It's the time of the year when many people start looking forward to next year - when businesses set their targets, when individuals resolve to better themselves. But normal businesses, taking the normal approach to budgeting will spend the coming year living down to their expectations. And, as for the ordinary-minded individual... it's never long until their resolves peters out. With a view to uplifting you - towards an emboldened perspective on what you can achieve (effortlessly) - today sees the start of a series of videos that explore how best to set your goals - business and personal - and, then how best to achieve them.

A couple of people have suggested that last week's story amounts to State-sponsored theft - and, indeed, it does. But it's far from unique.

I had cause to drive to Bavaria recently - a trip that took me through Switzerland and Austria - the Austrian leg being no more than a dozen kilometres. As I crossed the border from Switzerland, the Austrian border post was all closed up. But, I noticed, there was a line of traffic - must have been a couple of kilometers long - on the other side of the road, cars trying to get into Switzerland.

When I got to the Austrian border post on the German border, I discovered what was going on. Again, there was nobody manning the border on the side of the road where you entered Austria. And there was a long line of traffic leaving Austria. At the top of this line six white vans were parked - each manned by three border guards, each equipped with a mobile office and, most importantly, a credit card terminal. The border guard explained that, when entering Austria, I should have paid a €30 toll. As I had failed to pay this, I now had to pay a €200 fine - or they would impound my car!

Whilst Swiss Rail is involved in State-sponsored theft, the Austrian border patrol is involved in highway robbery!

I'm a few weeks short of the eighteenth anniversary of the day that I started working for myself - doing what I do now. Given my previous background in management, some of my early work as a consultant centred on helping clients construct their strategic plans - their mission, their vision... all the good stuff that consumes big business's imagination. Sadly, though, imagination rarely transforms into doing. And, there are only so many strategic plans, that are never implemented in a remotely recognizable way, that you can be party to. Sooner, rather than later, I got fed up talking to people who weren't even sure what their mission statement was, never mind what it meant!

In business - in life - people seem to think that planning is an end in itself. Even if that were true, the plans that most businesses and most people set for themselves are constructed from an ordinary-minded perspective. Do that and you will always short-change yourself! Extraordinarily successful people see things differently and, most importantly, do things differently.

Goal setting is the catalyst for doing. Setting extraordinary goals demands that, to achieve them, we do extraordinary things. Extraordinary does not mean becoming a world-renowned superhero! Extraordinary means out of the ordinary - different. And we're not good at doing different. As a result, we ordinarily find ourselves disappointed that we didn't get a different outcome from doing the same old, same old...

Today, we start a series of videos - ordinarily each week's video stands alone - the next few weeks' Ezines will be out of the ordinary! Starting with an exploration of the difference between a plan to keep doing a little more of what we're already doing (which actually isn't really much of a plan at all) and dreaming big dreams, the series will move onto doing the little things that relentlessly lead to the effortless achievement of those big dreams.

Your tomorrow is created today. And, although what you do now needs the context that goals provide, what you do now determines what happens next.