Image from http://www.eteamz.com/fcrogue/images/goals.jpg.

There’s a ton of great literature out there on how to set goals. The SMART technique tells us that goals should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely. Other sources advise that goals should be phrased as positive statements (”I will eat healthy foods” vs. “I will quit eating junk food”), and pretty much everyone suggests that we write down our goals to formalize them. This is all great advice, but you could develop and write out the SMARTest goal imaginable and still be missing a very important step: choosing a goal that inspires passion.
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Last week’s Question of the Week addressed the idea of the “forever job”, by which I mean a job that is aligned with your purpose and is a perfect fit for you, now and always. When I answered the question, I noted that–while I’m not convinced that there’s a “forever job” out there for me–I do believe that I have a “forever purpose”, a single message that I’m here to express in this life. Put simply, my message is “You can do it!”–or more accurately, “WE can do it!” (After all, I want to help me too!)

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Ladies (and gents, if you’re out there), prepare to have your mind blown…

Do you remember the Community Experiment I started on July 1? The idea was that I (and any of you who played along) would set an intention to achieve something by July 31. At the end of the month, we’d check in and see what had manifested in our lives in response to that intention. I thought about setting an intention to manifest $1 million…

Image from http://www.millionaire500.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/milliondollardreaming.jpg

…but I decided to stick with something more realistic and believable. My intention was to secure a paid writing assignment unrelated to my full-time job by July 31, 2008.

Funny story.
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If you ask the experts (go ahead, consult the Interweb–I’ll wait), one of the keys to true happiness is to find something you’re passionate about and DO IT. The best case scenario would be to translate your passion into a career, but that doesn’t always work. Some people feel that turning a passion into a job might kill the magic, so to speak. Some people are passionate about something that isn’t easy to turn into a paid gig. For instance, I’m very passionate about running, but I’m fairly confident that no one’s going to pay me to do it. Regardless of whether your passion brings you a paycheck, you still need something in your life that lights your proverbial fire.

Image from http://www.canyon-news.com/artman2/uploads/1/fire_005.jpg

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I’m back in DC after a wonderful trip to San Francisco for BlogHer 08. (I’ll be posting some pictures and writing more generally about the trip later.) You can visit the BlogHer website and read live blogs of all the conference sessions if you’re interested. I highly urge you to attend one the conferences or ReachOut tour dates (I’m planning to go to the DC ReachOut) if you have the chance–they’re worth every penny. I had an amazing time and learned so much, but it’s great to be home!

As you probably saw on the site over the past few days, I was an official live blogger for three conference sessions, one of which was “Building Traffic via Content and Community“. The session was incredibly informative and thought-provoking, and I wanted to talk a bit more about it today. One of the first questions the moderator (Elise of Simply Recipes) posed to the audience was “Why do you blog?”

Er.

Um.

Because everyone else is doing it?

Seriously–I don’t know about you, but I had never asked myself that question before. I’ve given a great deal of thought to what I blog ABOUT (personal development, career, finding your purpose, body image and disordered eating), to the kind of message I want to communicate to my readers (you can do it!), to the way my website looks (snazzy new redesign), but I had never asked myself why I’m blogging in the first place.
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