You're Better Than You Were Last Year

I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense. - Harold Kushner

You're better than you were last year.

You've learned a few things through well-deserved successes or hard-fought challenges.

You've incorporated whatever good stuff happened last year or have learned to work through whatever challenging stuff came up.

You have new friends or richer relationships with your old ones. Perhaps you're no longer in some relationships that aren't nourishing for you, too. People have come and gone, and each coming and going carries with it a lesson.

Some things worked out; some didn't. But, fundamentally, you're still alive and in motion.

All of this is obvious when somebody points it out to you, but we have a tendency to forget that to be alive, capable, in community, wiser, and employed (self- or otherwise) is something to celebrate. And, by celebrate, I don't mean think about it in passing, but, rather, to really feel it.

We also forget this when we're making plans for the year. Our operating assumptions about who we are and what we can do lag behind the reality we're standing in. The end result is that we're planning as if we were where we were 9 months ago rather than where we are today.

I get tripped up with this sometimes, too. Karen Wright - a dear friend and executive coach - thankfully spotted it and reminded me of this in a recent conversation. It's so much easier to see it when somebody else is doing it than when you're doing it and maybe that's a good thing because it just shows how much we all need each other.

Even if it feels like you're in the same place you were last year, you're not. As I've discussed before, our lives are more like a corkscrew than a circle - you're coming back around, perhaps, but at a higher level. That's progress.

So, I'm nurdging (portmanteau of nudge and urge) to do two things:

1. Really celebrate that you're here rather than there

2. Make sure your goals, visions, and plans are based off of where you are, not where you were.

3. Smile. (Yes, it makes a difference.)

You're better than you were last year. Celebrate that and start from where you are.