For several years now, I've been setting yearly goals at the beginning of the new year, and reviewing the goals from the previous year.

I'd like to share some of the lessons I learned from reviewing my goals for 2007, in the hopes that you can learn vicariously through my failures. :)

1. The value of minimum commitments. A big success I had this year was to practice yoga asana daily. While I didn't hit every single day, I practiced very consistently, which is the first time I've done exercise daily. A key was that my goal was 20 minutes daily, which didn't allow me to weasel out of practicing. I didn't think 20 minutes would be enough, but many days this is all I did, and I found it very beneficial physically, as well as emotionally. Try asking "what's the minimum I'm committed to?" with your goals.

2. Strong determination for gaining momentum. Even though I was excited about practicing yoga, when it came time to practice, I still didn't want to do it! But I held myself to my commitment, and it took about 3 months before I felt weird if I didn't do yoga right before bed. Combined with the minimum commitment, this kind of holding yourself to the fire is very useful for getting going on a new habit. Patiently persist for the first few weeks or months!

3. Some goals take much longer than you'd like. About half of my goals on my list didn't get achieved. Why? Because my timeline was waaaaaay off. I guess this is a case of the saying "most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade." There's an exponential growth curve to personal development--it seems like nothing is happening for a while, and then BAAAM! Your outcome arrives like magic. Be patient and kind to yourself if other things need to happen first before you can reach your goals.

4. The value of precise, expert help. I've had digestive troubles most my life. This year I got help from an herbalist and now they are mostly healed. It took 7 months working with him, changing my diet, slurping down gross chinese herb teas, and cutting out chocolate and caffeine, but it worked, and now I don't have chronic stomach pain. And more than that, I now have real data about my situation--e.g. if I drink a cup of green tea or eat some tofu, within 30 minutes my stomach will be inflamed and within an hour I'll be heading for the bathroom. Knowledge is power--go get expert help.

5. Follow the rabbit hole. Several of my goals ended up going in very different directions than I thought. I typically set "outcome specific" goals, as is recommended in almost every book on goal-setting. For example, I set a goal "learn systems theory." I imagined this to consist of reading several books on the subject. I didn't read any books on systems theory, but instead my mind opened up this year to thinking more systemically! This is far better, but I couldn't have imagined this before starting down the path. Sometimes it's better to follow your intuition than stick rigidly to your idea of how things should be proceeding.

6. Experiences change habits. I mentioned above that I healed my digestion this year. In large part this came from stopping certain habits that were causing problems, like drinking caffeine. How did I give up my delicious green tea? Well, my herbalist had me remove all potential allergens for a period of time, then reintroduce them. Removing the allergens cured my chronic stomacheache. Then I drank a cup of tea and within minutes I was in pain. Now I know that tea comes with a side of bellyache! It's an easy choice to drink something herbal instead. If you are having trouble quitting a habit, find a way to experience the real consequences--or if there aren't any, just enjoy it!

7. The power of relationships. Many of my goals were achieved magically when I joined the team at Falling Fruit. Many others were achieved in my intimate relationship. I had envisioned achieving these goals on my own, but they happened far more easily by working with others, and as a side-effect of the things we were doing together! Remember that you don't have to do it alone, and many times it's easier not to!

I hope that was useful to you.

Here's a simple process for reflecting and setting goals for the new year. Simply ask and answer the following questions. It will be more powerful if you share this process with someone you love.

• How was 2007? List memories, accomplishments, challenges, and life changes.
• What did I learn from my goals for 2007?
• What do I want to create for 2008? What does wild success look like?
• What can I definitely commit to achieving in 2008? Remember: minimum commitments, with strong determination.
• What's on the someday/maybe list for 2008? These are other things you might do, but aren't committed to.
  
• What are some other intentions, affirmations, and orientations for 2008? These are things like "Be Proactive" instead of "Initiate 5 things daily at work."
• What magical things am I open to receiving in 2008?

May 2008 be your best year yet.

It seems like everyone is talking about the end of the world.

Conservative Christians interpret every bit of news from the middle east as evidence that a Jewish mystic from the 1st century is coming back to condemn us for having premarital sex.

Leftists on the other hand, prefer to use predictions from violent primitive civilizations plus the evidence of global climate change and depleting oil supplies as "proving" that we are about to experience a total crash of civilization, sending us (at best) back to the 1850's industrial age.

Meanwhile the transhumanists seem to think that things are inevitably getting better, and at an exponential rate, unless of course self-replicating nanobots eat the biosphere.

And of course, there are still many missing nukes, and many terrorists who'd like to use them.

