Use birthdays and other gift-giving holidays to help reach your goals

Suggest to friends and family that for your birthday, Christmas, Hanukah, etc., you would much rather receive goal-related gifts than a new set of bath salts or scented candles.  Examples:

Tuition assistance at the college you're attending to get that new degree.

Supplies, or money toward supplies, to open your new business.

A gift certificate to a trendy shop to buy new clothes for that new figure.

An invitation to that networking-central black-tie party to help promote your new business or expand your Rolodex.

A computer program that you need for your new endeavor.

All of these gift ideas give your friends the chance to say, "I love you and support you", and they'll know that not only will their gifts fit (and be the right color), but that they will be used and appreciated far more than another holiday sweater would be.

Soni Pitts

Soni Pitts is a writer and personal life coach currently living in SE Missouri, US.

As a writer, Soni has two main goals. Her first goal is to use her innate copywriting abilities to rid the world of ambiguous, confusing and boring copy. Her second goal is to use her creative writing skills to make a living meeting cool people and doing cool things, then writing about it.

As a personal life coach, Soni works with people who have reached the point of epiphany (eg: "There's got to be more to life than this") rebuild sustainable lives and lifestyles that work for themselves and for the world around them.

She is also the Assistant Community Coach of the Social Capital and Networking Community of CoachVille, and volunteers on the board of her local Habitat for Humanity Affiliate.