How do you feel about goal setting? If you peruse the pantheon of opinion online and other places, you can find diatribes that stand strongly for and against the practice. With the New Year approaching, will you make any resolutions or set any goals?

Some consider goal setting to be absolutely essential. Fans and followers of  Napoleon Hill seem to  think that having a 'definite chief aim' is not only necessary, but that we must be obsessed with that chief aim. Hill, who studied the most successful people on Earth at the turn of fthe 20th century (see Carnegie, Ford, Edison, Schwab et al), instructs his readers to establish a definite chief aim, write it down and read it aloud to themselves every morning and evening. Hill goes on with very specific instructions on getting what you want out of life in his landmark works "The Law of Success" and "Think and Grow Rich". His advice goes quite a few steps beyond making a New Years' Resolution and standard goal setting practices.

To the contrary, Ray Williams wrote an article on financialpost.com that argues that a perceived high level of difficulty of most of the goals we want to achieve introduces fear into the equation. That fear causes our mind to automatically revolt against the new idea, thereby unconsciously sabotaging any goal we set.

Where do you sit on the spectrum? Will you make resolutions for 2012?

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