It’s not too late to choose your three words for 2011, my much-preferred alternative to New Year’s resolutions. I’ve picked mine, and this year it wasn’t hard at all. What my life needs this year is pretty obvious.
Two of my three words last year – proclaim and connect – were mostly focused outward, and they were the two I felt least successful with. My other – bamboo – was an inward goal, and it proved to be the most essential one, far more than I realized at the time.
Looking back on the year and my three words, I got a much clearer sense of where my life is right now. I realized I haven’t done the inner work – all the physical, health, emotional, and creative work – I need to do to get to a place of feeling grounded and strong enough for everything I want to do for my family, to achieve personally, and to work toward for the greater community. So I’m making building that foundation and creating good things out of that my focus for 2011.
Renew – Continue building on my recovery from The Great Burnout. What I’ve been doing with my running and much improved diet has slowly but surely helped me renew my strength and commitment and brought me to a much better place. But I have much more to work on. This is about practicing things that are good for me (diet, exercise, reflection, reducing stress as much as is realistic) so I can be the father, husband, and advocate I seek to be.
Simplify – My life is very cluttered and disorganized, but much of that is my responsibilty. Rather than try to organize the chaos, I’ve decided to try to simplify it first. Instead of attempting to keep up with the eleventy billion things on my to-do list, I’m going to work on choosing the most important handful of those and putting the rest out of sight somewhere. And I know I’ll have to be cutthroat about some things. For example, I like being on Facebook and Twitter and get a lot out of connecting with other people, but it does come at the expense of other things around here. I may skim over that longer list periodically to see if it’s time to take action on any of them, but my goal is to keep my focus on the essentials so I can actually make progress on them. This leads naturally into…
Finish – Like I said, I have eleventy billion things I keep wanting to do. Every year that list gets longer because every year I carry over eleventy billion minus maybe three things from the year before. It’d surprise me if I even get three important things done a year. I want to change that this year. Whichever of those goals I decide to focus on and put on my essentials list, I want to finish them. I’ve been wanting to do certain things for much of my life, but every year they get deferred and never done. Life happens and you don’t always get to do what you want, but a significant part of this is still my responsibility. I can finish some and finish major parts of others, but I haven’t. I both want to explore why I’ve done this in the past and take steps to turn these wishes and ideas into reality.
My first very concrete finishing goal is to run a marathon. It’s a great symbol for ‘finish’ because it has a very literal finish, 26.2 miles from the start at a very specific place and time. I decided to go bold and set a strong, positive tone for the year. I signed up for a local marathon at the end of March and am well into my training for it. I ran 12 miles yesterday and felt pretty good. I originally planned to just do a half-marathon in April and the full in November. It’s the ‘just’ that’s gotten me into trouble in the past. It’s often led to ‘maybe’ or ‘possibly’ and ‘it didn’t work out so perhaps next year’ and then not at all. I’ve dreamed of running a marathon for the last 15 years. This year I’m doing it. And it won’t be the only thing I finish this year.
So there it is.
How are you going to make 2011 great?
Posts that hopefully are similar:
- A Journey of a Thousand Miles
- Three Words for 2012
- Lessons from the Road – One Year Later
- 2012 – An Invitation to the Year of Getting Your Crap Together
- Why Do I Run?
- Finally Picked My Three Words for 2010
- Goals for 2012
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Guys
Just wanted to follow up on an email exchange we had a while ago (right before my two year old was headed off to a multi-disciplinary team eval for diagnosis and treatment). I just wanted to let you know how much your honesty and humor and candor and truth have inspired this “fly on the wall,” mama. It takes a lot of courage to do and to write and to be and I appreciate you both for sharing. I love the way you see the beauty and strength in your beautiful children and how you look to their gifts rather then their deficits (I know, I know, some days we all are about deficits no matter how hard we try). While our son does not have Autism, he has a host of other issues that are challenging (Severe Apraxia, motor planning and sensory issues). I still think he is the sweetest, smartest, funniest kid in the world! Just today I found myself crying in the most inappropriate setting to an Audiologist of all people. She said something to the effect that I sure was signed up for a lot (meaning our son’s hearing loss and other issues and the fact that my husband recently had a kidney transplant). I started crying because in that moment I saw things for how others see them and then realized how different they are from the truth of my experience. While I never would have wished these challenges on our little guy, I see them for what they are, challenges. Also, in that moment I realized how his challenges have provided me the opportunity to become incredibly attuned to him and how emotionally attached, connected and bonded we are. When other parents can sit back and let the kids play and watch videos, this helicopter mama is doing flashcards, puzzles and speech drills. I am my child’s mom, interpreter, chef, driver, dresser, play mate, best friend, (sometimes worst enemy), but more then anything, I am so incredibly loved and for that I am SUPER grateful.
Happy New Year to you all!
PS. I remember that J-man struggles with Apraxia. We have a FANTASTIC Apraxia specific therapist who is also an Autism expert. She has done so much for us and set us up with an amazing home program….if you ever want to share tips or materials, let me know!
Best,
Kim
Thank you Kim! I had that same type of conversation with our chiropractor recently. I mentioned that my arms just felt really weak lately (it seems to have been a weird side effect of the antibiotics, so I’m OK now), and he said, “Well, your life has been pretty stressful lately, what with the J-man being out of school, and you being in the hospital with a massive infection, and” blah blah blah. I just looked at him and shrugged, and then he said, “I know, YOU don’t think that’s anything but your LIFE, but from the outside it looks pretty stressful.”
He was right. It is just my life. I’m happy to have this life. The love that surrounds me from my husband and kids makes me happy to have this life.