Oh, no! Another one?

The urge to make New Years resolutions and load my conscience with lofty goals of changing the way I do things is seductive. Lose weight, work out, renew old friendships, read more yadda yadda yadda….. We’ve all seen articles about resolutions and how quickly we ‘resolvers’ rationalize them out of existence. Maybe that happens because we set unattainable goals. Dreams are fine and we all owe it to ourselves to have a dream. Where, then, is the balance between having a dream and chasing after something quite impossible to achieve. We set ourselves up for having to come to grips with the concept of failure. I think I’ll keep mine simple this year by setting a resolution that can yield some sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment by being broad enough that it creates opportunities for small victories along the way. Perhaps then, at the end of 2005 I’ll be able to look back and total up a partial list of successes. So here goes: Stephen Covey talks about the concentric circles of our lives in terms of spheres of influence and concern. His counsel is to spend our energies in our sphere of influence. That is so simple that it should be intuitive yet for me it’s very difficult to achieve. There are so many lovely windmills out there inviting a valiant but fruitless charge and I do want to hold on to my windmills. Maybe this year I can just put them in storage for the year and redirect my energy toward making more of 2005 than I did of 2004 in smaller but more direct ways: So for 2005 my goal will be to make more of the year than I did of 2004 by Being kinder to people around me Wasting less time Thinking things through more carefully Paying more attention to the needs of other Listening more actively Judging others less frequently I would say that I’ll report back at the end of the year but hopefully, if I am at all successful you’ll realize it by what you read here. That’s my story and as always, I’m stickin’ to it…