Today is a funny kind of day, if you ask me… which I am going to assume that you did by virtue of reading this post. Yeah, I am taking more than a little bit of license with that assumption, but seriously… I am whoop-ass incarnate and can pull that kind of thing off. Or at least that’s what I tell myself from time to time.
Anyhoo, the last few days are the time of year when people all around the world taking time to look back on the previous year and look ahead with a bit of hope towards the new year, most often in the form of making resolutions, goals and promises about all of the glorious things they want to do differently. The very notion of only reflecting and goal-setting once a year is anathema to a lot of people, but I don’t tend to get quite so fired up about the process.
First, I think it’s good almost any time we stop to think things over, so if there is a time of year where people decide to stop (even for a moment), I can get behind that. Second, I think all of us are very influenced by the calendar anyway, whether in our work lives (where goals, deadlines and all sort of shenanigans are completely calendar-driven) or in our personal lives as well (bills come monthly, taxes are done once a year, etc.). A continuation of that calendar-affected behavior seems fairly normal to me. That being said… if you just pick a single day to think things over and never consider it again during the year or don’t tweak your goals to accommodate changes in life, well then that’s just plain silly.
Plus, I actually like doing some resolutions. For reasons I have never been able to fully fathom, I tend to do well sticking to them, even when I don’t keep them in my face all year long. Weird, I know.
This year I am approaching it a little differently by thinking about overarching themes for the year and then building more specific goals and actions to go along with those themes. My big themes are as follows:
- Happiness (yes, I know… can I be any more broad???)
- Simplicity
- Inner calm
- Belief in the power of action
Happiness is really a big piece of what drives the other 3 themes, but my focus there is about doing what I can to find my own sense of happiness (i.e. from within as opposed to externally-driven) and doing my best to spread happiness to those closest to me. This notion of my liberally sowing happiness akin to a self-help Johnny Appleseed is really about something I’ve noticed about myself that, truthfully, I really don’t like. What is that? Mostly the notion that I will tend to have less patience and be less polite (at times, mind you) to my own family than I would be to someone who is either a stranger or fairly removed from me. That’s gotta stop… now. And yes, this photo on the right is a perfect example of pure happiness… well, that and complete idiocy on my part.
In terms of actions I plan on taking this year to get at some of these items above? I am still working out a more concrete list, but a few of them are:
- Meditation
- Reading more, watching TV less
- Fighting and fighting hard against anything that even has a whiff of procrastination about it
- Keeping up with my blogging/writing. As a more concrete goal, I want to get an article published over at EliteFTS (if I can figure out something to write they would actually want to print).
- For my training/lifting – not placing any kind of self-limitations on what is truly possible.
There are more specifics here, but I am going to avoid going into inordinate amounts of detail to bore you to utter tears… umm, that’s if I haven’t done so already. I am one wordy sonofagun. Stunner, I know.
If you are performing your own goal-setting right now, I’ve been fortunate enough to either run across some nice links or even have a semi-original thought of my own to assist you through the process:
- If you are looking to get in better shape or lose weight, DO NOT just join a gym if you do not belong already. Seriously. I am fortunate enough to lift in my own home gym as well as at a private training gym, but I’ve spent an enormous amount of time in commercial gyms and joining in early January is a huge mistake. Why? First, you will be lucky enough to join hordes of others doing the same thing, so the gym will be crowded beyond belief. Super fun! Second, I can remember being in the gym during this sad time of year, looking around and thinking with a sigh, “Man… 90% of these people will not be here in a month.” And that’s just the truth.So what to do instead? Find a smaller private place with a qualified training (preferably one with a NSCA certification, especially the CSCS cert). Will it be more expensive to follow this route? Hell yes. Will you actually have a really good shot of meeting your goal? Umm, hell yes again… and isn’t that the point of having the goal in the first place? I might even make an entire post about this later in the week to really hammer this one home.
- If you are in charge of managing, leading or supervisor other people, read this great post by Bob Sutton, Stanford professor and author of Good Boss, Bad Boss
and The No Asshole Rule
. It’s a short and excellent piece about what good bosses think. My favorite is #1 – “I have a flawed and incomplete understanding of what it feels like to work for me.” Pure truth.
- Look back before looking forward. Felicia Day (the pipe dream of comic book and gaming geeks across the globe) put up a great post about… GASP!… learning from what 2010 taught her versus focusing too much on what she plans on doing in 2011. And she learned a few nuggets that you can apply to just about anything in your own life. Nice huh? Plus it’s fun to read the comments from all the dudes have a full on nerdgasm from looking at her photo.
So to 2011, I give you my warmest welcome. My arms, heart and mind are all open… now it’s just up to me to make it special. God help me, I will.
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It’s simple, clear and readily accessible to just about anyone because all of us go through moments in our lives where we scrap, claw and battle… but damn, it sure would help to know if we could even make a change on that thing we war against so fervently. Knowing that line between the changeable and the impossibly fixed would be helpful.