2012 reflections & what will we do with 2013?

Merry (belated) Christmas & Happy (belated) New Years to my family, friends & coworkers:

First, I would like to say how happy I am to be sending you this greeting, which means we survived the Mayan apocalypse on 12/21/12!...but from a purely non biased perspective I'm happy to say this month I've become a grandfather for the first time!  It certainly adds a new perspective on things.  A dear friend of mine asked me "do you know what grandchildren are?....they're a reward for not killing your children!"  With that said, my advice is "don't kill your children!"

It may seem odd to be sharing New Year's thoughts with you at the END of January, but I thought it would be appropriate to let the NEW part of New Year's wear off a little. (I can tell the new is wearing off when I see the parking lot at the gyms start to thin back out again)

New Year's day, I had the blessing of sitting down with my wife and four children to look back on 2012 (it's been a challenging year in our family) to see what we can learn from it.  Then we shared with each other our goals for 2013.  My daughter had the insight to say she'd like to have us all share what their favorite part of 2012 was and what we were looking forward to most in 2013...what a great idea.  If you haven't done the same yourself, give it a try.

As I reflect back on 2012 & look forward to the year ahead, there are several thoughts/quotes that mean a lot to me.  Hopefully you will find some or all of them useful (or entertaining) as well. 

1) The founder of Team Health (the Emergency medicine staffing company I've been blessed to work with since 2005) Dr. Lynn Massingale shared with me several years ago, "I've never had an original thought in my head, but I know good ideas & people when I see them."  I certainly have found this to be a great form of advice: Surround yourself with good ideas & good people. It will most likely bring the best out in you, especially when you consider the opposite.

2) I want to treat my body like I'll live forever and my soul like I'll die tonight.

3) New Year's resolutions.  It may sound like splitting hairs, but I prefer to set goals for myself, not make resolutions.  Over the past couple of years I've tried to sit down with my family so we can share our goals with each other.  This gives us a degree of accountability and a support system at the same time.  My desire is for us to have goals in the "4 foundations of daily life": family/relationships, spiritual, professional/financial and physical.  These goals need to be achieveable & measurable (example: "I want to run a 4 minute mile" unachieveable or "I want to run faster" unmeasureable).  I like to put them down in writing and look at them say 3-6 months later and see how I'm doing. If I need to reassess or readjust, that's ok.  But without goals or direction, you will fall prey to "if you shoot for nothing, you will hit it every time".

4) The Bible describes 3 men in the New Testament that I need in my life to keep me balanced.  (If you aren't familiar with these men, that's ok, but I would encourage you to read about them...like us they were far from perfect, but God used them in mighty ways): A Paul, a Barnabus, and a Timothy.  My "Paul" is someone more mature and wiser than myself who can share with me their successes and failures in a way to guide me in my own life.  My "Barnabus" is someone at essentially the same place in life as myself who can relate to my situation and encourage me as I do the same for them.  My "Timothy" is someone that I can be a Paul to; sharing my successes and failures to guide them along & invest in their growth/development.

5) The longer I live, the more I've been guilty of looking back and saying this has been a "good" or "bad" year, when in fact the "bad year" may have been full of many good things.  I have tried more of late to look at life as "seasons" with some being full of difficult winter storms and others peaceful springtimes.  Every season has it's purpose and they come without my control, so I will try to make the best of each one I live through good or bad, easy or hard, happy or sad. 

6) I want to get in better shape whenever possible, but there are 5 exercises I want to avoid: Jumping to conclusions, Flying off the handle, Carrying things too far, Dodging my responsibilities, and Pushing my luck.

I'm sure you may have more and better ideas/thoughts than these.  I'd love to hear them, so feel free to share.  In the meantime, good success as you move through the beginning of 2013!