Perhaps one of these scenarios will occur, or perhaps not. Y2K and 911 if anything simply boosted the economy, especially in the bottled water and canned food sectors.

So what's a reasonable person to do? Here are my 7 hot tips for preparing for the uncertain future:

1. Develop a sense of humor. No matter what happens, it's gonna be hilarious! Wouldn't it be great to see Jesus come back and tell us that we are all going to be eaten by nanobots because we didn't conduct enough Mayan human sacrifices to the oil gods?

2. Meditate. No doubt, the future is going to be weird! The best way I've found to develop the ability to roll with the weirdness is to practice non-attachment, and meditation is a great way to do that. Plus meditation helps one develop an ability to see things as they are, and to enjoy the present moment.

3. Get healthy. Whether we are heading towards a post-oil apocalpse or a transhumanist immortality in the metaverse, your health matters more than ever. Aim for the kind of health that will lead to a long life, with a robust immune system. That way you can live long enough to experience as much of these strange times as possible!

4. Drop the drugs. Drop pot and cocaine in particular, as they tend to make people paranoid. We have enough to be worried about as it is--we don't need any additional drug-induced paranoia. I have a hypothesis that many of the conspiracy theories and apocalptic visions of the left are simply pot-induced paranoid fantasies. Do some personal growth work on paranoia and worry. Learn to let go and accept your own death (read Who Dies? by Stephen Levine).

5. Think in systems. Only systems-thinking solutions will work for systems-level problems. Global warming is largely a problem of imbalance in the carbon cycle--we've moved much of the carbon that was stored in trees and fossils into the atmosphere, and removed many of the trees that kept the system balanced. Learn the systems archetypes. Study systems theory, on all levels.

6. Think in probabilities and models. Modern science no longer considers absolute truth attainable, but rather thinks in terms of useful models and approximations. Alfred Korzybski pioneered thinking this way in all domains, which he called General Semantics. Read Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology to begin to think with more sanity and less dogmatism.

7. Become incredibly curious about the human addiction to certainty. Expose yourself to several intelligent yet contradictory perspectives on the future. Read The Long Emergency and The Singularity is Near and Natural Capitalism and 2012. Argue one at a time that each one poses an exact view of the inevitable future. Then, try to figure out which one or combination of which ones are "correct." Let all these perspectives go. Become incredibly curious about the human addiction to certainty.

Have a wonderful day! And try to relax, ok? :)

Perhaps there will be a coming apocalypse, but there is also a lot of evidence that things are getting better, and that solutions to our biggest problems are emerging.

2 examples for today, based on 2 principles of Natural Capitalism:

1) Turning carbon dioxide into fuel. Whether this particular invention works or not (I'm guessing not), this is a great way of thinking! One could call this an example of biomimicry, in which we model what nature does, in this case photosynthesis. If we could get something like this to work, especially with nanotechnology, we would be eliminating problems of global warming while simultaneously producing energy from "alternative" fuel sources. Wow!

2) Movie rentals from iTunes. You can now download a movie, watch it, and 24 hours later it disappears back into the ether. Renting is an example of the service-based economy, or as the marketers are calling it, the "experience economy." This is just one example. Why is this good? The purchasing of experiences and not products encourages companies to reuse the things that create the services. For example, if everyone leased cars (purchased transportation), car companies would have motivation to build cars to be deconstructed and reused for new cars. Plus we would be selling the thing that actually meets the need--transportation--instead of the thing itself. This leads to the meeting of human needs without the creation of unnecessary "stuff."

Is the world actually becoming a better place? To what extent do our filters determine whether we see a bright green future or a bleak post-apocalyptic nightmare? And what effect do our filters have on the future we create together?

Studies of optimism show that people with an optimistic explanatory style are less accurate than pessimists, but are happier. In my experience, when I'm optimistic I'm more likely to try something new. This emergence of novelty seems to be key for finding novel solutions to our problems.

This guy is outta control:

One could learn a lot about modeling others behavior from someone like this.

This guy is right about something. He intuits that something is dying.

In the Tarot, the card for death indicates symbolic death which precedes all change or transformation.

Trust your intuitions, but rigorously question your interpretations.

Kevin Kelly is an uber-geek. He's been on the net so long his personal domain name is only two characters long (kk.org). Here is his suprising answer to why he is optimistic:

I am optimistic because I think that while disease, illness, stupidity, wickedness, problems, and evil fill 49% of the world, health, wisdom, light and goodness fill 51% -- and that tiny 2% difference compounded over time is what makes civilization and cultural.

That makes a lot of sense to me--the power of little acts of courage and kindness with compounding interest leads to exponential growth given time.

Hat tip to Mark Hurst.