Regardless of what your resolutions are for next year, let me toss out a proposition to you.

Operate from a personal code of ethics.

What flaky thing is this – this personal code of ethics?

Think about successful businesses. They operate from a clear vision and set of guiding principles or a set of values.

Churches, restaurants, online superstores all do it. We typically like to visit and buy from the ones who have clarity around what is important and stick vehemently to them.

Why shouldn’t individuals who want to do good work and create better stories for themselves and others do the same thing?

Todd Henry writes in his book Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day that one of the most important things we as creative individuals can do (we’re all creative on some level) is to operate from a core personal code of ethics.

This code of ethics describes how we want to engage our work, loosely defined as anything we do that brings value, encouragement, and life to others.

Other folks have written about focusing on one word for a year.

Another guy always chooses three words as guiding themes for a year.

Just Try It

Pick one word, two words, three words, or four words. Don’t pick any words.

Just have an idea of what is vitally important to you.

If you know that you are awesome at listening, listen like your life depended on it.

If you know that you’re ridiculously good at being organized, help the rest of us that suck at it.

If you know that you want to do more excellent work, spend a year learning how to dot i’s and cross t’s.

I think it’s a worthy exercise. Pick a word or four. Operate from them. Pick a couple words that describe your strengths and leverage them. Pick one or two that are weaknesses and improve (even though I think it’s much more important to get better at what you’re already good at than it is to improve on deficiencies, especially in the talent arena. If it’s a character defect, then perhaps you need to focus on that thing).

What do you want to characterize your engagement in 2014 and beyond? Write a few words down.

I’ve selected Courage, Generosity, Diligence, and Meticulousness.

I probably should toss in patience or fun because I’m a dad and my kids are 5 and 6. They need both patience and fun from their dad.

Regardless, as we head into the Starting Well Challenge on January 2, I encourage you to let this idea marinate in your noggin for a couple days. Even if plans and goals don’t shake out like you hope, having an anchor like a code of ethics (or one simple theme) should have a positive impact.

Take out an index card and write out a few words, perhaps a sentence or phrase to describe why you chose those words. You can change them later if you want to.

Questions:

• What words would you like to describe your upcoming year?
• How would you like to engage your work? Your family? That one thing you know you’ve needed to focus on for a while but just haven’t been willing to?

If you want to join us for the 2014 Starting Well Challenge, drop your name and email below. it won’t blow your mind or rock your world, but it just might help get your year kicked off a bit more intentionally.

 

While the overall purpose for having a plan is to become more and more intentional with our decisions and give ourselves the best chance to succeed, there is something else that having a plan can do.

A playbook or a plan for the year, a system of goals and habits, can be sterile. In reality, the type of plan that we’ll be working on in the Starting Well Challenge is more or less a building block toward an overall life plan (check out Michael Hyatt’s wonderful and free resource on life planning).

A life plan–or even an annual plan–isn’t simply about hitting numbered goals. It’s about telling a better story with our lives.

Creating a New Story

Having goals can be an arbitrary practice. It’s never bad to have them, but it’s hard to be driven by them.

You select a number, give yourself a set amount of time, and see if you can hit the number–a weight, an income, a mileage for a run. If you don’t, you either try again or shame yourself and give up (or somewhere in between). There needs to be a compelling purpose behind the goal.

For example, let’s assume (rightly), that I’d like to weigh 180 lbs. I know I’ll feel better. I know I’ll be healthier.

But unless my plan of achieving 180 pounds is connected to a purpose, then my efforts will be weaker than they could be.

What if my goal of 180 pounds contributed to creating a better story? What if, instead of memories of tall stacks and heaps of bacon and ESPN every Saturday morning, I had memories of playing soccer with the kids in the park?

What if, instead of eating nachos and drinking too many beers every night, I set things in motion now that 30 years from now at 72 I will be dominating in the men’s doubles tennis leagues, right before going to see my grandkids and running around playing soccer in the park with them just like I did with their parents when I was 42?

180 is nice. But being healthy and energetic to give my kids and grandkids fun memories is a story with a purpose.

A Plan Supports the Story and the Story Supports the Plan

A plan and a story go hand in hand. The story we want to tell is the ‘why’ of our plan. But the plan provides the ‘how’ and ‘what’.  If you don’t have both, achieving the goal will be difficult.

Having a fun dreamy story is nice, but without a plan, it’s a dream. Having a plan and a goal in mind is helpful, but without a story or dream attached, it’s tough to find the motivation.

Don Miller, in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, talks at length about the fact that most of us are not telling compelling stories with our lives.

He writes,

“Here’s the truth about telling stories with your life. It’s going to sound like a great idea, and you’re going to get excited about it, and then when it comes time to do the work, you’re not going to want to do it… People love to have lived a great story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain.”

Having a plan is the first step toward doing the work it takes to create a great story.

To that end, I’d love you to join us starting this Thursday, January 2. That’s when the 2014 Starting Well Challenge will get underway.

We’ll focus mostly on how to create a plan to leverage your talents, time, and even treasure to help you create great stories for the upcoming year and beyond.  We’ll spend at least one day on this idea of story.

The Challenge will consist of 14 daily emails, walking you through a process to do the following:

1. Review 2013.
2. Brainstorm and filter a set of goals, outcomes, or changes for 2014.
3. Identify your contexts or roles – and the stories you want to tell in each of those roles.
4. Help install practices to support the outcomes you want.
5. Create a personal culture to give yourself the best chance to win.

Enter your name and email below or follow this link to sign up. It’s free (although you’ll be on this blog’s email list – which is easily unsubscribable when the Challenge is done).