1st February 2013

Aegon: How to overcome the New Year blues

Christmas is well over the New Year is here and RDR is a reality how do you feel? Many people I talk to are slightly shell shocked with all the change that has happened and starting to take stock of their future direction. To be blunt they are suffering from the New Year blues.

Setting and achieving goals is a great way to take charge of your life and create the life you want. Thinking about your dreams, goals and future can play a huge role in moving forward in your life. Reaching a goal you have set can boost your self-esteem, make you feel stronger, create a sense of accomplishment and contribute to your overall happiness—it doesn’t get much better than that!

A great way to get started is to draft a personal profile.

This is a self assessment to identify the direction you wish to take. Why not try this on a piece of paper write down the answers to these questions:

• What are my strengths?
• What special skills do I have?
• What is important and worthwhile to me
• What would be my preferred ways of earning a living?
• What activities or situations do I want to avoid?
• What achievements would I like to list as having been successfully met in my life
• What would I like the highlights of my obituary to be?
   

Set Personal Goals

Answering these questions will enable you to set out more clearly the goals and objectives you want to achieve in your life. The best approach is to work from the long term back to the short term like this:

• What are my long term goals/objectives?
• What are my five year goals /objectives?
• What goals /objectives will I set for achievement within one year

If you take this simple approach this will ensure that you concentrate on those goals and objectives that are important to you. If you find this approach difficult it might be easier to simplify your strategic aims by answering these 5 key planning questions:

1. Where are we now?
2. Where do we want to be in three or five year’s time?
3. What strengths and weaknesses do we have?
4. How can we improve?
5. Can we get to where we want to be?

It is important to remember that goals and objectives must be

• Clear
• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Time bound
• Realistic
• Challenging
• Agreed
• Worthwhile

But most of all any goals or objectives you set yourself must be written down.

Remember you can’t spend all your time planning everyone will need to attain the correct balance between planning and implementation but remember achieving your goals is the fun part and a great way of overcoming the New Year blues.

I will leave you with this thought

"every moment spent planning can save three or four moments in execution".

John Joe McGinley

Head of Business Brain

Aegon January 2013

RDR