I’m a goal driven guy. I love the start of a new year with all the hope and opportunity it brings. Part of our family tradition is to fill out New Years resolutions on January 1st and look back on the previous year.
Over the 15+ years I’ve been doing this, my resolutions have become more refined and structured. Most recently I’ve adopted this model (which I think came from Zig Ziglar back in the day).
I usually jot down a few goals for each of these areas of my life.
This year is different.
This year I looked back at what I set out to do in 2013 as I starting looking forward to this year. Most things I thought were important to accomplish became insignificant the minute I got cancer. I spent much of the year in pain and in treatments so I wasn’t able to do the things I had wanted to do. By the end of the year, those things weren’t even what I wanted to do anyway.
Two weeks into the new year, my New Years resolution page is still blank when the rest of my family has long since completed theirs.
Two things have helped me make up my mind what my resolutions for 2014 look like. The first was a table topics speech in my Toastmasters club which asked each of us to come up with a one word resolution that would guide our year. Mine had to be “healing.” The second was my daughter’s New Years resolution she brought home from school:
That’s me in bed getting better. That is her New Years wish. That is mine as well.
I thanked my Toastmasters club for giving me permission to have a single word be my guiding resolution for the year. It freed me from the pie chart of years past and made me focus on what is really important to me this year. It liberated me from the blank page on my kitchen counter that has plagued me for the past two weeks.
Healing it is. Bring on 2014…