Let the haters fuel your passion, not diminish it.

I'd like to take a moment and point out something that every person that has a "hustle" or big goal to achieve in the new year is going to run into, haters. It seems as though the social media maelstrom that is ever present in modern society, has let people become more and more critical of others, both their successes and their defeats. This isn't a new construct since the advent of social media, people have always been jealous and doubtful of others ability to succeed, it's simply that our connections allow others to voice these concerns more readily.

In anything that you do, others will look on in doubt and disbelief, my theory is that it's not that they don't want you to succeed on principle, it's that your success will make their stagnation that much more apparent. For those that do, those that don't are always quick to remark. Recently I've begun my own journey to what many would call an improbable goal, something that won't easily be achieved, something that will take hard work, dedication and much sacrifice on my part to accomplish. While I've worked very hard to cultivate a positive circle of doers and dreamers around me, there's still those in my life that are stuck in their own ruts, not dreaming, not moving forward. Personally I won't be satisfied with the "status quo", not for myself or my family. Too many times have I found that to do one must only dream. We as human beings are incredible in our capacity to create our own dreams, to affect our destiny's and too forge our futures in the image we desire.

Throughout your journey however those haters will pop up, so what do you do to handle them? My suggestion, and the process I follow is this. I imagine my dream, my goals as a fire that burns within me. I do this mostly because it's the best way to describe my own yearning to be "more than" what I currently am, to progress constantly and explosively within my own life. Instead of the haters extinguishing that fire, or lessening it's fervor, each and every time someone doubts my dream, or speaks to lessen it in any fashion, I picture them dumping gas on my passion, causing it to swell and gain in strength. The urban colloquialism of "haters gonna hate", is a simple reality of life, people will attempt to drag you down to their own stagnancy, to their own mediocrity, however I encourage you to hear the "hate", to embrace the haters and allow them to fuel that which drives you forward.

In this new year, I have one major goal to tackle, and while I'm not naive in the fact that it's going to take work, and it may take much more work than I've originally dreamed, I know that I will concur that goal, because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone-it I don't care about the haters! I encourage you all to take on a similar stance towards haters for if we all reach for the stars, the light will only allow each of us to shine brighter against the darkness.

New Year, new goals.

2015 is upon us. We're already 5 days into the year, resolutions have been made, and many have probably already been broken. This year I won't be focusing on "resolutions" but solid goals in several aspects of my life. For those that don't know, physically last year was a time of ups and downs for me, I completed my first triathlon, and then had two surgeries, both for gout, that kept me sidelined for the rest of the year. Thanks in large part to the healthy eating habits, and great nutrition in my ViSalus shakes I have been able to, even with a physical activity level near zero, keep my weight under control, and while I have gotten a little bit softer over the last 4 months, I've kept the "beer gut" at bay!

2015 will be another rough year physically as I'm still recovering from one surgery and have one more scheduled for early in the year, so I'll be sitting on those aforementioned sidelines for most of this year as well. While I could look at this as an end of the road, I've been able to recognize it for what it is, simply a road block along the way. In some ways being able to keep my physical goals lower than they have been in the past, i.e. this year I'm simply looking to maintain a healthy weight throughout my invalid phase, I've been able to focus more clearly on my business, personal, and professional goals for the new year.

So here they are my personal, business, and financial goals for 2015:

Personal: While I've taken on a lot as far as job responsibility in the past year, going from working at an MSP to running IT for a reasonably sized regional company, for the most part entirely alone, I've struggled throughout in maintaining a separation and distance from my work and home life. My goal in 2015 is to devote more time with my family, to miss fewer events and to be there more both for my son and my wife. I will also grow myself, in several areas, fitness, gaming, and online journalism to help support my business goals.

Business: My business goals actually reside in several areas, a brand launch with a new friend that is already gaining momentum, my ViSalus goals, and the launching of an entirely new venture that finds me in a vertical that is new to me as far as monetizing goes. For the brand launch, along with my partner I hope to have built a 50k user Facebook Fan base by mid year, and be talking about expanding our purely Facebook presence into a full-featured website with e-commerce capabilities. For my ViSalus business, this year I will hit regional director, and be driving a BMW, helping countless others achieve their goals along the way. As for my new venture, it's been a project that's loomed in my mind for quite some time, and I've honestly been "too scared" to give it a go, but my biggest goal for this is to, in some fashion, have created a reliable revenue stream out of this avenue by mid-year, at which point I plan to refocus and see where it can take me.

Professionally: Two bigs goals in this field, one is to establish myself as a programmer, which will mean learning software development from scratch, and devoting a large amount of time to study of that craft. Along with this developing in my current IT niche, both with certifications, and continued education will be key to realizing my long term (post 2015 goals).

