During January many of us spend time setting goals and making plans. Often these are based on our aspirations, who we want to become. But there’s another side to this, sometimes we need to set goals based on who we don’t want to become.

Matt Linderman on the SvN Blog had a great take on this, start with an enemy, what you don’t want to become. Is there a firm that you just hate, can’t stand, don’t respect? What is it that makes your blood boil? How can you design your service offering to be totally the opposite from that? Better yet, how can you design your service offering to appeal to a large market segment that also hates that thing?

Maybe it’s worth an hour or so to thing about what you don’t want out of 2010, who you don’t want to become, and things that you shouldn’t be spending your time on. This is tricky, you don’t want to trigger a fear response, “If I don’t accomplish this thing then I’m going to be doomed to be that person I hate.” But we can use these things we are driven away from to set a direction or position, then set a positive goal of what you want to become.

For example, I don’t want to grow my business just for the sake of getting bigger. I want us to impact more businesses and create workplaces where people love to come to work. I hate the idea of growth for the sake of getting bigger, but I do want us to work with more companies and have more impact. So I might set a positive goal of finding better ways to measure the impact we’re having on our client companies. This would both insure that we are making positive change and prevent us from taking on work where we can’t have that kind of impact.

What do you hate enough to get out of your comfort zone and accomplish this year?

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Brad Farris is a small business advisor with Anchor Advisors, Ltd. in Chicago, Il. Since 2001 Anchor Advisors has been helping creative professional firms to grow, by helping them clarify their purpose, get the most from their people, keep their eye on key performance measures, and implement consistent processes. Brad is also the author of The Business Owner’s Champion: 6 Practices to Build your Nerve and your Business.