Thinking Sanely About the Year Ahead and Behind

Like many others I have been pondering the year ahead and the year that is ending.   I have seen that as I get older, I see more nuances, gray areas, and more potential pitfalls.  With all of the nuances and gray areas, we can drive ourselves silly.

There were changes in the past year and there will be changes in the coming year. We had some good changes and some bad changes in the past year.   What will blind-side us and what will pleasantly surprise us?

General Changes

As I get older, I realize that the biggest change is "style."  What is popular and what is in fashion is going to change.  The more it changes, the older we are going to feel.

Some people try to act younger by wearing younger fashions and taking on the current look.  However, it seems that it is quite unbecoming when a 53-year-old white male college professor goes out and gets a pierced ear. There is something about not embracing age and dignity that speaks volumes about character or the lack thereof.

I especially feel old when my son asked me what 2 Legit To Quit meant and who Hammer was as we were watching the New Year's Rockin' Eve tonight.  Growing old does mean experiencing a different world because our culture is changing with the new fashion that is not meant for us but the younger folk and we may feel out of place. 

Successes and Disappointments

Besides experiencing the culture change, we will find ourselves having successes and disappointments.  Life is a series of successes and disappointments.  We can look back in our memories in a nanosecond and remember the would-have's, could-have's, and should-have's.  We also may not be where we expected to be in our careers, our retirement savings, or in our accumulation of wealth.

Some of the disappointments are very real.  Some of the disappointments have been due to the oppressive unfairness of others. Some of the disappointments are from the out-and-out abuse from people in power.  Some of the disappointments have been due to coincidence. Some of the disappointments are just unexplainable as to what caused them. 

Some of the disappointments are out-and-out failure.  We fail.  People fail.  Everyone fails.  Failure hurts. 

We will feel guilty, sad and/or mad with the disappointments. It is a fact of life that we will have strong feelings when significant disappointments happen. How we get through them is up to us.

The reality of coping with disappointments is that our lives cannot just be put on hold because of a disappointment. Even with big disappointments we have to move on in some fashion. Sometimes the disappointments move us in better directions.

On the other hand, we will have successes.  We will get some things that are good.  Some of them will be gifts, and some of them will be successes we earned.  We will feel good and pleased.  Sometimes the failure helps us be successful.

Not all of the successes will be spectacular.  In fact it seems that most of our successes are small and our larger successes are combinations of smaller successes.   Many times it takes work to recognize our successes when we have made a habit of dwelling on disappointments.

Being Grounded

Accepting the change and disappointment is not always easy. Sometimes we are prepared and sometimes we are slapped silly. Also, how much we cherish what we stand to lose plays into the difficult or ease of handling the change.

I cannot begin to go into the different kinds of changes. There are so many possible changes we can experience.

As I look at 2012, I have seen the change of losing my 101-year-old grandmother. As I look ahead I see the changes of my father-in-law being diagnosed with cancer, and my wife's paternal grandmother continuing to decline into that long evening of Dementia of the Alzheimer's type. I see life taking on more and more complexity with different kinds of emotions that are hard to explain and cope with.

In a more global sense, there have been deaths.  There have been a number of massacres and then some of my favorite celebrities have died in 2012.  I figure that celebrities and notables will die and there may be a few more massacres.

As I think about my coping with the changes, I have decided that it has been a matter of having a good emotional and spiritual grounding. Grounding helps us weather the storms of life and the various changes.

Working on being grounded is a personal responsibility. We ground ourselves by cultivating healthy relationships. We ground ourselves by holding on to what we hide in our hearts. We ground ourselves by pursuing what is meaningful and fulfilling to us. We also ground ourselves by creating resources and saving resources.

Lastly, being grounded means looking at what you can do versus overly-focused on what you cannot do.  For all of us, there is so much that we cannot do because we are limited human beings.  There have been, there are, and there will be tragedies happening around us that we cannot only see and will be helpless to prevent. 

Closing Thoughts

As we leave another holiday season and go into another cycle of a year's time, we do not absolutely know what is to happen.  But I am that thinking sanely is being sure that much of the past will repeat itself.  Hopefully we have learned lessons and have grounded ourselves.  It is part of our experience and maybe how many of us will realize our gained wisdom and experience. 







 

Goals (not resolutions) for the New Year

Over the past several years, I have tried to make a list of goals for the new year.  I have not been successful every year in making the list, but it has been helpful when I do.  I think that creating a list of goals makes for a more positive outlook and a balanced life.

I got interested in making lists of goals after listening to a tape by Charles Givens.  He decided on what he wanted to do and achieve.   He said that his list of goals were items that he wrote down with a marker on a pad of paper.  Givens said that when he got done with the list he came up with another list of things that he wanted to do.

Goals: What are they?

