Assess - Reflect - Resolve

Every year, we get to the end of the year and we celebrate a New Year, but what many are celebrating is the previous year. Some celebrate the awesome successes, while others celebrate the fact that they simply survived the year given health challenges, relationship turbulence, work drama, or family issues. Some may go out on the town and party hardy like the Nels version 1.0 and howl at the moon 'til the wee hours of the morning, some may go to some friends house to take in the New Year for the ball drop and call it quits, and others may stay home and make until they see the backs of their eyelids and may not make the ball drop.

Either way, there is a tremendous opportunity for us to go beyond the celebration or no celebration of just surviving another year. Think about it, is that all your life is worth, is the night of the last day of the year for a party or no party? Or does your life hold more value beyond that one night a year? The good news is everyone’s life holds extreme value, and the real opportunity lies in our ability to assess, reflect, and resolve. We assess each year by thinking about the quality of the year we had, and take stock of the accomplishments, goals met, and obstacles beat. Was it a good year or bad year, could be that simple. From there we need to look to reflect on the year, of which is sitting down and taking the true intentional time to think deeply about what we did right, what we did wrong, what we would do differently, what we wouldn’t do different, all the time looking for a path forward of improvement and change. This is a crucial and critical step as we need to identify our learning opportunities, yet at the same time, we don’t need to just “camp out” on our failures and let the sunset on us not moving forward.

The next step in this process is to resolve. To resolve is to find a solution or to decide firmly on a course of action. At New Year’s, we make resolutions, which are re-solutions, or we resolve. We have already taken the opportunity to learn from our reflections on the previous year, and now we are resolving to clean up the mess or messes we created in our failures, and if we don’t have the ability to resolve, we likely can’t clean up our failures or make necessary changes, or corrective course of actions, to avoid those same failures or make the conscious decision or choice to do so. Making the same mistake twice is no longer a mistake, it is a choice. And for some, there has been a great year of success, so in your resolve, there is opportunity to continue to “stretch your rubberband”, to acquire more “bandwidth”, to increase your capacity for more knowledge for further growth to have the appetite to take on more challenges. Because in this we must remember the Peter Principle of which is our level of success will be equal to our level of incompetence. Keep learning!

As Ken Coleman from the Ramsey Group recently stated - Assess, reflect, resolve! Very powerful opportunities we often don’t take the time to do effectively, and that should not be done just once a year, but if you want real growth, or real improvement in life, or greater success in life, work, and family and friends should be done every single day! Every single day! Every single day, not once a year! And we expect you to. Be an active agent in the design of your life. We know you can radically change your life. We expect you to achieve your high level of inner greatness and titanic success! Others may not expect much of you, but we are here to be your accountability partner, and fully expect you to assess, reflect, and resolve each and every day! And expect the same from your kids, those around you, and those you lead!! We want you to have the best year ever!! Get it done!! Happy Leadership Thursday!