal Growth

We the Change -  The Greatest Self Improvement Tool You Know Nothing About

Slow Down Fast - Six Days for a Fifteen Hour Trip?

The Human Imprint - A post on patience

Personal Development by an INTJ - Conversation Skills / Tips: How To Have A Good Conversation

Rule of 5 - Capturing Creativity - Part 3

Tupelo Kenyon - How to Live the Life of Your Dreams Through Intuition

Real World Spiritual and Personal Development - Who are you listening to?

Miscellaneous

Brighter Days for you and me! - I love the Think Different Challenge.

Fun Spirit - 10 unusual ways to have fun cleaning

Principled Discovery - Some geographical reasoning

Goal Setting

Potential 2 Success - 7 Reasons Why You Haven’t Reached Your Goals Yet

Intensive Care for the Nurturer's Soul - The 212 Degrees Attitude

Health & Fitness

Raw Food Diet, Bodyweight Fitness and Peak Performance Living - Having Trouble Staying Raw, It May Not Be Your Fault

FitBuff - Circuit Training Exercises

Law of Attraction

Applying the Law of Attraction - Integrating the Law of Attraction into Your Busy Schedule

That wraps up the 14th edition of the Doing it Differently Blog Carnival! Many thanks to all of our authors, and don't forget to add this post to your favorite social bookmarking website!

The next edition will be posted on January 15, 2008, and the closing of this edition is also the official call for submissions for the next one! Get the inside scoop on what this carnival is all about and access the submission form as well by clicking right here.

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