My definition of a goal is a desired, specific accomplishment or achievement.  For the purpose of this post--a goal can also be a project.  They can take a few minutes or they can take years.  They can be big or small.  We can have goals for the minute, hour, day, or our lives.

I frankly think that a healthy goal should be something that takes no more than a few years at the most (although it took me seven (7) years to get my Ph.D.).  Otherwise we tend to waste energy when we could accomplish smaller tasks that matter to us.

How do we decide the goals we pursue?

There are many sources of goals.  Ideally goals arise out of our values and principles.  Goals also arise out of corporate mission statements, which are related to individual values and principles.  Goals also arise out of our interests and curiosities.  Goals also arise out of our less-than desirable circumstances (we may decide that we need to find a new job, career, or living situation).

What makes for a good goal?

A good goal should be concrete, measurable, reasonable, and achievable.  A good goal should push you a little and make you work and stretch yourself so that you grow.

To say I want to be a better person or I want to be skinny are not concrete but vague and nebulous and nowhere likely to be accomplished--and lead to hopelessness and frustration and lower self-esteem.  More concrete goals in these cases are I am going to stop swearing or gossiping or I am going to join Weight Watchers and endeavor to lose 30 pounds.

To say I want to be the next Tom Cruise is concrete, and probably measureable, but the only way I could be the next Tom Cruise is to go and legally change my name--and will not make me achieve Hollywood Star status making millions of dollars a picture.  (I actually relish my plain average person status and feel relieved sometimes that the Tabloids are not interested in me and that  Paparazzi do not follow me around trying to get embarassing and unflattering pictures).  Some concrete goals are nothing more than pipe dreams.

Examples of Goals:

The following are lists of good and reasonable goals for average people.

• Run or walk in a mini marathon.
• Plant a garden if you have the space
• Read five books in different subject areas.
• Save a specific amount of money.
• Get specific projects done in your house.
• Redo your resume.
• Find a new job.
• Take a night class (a foreign language class would be good).
• Take the ACT, SAT or GRE test this year.
• Go back to school
• Get a new professional certification
• Go on a vacation to someplace different.
• Build a wood project or an electronic project.

End result: Satisfaction and fulfillment

One of my most challenging projects on my lists over the years was re-doing the floor of the workroom of my garage in 2010.  The original owner/builder of the garage put down tile back in the 1970s.  It was ugly and moldy due to dry rot and what the regular flooding did to the adhesive.  I had to stop in part due to distraction from family medical issues, and I had to figure someway to remove the tile because I kept going through propane torches trying to heat the tile.  It took me trial and error but I ended up using a hatchet to chop at the tile.  I then finally was able to epoxy paint the floor in 2010. 

It was a simple goal that turned out not to be so simple and it challenged me, but I still feel very good about the accomplishment.  It looks good and I did it myself. There was something about the process that stretched me in figuring out how to get the job done. 

Limits: don't create too long of a list

If this idea of a list of goals appeals to you, go for it.  However, I think some restraint is in order.  I think a list of goals should be no longer than 10 goals.  When people make too many goals the size of the list can be overwhelming and people never get anything done. There is always the option of adding to the list when you accomplish the goals.

I hope that your 2012 is a year full of satisfaction and achievement because you set good goals to make your life better.  

The future--don't get carried away worrying about it.

With the coming of the new year, people do contemplate and worry about what the new year will bring.  We're getting older, we may not have been satisfied or we were disappointed with 2011 . . . the list could go on as to why to dread the new year.

2011 has had its dread.  The Reverend Harold Camping made his two predictions.  Many are freaking out about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012. 

Throughout my life, I have seen doom-sayer after doom-sayer make predictions and then crawl away after their 15 minutes of notoriety.  Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, there were countless people engaged in studying and rehashing prophecy about who was the anti-christ and when Jesus was coming back.

I am one of those people who have decided not to get carried away about how or when the world is going to end . . . at least now.   I find that too much emotion and not enough logic is behind all of those scares.  Perhaps I am cynical--no one is perfect.

When it comes down to it, I have to take a few cues from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.  There is nothing new under the sun--stuff comes around again.  All economic forecasting is basically a form of saying the past is going to be the future.   However, to me the most salient statement in Ecclesiastes is 7:14,

When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future. (NIV)

I think that the passages of the Bible indicate that people have always dreaded the future.  Some generations had more to dread than others. 

History is always a good teacher.  While nothing is guaranteed, the world has kept turning. 

Getting spiritual for a moment, there are a few things that believers in God can take comfort in.  There is a future and Jesus Christ is coming back. When is a mystery, but it will happen.  Until then you and I have a choice as to how we are to live--hopefully in the wisest possible way.

That being said, I blend in a secular statement from Wayne Dyer:

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.