Prepare to Accomplish the Unthinkable
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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Today, Michael gets us started on setting some challenging goals for 2007. You’ll also notice we’re kicking off the new year with a new look. After you’ve read today’s issue, please take a moment and go to our Speakout Forum to let us know what you think.
"Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination, and disregard for obstacles and other people’s criticisms, carry out your plan."
Paul J. Meyer
Kicking Off the New Year With ETR: Prepare to Accomplish the Unthinkable
By Michael Masterson
I was inspired to ante-up the challenges I’m setting for myself this year by a piece I clipped from The New York Times a few weeks ago. The article is about Suzan-Lori Parks, a pretty, dreadlocked, 43-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who, in 2002, decided she would write a play a day for a year.
Think about that. A play a day for a year.
When it comes to goals (setting and accomplishing them), I consider myself to be a strong player. Before my 40th birthday, I met and surpassed all my business and financial objectives. Since then, I’ve been knocking off other lifelong goals at a pretty steady pace - and many of them involved writing.
To me, writing a short story a month is a very ambitious goal. And although that’s been one of mine for at least the last five years, I’ve never quite accomplished it.
How is it possible to even imagine that you could write a play a day for 365 days in a row? And even if it were possible to imagine, how could it be done?
The NYT article doesn’t tell me that. It talks about how, after finishing the project, the huge manuscript sat in Parks’ drawer for three years until she and a theater friend hatched a plan to produce all 365 of her plays. (The plan is very complicated, opening them a day at a time in 14 different cities, using a network of hubs and satellite theaters.) And it tells me her subject matter ranges from "deities to soldiers to what Ms. Parks saw out of her plane window."
But how did she do it?
Did she wake up early every morning and get to it and not stop until she was done? Did she work on other projects first (she is also a screenwriter and novelist) and then get to her plays at night? And how much did she write? According to the NYT, some of the plays were "only a few pages long" - but that doesn’t detract from her achievement. She gave herself an almost unthinkable goal and went ahead and accomplished it.
And she did it smart: She didn’t put a minimum length on each play. She let each one take its own length. That’s a clever way to do something great.
That’s something to think about for 2007. What sort of incredible personal goal could you set for yourself? And how would it transform your life?
I’ve been asking myself those questions, because I’d like to accomplish something unthinkable myself. And I’m hoping you’ll join me in making this one of your goals for the coming year. If you’re not sure what to shoot for … here are some ideas:
- Learn a marketing secret a day.
- Read/scan an educational book a day.
- Write a story a day.
- Study a promotion a day.
- Analyze a stock a day.
- Make a sale a day.
- Contact a potential customer a day.
- Recite a poem a day.
- Call/write a friend a day.
- Practice a speech a day.
- Sing a song a day.
- Practice a musical piece a day.
- Exercise intensely each day.
During the next two weeks, we’ll be offering many suggestions in ETR for how you can prepare to make this year your wealthiest, healthiest, and most successful yet.
To get started, you need to identify one significant goal in each of the four most important areas of your life:
- Your health (without which most of the others don’t matter)
- Your wealth (which is undeniably important - so treat it as such)
- Your personal self (your hobbies and interests)
- Your social self (your friends, family, and community)
Each of these goals should be not only significant but also specific. That means you’ll probably have to break each one into several smaller objectives. For example, you might want to resolve to become stronger, leaner, and more flexible. To make this fitness goal more specific, you could resolve to add three pounds of muscle to your body, lose four pounds of fat, and learn how to do a proper Sun Salutation in yoga.
Today, since you’re not (and shouldn’t be) working, your job is to set these four big goals for yourself - and to make one of them unthinkably great. Then, once you set them, commit to them.
You can use the ETR goal-setting program to convert each of your four major goals into monthly, weekly, and, eventually, daily objectives. By taking the time now to write down your goals and think about what it will take to accomplish them, the likelihood that you will accomplish them will increase dramatically.
Studies show it: People who make formal goals and write them down accomplish more. If you follow the ETR goal-setting system and stick to it, I am 100 percent sure that 2007 will be the most successful year of your life.
While you are picking one unthinkably great goal for yourself this year, why not allow me to suggest a second.
I’d like you to consider making a commitment to spend at least five minutes every morning skimming through ETR for ideas, tips, techniques, and strategies that can improve your life. You don’t have to promise to spend any more than five minutes - unless you find something that is especially good and you want to slow down and study it.
I recognize that there are times when you don’t feel you have a spare second to read another e-mail message. And I know, too, that not all of our articles will be particularly helpful to you.
But every day, Suzanne Richardson, Judith Strauss, Charlie Byrne, and I review all the many good submissions we get from the dozens of smart and successful people who regularly write for ETR - and we do our best to include the best possible information in every daily message:
- to help you build your wealth
- to make you healthier
- to make you wiser
We won’t always hit the bull’s eye - but if you read ETR conscientiously and with an open mind, I’m sure you’ll find plenty there to learn from. I know I do.
Five minutes a day. It is a small investment that will pay you back many times over.
[Ed. Note: When you set your "unthinkable" goal, we’d like to hear about it. Please send an e-mail to ReaderFeedback@gmail.com. Include your full name and hometown, and we may publish it in ETR.]
The Early to Rise 2006 End-of-Year Blowout Sale
What are your resolutions for 2007?
To increase your salary by $15,000? To finally start your own profitable online side-business? To locate an incredible real estate deal?
Whatever your dreams, hopes and aspirations may be… ETR is here to help!
As 2006 comes to a close, we’ve compiled a dozen of our best success programs into a year-end blowout sale with our lowest prices ever… so there’s no better time for you to start making your dreams come true in 2007 than right now.
This offer ends when the New Year begins, so don’t put it off and risk paying more a few days from now. Act today and you’ll get the best deal we’ve ever offered, guaranteed.
Stop by our ETR 2006 End-of-Year Blowout Sale now.
- MaryEllen Tribby
Reader Feedback: "I am always learning and growing from ETR."
"I just want to take a minute to wish everyone at ETR a Merry Christmas and the best in the New Year. Thank you very much for another year of ETR and the hard work that went into preparing and sending it out. I am always learning and growing from ETR."
Phyllis Dutchak
Toronto, Ontario
The Worst Thing About the Holidays: Sauerkraut
By Jessica Haynes, ETR’s Product Manager
More than five generations of my family have been born in America. Despite that, ever since I can remember, my mother has practiced the tradition passed down from my German ancestors of serving sauerkraut on New Year’s Day. (It is supposed to give you financial prosperity in the new year.)
Every January 1, my mom made it for dinner with spare ribs and mashed potatoes. My brother and I would try to hide the sauerkraut in our mashed potatoes so we wouldn’t have to eat it all, but Mom was too smart for that. She made us clean our plates before letting us leave the table.
Today, I can’t even look at sauerkraut (unless it’s on a hotdog) without my nose automatically wrinkling in disgust. It’s the most bitter tasting food on the planet. When I left my parents’ house after college, that was one tradition I gladly left behind.
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Word to the Wise: Asseverate
To "asseverate" (uh-SEV-uh-RATE) - from the Latin for "serious" - is to affirm or declare positively or earnestly.
Example (as used by G.K. Chesterton in The Fairy Tale of Father Brown): "’He always asseverated that he did not know,’ replied Flambeau, ‘that this was the one secret his brothers had not told him.’"
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007