We were staying in a hotel in Wagga Wagga for a few days and as usual, I’d packed some exercise gear. I don’t like running along the roads if I can avoid it, so the night before, I pulled up Google maps to find a route for my morning jog.

This is the first of three stiles I had to cross. Note the flood debris on the fence.

I was in luck, there appeared to be a good path following along the edge of the river for three or four kilometres in either direction from the hotel.

In the morning I had one last look at the map and headed off toward the river. It didn’t take long to find the path but it also didn’t take long to lose it either!!

The path was not easy to follow, it appeared to join with a road and then veer off into a track. Recent rain meant that there were plenty of puddles to jump over, so my morning jog was a little more of a steeple chase.

It wasn’t long before I found myself in a labyrinth of 4WD trails criss crossing through the bush. The trail went cold and I stood there bamboozled until I spotted a stile over a fence covered in flood debris.

Sure enough, over the stile was the track. The whole area had been flooded in recent months. It was muddy, there were many wash-aways, flood debris, and fallen trees.

One of the wash-aways along the track

Running through the tall weeds covered in heavy morning dew meant that my shoes and shocks were getting wetter with each step.

My return trip was a little quicker, not because I was running faster but because I didn’t have to stop to try and find the path.

When I finally got back to the hotel, I was tired, wet and very muddy but felt totally refreshed and ready for the day.

As I sat in the hotel eating my breakfast, I looked around at the other travelers and wondered if they realised how much of life they missed out on this beautiful morning?

Many people just look forward, asking themselves ‘what do I want to do this year?’ and then they boldly make statements such as: ‘This year, I’m going to get fit’… I know how successful that can be because I used this ‘process’ for many years myself – with less than excellent results!

Like any business or marketing exercise, what we should be doing is to start by benchmarking. If you don’t know exactly where you are now, how can you set sail for somewhere else?

I’ve done my benchmarking homework before, so these days I start my goal setting process by first looking at the goals I set myself last year and ticking off the ones I’ve achieved. Then I literally look back over the previous year – A quick and easy way to do this is to browse over the photos you took in the previous year. (I use iPhoto and click ‘last 12 months’.)

This works well because we tend to take photos of the things we find interesting or significant at the time. I find that browsing the year’s photos gives me a great overview of the previous year. I’m always surprised by just how many things we’ve done. Try it now for yourself.

There are always lots of things I did that weren’t on my goal list – so don’t think of goal setting as something that takes the spontaneity out of life. One thing you’ll probably notice is that whilst you may not have done all the things on last years list, many of the things you have done will fit into one of the categories of goals you set for yourself.

About Benchmarking for Goal-setting

Goal setting helps you to define the key things you want to do, but without benchmarking, your goals won’t have a solid platform from which to grow.

If you haven’t done a goal setting exercise based on benchmarking before, you’ll need to consider benchmarking all aspects of your life. Relationships, health, career, personal development, your values, beliefs and expectations and much more. After you’ve done the big exercise, it comes down to review each year thereafter.

If you need some help setting your goals, you can always contact me for a chat.

Another year draws to a close having seemingly been somehow shorter than all the years before it.

Already we are well into party mode with much food and drink already under our belts… (Or perhaps rolling over our belts!).

Like many others, I’ve also started to think about new goals I’d like to set for 2011. One that always comes to mind is getting fit. For some reason I never seem to be as fit as I want to be, especially around this time of year!

Last year I wrote my goals down – this is important because now I can look at them and see how well I did at achieving them. I’d give myself about 60% I think… I didn’t them all done, but I am still working toward the ones that missed the boat.

Tip:

Check your goals from this year before you begin to set goals for next year. There is no point making new goals when past targets you set yourself are not yet completed.

A re-evaluation of your old goals can help you complete some of them quite quickly. What I do is make a decision about whether the goal is still relevant to me – if not, I simply cross it off. Otherwise I make sure to reset it with new and meaningful milestones.

Take care and enjoy your holidays. Get outdoors and exercise and get plenty of rest so you can start the new year on your front step.

Merry Christmas

I recently went to a surprise party and as I was walking the dog this morning, it occurred to me that the whole idea behind a surprise party isn’t quite as simple as it may first appear.

The obvious idea behind a surprise party is of course, that it has to be kept a secret from the intended recipient of the surprise – and that can be an extremely difficult thing to do. Especially if there are blabbermouths, careless friends, party poopers or children involved!

The Real Secret Behind a Successful Surprise Party

I asked myself, ‘Why would someone want to throw a surprise party anyway? And why would attendees want to come?’

Firstly, the organiser of the surprise party probably has an emotional connection with the intended recipient, because it takes a lot more effort and a lot more commitment to organise a surprise party than it does an ordinary party.

For the organiser of the surprise party, he or she will have to live with heightened sense of awareness, sometimes for months leading up to the event. Invitations must be sent and followed up with phone calls in a secretive and often devious manner so that the intended recipient is left clueless. This is particularly difficult if the organiser is living under the same roof as the intended recipient of the surprise.

The organiser must use espionage skills, tell lies and be able to rope others in on the secret whilst also convincing them to join in on the lie in order to keep up the ruse.

Organisers may be required to hunt through desks, search offices and perhaps log into the intended recipient’s computer to find out the contact details of his or her friends.

Heightened Sense of Awareness, Fear and Stress.

As the date for the surprise party draws nearer and nearer, the organiser comes under more and more stress… will someone accidently blow the whole thing and ruin months of planning? Will anyone get found out and find their cover blown?

The whole thing brings with it a sense of heightened awareness to the organiser, who must remain constantly vigilant to protect the intended recipient of the surprise from accidentally discovering the plot.

On top of all this, the organiser doesn’t know how the recipient will react when they are finally ‘surprised’. Will they react positively? Will they be overcome? Will they feel violated? Angry? etc..

What does a surprise party have that other parties don’t?

Everyone involved with the surprise feels a part of the process. In the lead up to the event, each participant is in on it – they all feel included.

On the day of the surprise, every guest will feel the fear of discovery, a heightened sense of anticipation and each will share in the joy of the party that much more.

It is the party season; why not spring one on someone you love?

Homer's automatic dialing machine

This year at 3:02pm our phones started ringing one after the other in succession. In my experience, each time this happens it is usually an automatic phone-dialling machine and always reminds me of the episode of the Simpsons in which Homer uses an automated dialler to make his fortune.

It might be important

Curious, I picked a phone up – it might have been something important – there was silence, I waited for the click and then a man with an Indian accent introduced himself. He was representing Telstra and wanted to help me save money with my phone calls.

I politely told him (just as I had last month and the month before), that I was still happy with my current telecommunications supplier, then I quickly hung up before he could suck me into his never ending telemarketing script.

I seem to get these calls very regularly and I always the answer is the same way.

Am I the only one who finds this annoying?