The New Year’s celebration, like other holidays, has its peculiar traditions; fire-works, Auld Lang Syne and blog posts telling you how to stick to your resolutions. Not here though. For a start I still think of the year as following the academic timetable. In my mind the new year still starts in the late Summer or early Autumn. The Winter period is only the half way point while the time of transition and reflection is the Summer. Anyone else still have this years after they left education?
I can’t remember ever making any serious New Year’s resolutions. I try to continually steer myself in the right direction (though I’d like myself to evaluate an adjust course in a shorter time than up until now). Don’t get me wrong, I have goals that are written down in the SMART format; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. But I’m not going to share those goals with you today.
I realized a while ago that in order to do the things I want to do I need to be a certain kind of person. I need to live by certain values that can guide me to whatever goal I’m working towards. Below are some of the values that I want to align myself with. Although some of these could be described as traits or abilities I’ve decided to name them values because they are more like compass directions that I want to follow rather than some skill that I can eventually measure myself as having a 10 out 10 score in.
Authenticity: I’ve come to believe that this is the most powerful value I can live by. Being authentic seems to be the easiest and most rewarding way of being congruent in my thoughts and actions. This has real implications for how I carry myself, my presence and how I communicate with other people. I would say that at this point in time it’s the guiding value in my life.
Discipline: I think this is a something a lot of people can identify with wanting more of. With more discipline I can get more out of each day, each action, each moment. My current strategy for having more discipline is to make sure I keep my promises to myself even if it’s in very small ways.
Pushing myself / Living on the edge: Closely linked to discipline, but I feel it needs to be mentioned separately. This is the ability to do my very best right till the end. I find this very difficult because I find it hard to distinguish between merely being uncomfortable and genuinely not being able to do any more. I also find it difficult when to determine whether I’ve done ‘enough / what’s necessary / what’s productive’ and when I’m just spinning wheels just to fool my ego into thinking I’m doing something worthwhile. Any suggestions on how to get better at this would be appreciated.
Honesty: Be honest with myself and others. Not to the point that I hurt people, but I think there is room for me to be more assertive in some ways. I think assertiveness comes when I am more honest with myself and others about what I want and expect.
Do you have any values or traits that you want to align yourself with? Feel free to share them in the comments.
Stay cool.
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