Have a Meaningful Year

Happy New Year!  What a wonderful feeling it is to have that “blank slate” approach to life.  So many good intentions.  So much to achieve. So much to hope for.

However…… let’s be realistic. Not to bring the mood down or anything, but how many of your January goals did you achieve last year?  Or the year before? Or the year before that? You get the gist.

In my experience, New Year’s Resolutions only work if they are applied on a broader scale and time frame.  Ironically, it is sometimes easier to change your life than it is to make one year goals.  This is not to say that you can’t do both.  But be gentle with yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But it was built on tremendous knowledge and a team based effort.

Everyone has vastly different personal goals but there are a few common themes that tend to appear among a large percentage of us.  These being, weight loss, getting more fit, earning more, improving relationships or acquiring specific assets.  But the one that stands out for me and one that is extremely difficult to measure, is the pursuit and acquisition of happiness.  Another is having more time.  Time with our family and friends and time on our own to concentrate on the things that make us happy.

One personal  goal I am more than happy to share with you is related to that ever persistent issue of time and how it gets used.  I cannot count how many times last year people referred me to podcasts, books or Ted Talks that they knew I would enjoy and find helpful and my immediate thought was “when I have time”. Guess how many podcasts or Ted Talks I listened to last year? As a total? Zero. Nothing. Embarrassing.

As some of us are still enjoying the holidays relaxing, I thought it might be helpful to compile a list of Ted Talks that can be watched in full or just in snippets. With each and every one of the following I found some stand out knowledge that has already made an indentation on my life.

Now to put them into practice.

I hope you find some of these helpful too.