There you have it, my goals for 2015. While I hadn't exactly planned on "penning" these out in this particular forum, I'm glad that I did and hope that you will join me in keeping me accountable, and please take a moment in the comments below and share some of your goals for 2015, and I will do my best to check up with you!

Happy New Year to all, and may your 2015 be a year of realized and exceeded expectations!

Goals. Or something like them?

Do you have goals?

Do you have goals?

I'll bet the majority of folks reading this would say emphatically "Yes, of course I have goals". My next question would be, does everything that you do in your life reflect those goals? Are you constantly and courageously striving towards them? Are you making waves with your goals? Changing lives? Challenging yourself or others? Are you advancing ever forward toward your goals with every fiber of your being?

Yes?!?! Awesome! You ROCK! You are one of the few, brave, resilient souls that will make a mark on this planet, leave it a better place and in doing so, gain more than you thought possible. You probably don't need this blog, heck you're probably not reading this blog because you're out affecting change in your world. Here's a hearty internet pat on the back for you, keep up the good work.

No? You're floundering? Struggling? Treading water? Maybe you're "in a holding pattern" or a "rebuilding phase". There's all sorts of names that you can assign to times when you're not chasing your goals, but the truth is, if you're not working on it, than it's NOT a goal, it's a dream.

Dreamers are great, god bless them, they dream up imaginative, creative things, some of which get given to doers that go out and create incredible works. Without dreamers our society would not be as enriched, I don't write this to drag down the dreamer, I applaud them. I write this to encourage you to be honest with yourself about which one you are.

Are you a dreamer, or are you working on your goals?

True goals can be birthed from dreams, many are. Many are also birthed from practicality, or a need for something not found in your current existence. Dreams have to turn a corner though, to become goals. It's the action, the effort, the simple fact that forward progress is being made that turns dreams into reality.

Life is full of seasons, I've heard that manny times and you can in your life be both a goal seeker and a dreamer at different times, but pretending that you're seeking a goal when you're simply dreaming is a sure way to set yourself up for frustration. Telling yourself that you are chasing a goal, when not putting in the action is the surest way to ensure that you will quit before you ever get any where close to that goal.

Today I was dreaming, literally laying in bed asleep, my alarm went off at the assigned time to wake me for an early morning cycling session, I made the conscious choice at that moment to go from being a true dreamer to truly seeking my goals. While this is a little bit of "literal hyperbole" it's that same sort of get up, get out of bed, and go sweat action that will take your dreams and make them a reality. Today I didn't reach my goals, my goals truth be told are pretty lofty, but today I made progress, today I advanced, and I know that today I'm one step closer to my goals, and that feels good.

JUMP.

A wise friend recently told me a fantastic story that I just had to share. Three frogs are sitting on a log, one frog decides to jump off the log, how many frogs are left? Simple math right, this is kindergarden type stuff, I bet you didn't even have to use your toes to answer this one! You answered two, right? Well if you did, you'd be wrong, you see there's still 3 frogs sitting on this faithful log. The key word here is that I said that one frog decided to jump off of the log, the problem is he never actually did.

How many of us in our personal or professional lives have been that one frog, the one that "decides to jump" but finds himself still sitting on the log? The real lesson to be learned here is that you will never get anywhere by simply making a decision. While making the choice to do something is an important step, as there are few truly successful people that ended up there purely on accident without first deciding that they would be great, but the common thread in all great successes is that there is an action that follows the decision.

You see Thomas Edison decided he was going to invent the lightbulb, but it wasn't until after over 1,000 times "failing" to create that lightbulb that he actually came up with a working bulb. The decision to create the lightbulb was integral here, but without the action of creating it, Sir Edison would simply be another one of histories great dreamers, and it is likely that you may never had heard his name.

For every Michael Jordan out there that has put in the hard work, time and effort to become the best in their field, sport, or vocation, how many others "decided" that they were going to be the best, but never jumped off their respective logs?

So the biggest question after realizing this is how do you make the leap, how do you take the action, what is the magic formula to actually getting off that darn log? Well the answer is simple really, so simple that most of us miss it because we, as humans, must endever to complicate things to the point that our productivity simply becomes activity and we never actually get off the log. We love to plan how to get off the log, talk about the different technologies and philosophies surrounding log jumping, even read books from people who have jumped off the log before us, but it is the rare person that actually makes that fateful leap and pursues their dreams.

The answer to how we jump off the log is this; just JUMP!

Not to complicated is it? Here's my question for you to ask yourself, if it's this simple why haven't you jumped?