Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
-- Omar N. Bradley

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

A small look back, a big leap forward...

Review your goals twice every day in order to be focused on achieving them. -- Les Brown

An important part of any focusing regimen is to set aside time at the end of the day - just before going to sleep - to acknowledge your successes, review your goals, focus on your successful future, and make specific plans for what you want to accomplish the next day. -- Jack Canfield

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year.  It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes.  Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions.  Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. -- Gilbert K. Chesterton

Let's face it.  2015 was not a great year for me.  I'm ending the year with more fails than successes, more questions than answers, more things undone than completed, and more pounds on my hips than I started the year with.  In all of these things -- fails, questions, incompletes, and weight -- I think it's fair to say "less is more."  It's hard to acknowledge my successes from 2015, because I think that the year was spectacularly devoid of them...and so I think the best thing to do, as the year closes out, is to...let it go.  (Ha, you thought I was going to put in a Frozen video here, didn't you?  No, I would not torture you that way.)  Rather than looking backwards and dwelling on the things I have too much of (or even the things I had too little of, like success)...it's time to move forward.  So I've decided to start 2016 today.  A few days early.  Why not?  Calendars are so arbitrary.  :)

I usually make New Year's resolutions.  Why not?  Everyone does.  And everyone fails at them.  And so do I.  But I like the idea of a new me - starting afresh and focusing on my goals.  Of course, everyone does...that's the whole scam of New Year's resolutions, right?  We say we're going to lose weight, save money, be nicer, etc. etc. etc. for a day, or two, or even three...but then old habits kick back in and we go right back to the old us.  I've been reading a lot about habits and change.  I can't promise that I'll get this entirely right, but I think I have a plan to make some better New Year's resolutions...scratch that, some New Me resolutions.  I will set my resolutions in terms of goals, so they can be measured and reviewed.  I will make specific plans and set milestones so I can view progress.  I will acknowledge successes and I will try to understand failures and make adjustments to overcome them.  I will come into 2016 with new eyes and a new soul.  I'm starting afresh and I will be effective.

More about my New Me resolutions later...right now, I have to go run.  Success!

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