Newsletter | Mar/Apr 2012


Report: Set Your Priorities & Vision for Your 2012 Success!

by Eliza Hart, www.hartwrightarchitects.com
On Feb. 21, 2012, "Set Your Priorities & Vision for Your 2012 Success!" was presented by Maria Cristini, certified Professional and Personal Life Coach.

At the beginning of the talk, Maria described what life coaching is and a story of why she became one. She explained that coaching is about imagining a better life, setting goals and achieving them in an organized and effective way.

The first method of figuring out a goal is to set aside "should do's" doubts and fears. Ask yourself, what do I want to do, what do I love doing, and what would make me excited to have done in 2012. The job of a coach is to ask many questions and be a sounding board for the goals, desires and doubts we all have.

The body of Maria's presentation was to have all of the attendees do an exercise together. We would choose one of our 2012 goals and set a strategy for achieving it. She handed out a sheet with an image she called "The Wheel of Life". It is a circle with pie slices each representing an aspect of life. The categories were: Career, Finances, Heath and Fitness, Friends and Community, Family, Significant Other, Personal Development, Spirituality, Fun and Recreation and Physical Environment. As an attendee, I'll say that a great benefit of having this wheel is that it makes you see the parts of your life and you immediately start to think about them. On each slice, we were asked to write down some goals. We would then be asked to choose one to focus on for the remainder of the session.

The second page of Maria's hand out was a sheet that stated: "At the end of 2012, I will be celebrating___" Including a space for a theme, and the year's top priorities. A third sheet was titled "Breakthrough Goals". Breakthrough goals are unique to each situation and allow you to move past a sticking point on the path to achieving the main goal. If you create a set of breakthrough goals, it divides the big goal into smaller achievements thereby assuring success with the big goal.

She divided us up and we had to choose the goal to focus on for the session. We wrote it out on the celebration sheet, listed breakthrough goals, our priorities and then listed the reasons why we wanted that goal. After discussions in smaller groups, Maria had volunteers share their goals with the whole group. Following more discussion, several other attendees shared their goals as well and there was discussion until the end of the program.

In summary, the presentation gave us a clear methodology for accomplishing things in our lives. The handout is a blueprint for any goal, any time, and we were encouraged to continue to flesh out more goals on our own.


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