Three Words for 2011

What three words will you set as your star points, to chart your course through 2011? The idea of setting three words to help guide you and keep you on track in achieving your goals comes from Chris Brogan, who outlines in his blog how you can cut through all the mission statements, visions and strategic planning by selecting three essential words.

Quoting from his own article at the beginning of 2009, Chris Brogan's 3 words - 2009 he wrote:  “If you’re not familiar with the exercise, the object is to come up with three words that you use as compass points for your efforts over the year to come. They’re not resolutions. They’re ways of framing what you plan to do in the
coming year.”

Rather than being hard and fast objectives, the words you choose should be multifunctional and provide a number of different ways of being applied to your path of achieving your goals. They can highlight when you are on track, provide a warning when you stray from your objective and give you cause to celebrate when you achieve a milestone along the way. 

Setting goals is essential in our lives, personally and professionally. Achieving goals is not so easy,  and often we make it too hard for ourselves to get the positive outcomes we want – by being too rigid.  By setting deadlines that are unrealistic; by not having a simple and clear way of measuring how we are progressing; by not knowing how to get back on track when we stray and thus, too often, abandoning our goals and subsequently lowering our own sense of self worth.

In his blog, Chris writes: In using this method, here’s how I set about wiring my goals to the way I accomplish what I do.

• Determine 3 guiding words for my efforts in 2010.
• List 1-3 paths to accomplishing those goals (aka strategies).
• List distractions that might possibly scuttle my efforts.
• List the steps for each path (these are the projects that map to the goals).
• List what the “finish line” looks like.
• List what comes next, should I actually accomplish something major along those paths.  

My primary resolution is to build my business, Stories My Nana Tells to be a worldwide family membership site. My second resolution is to improve my personal levels of fitness, after a year of being waylaid by accidental health issues. Follow Up Interview With Andrew Spreigel

For 2011, these three star point words will guide me towards my personal goals: Touch, Quiet, Gift. Combined, these three words are a powerful light to illuminate my path to my goals.

Touching the lives of others in a positive way, will be through writing and personal contact. Writing will not be just the stories themselves, but meeting the expectations of my readers. Reach out to touch others and helping them achieve their own goals too.

My second star point word is quiet.  To be quiet, to create a place of quiet, to enjoy the companionship that quiet brings. Quiet, because it brings patience, a sense of listening first, of making space for others to speak. We cannot truly reach out to others until we have heard what it is they need of us. Quiet is an absence of noise.

My third word for 2011 is gift. Giving others of your time is a priceless gift, so I will be less busy and live more in the moment. It has multiple interpretations - including recognizing and lauding the gifts of others. It conveys the noun (the object) and the verb (the act). To "gift" is done without expectation of return.