Adopting modesty.
One month into the New Year (the 21st year of the 3rd millenium), we are seriously knee-deep into what i like to call - the “list chapter” of the holidays.
First list — is usually the main “xmas list”, which in annual parlance is all about who to send our greeting cards to. Relatives from here to there, and everywhere. And usually, there’s a computer file that probably stores (and updates) all their addresses — how many kids they have over the years, and considerably, updates their status on who’s broken up, gotten re-married, or have moved to Antartica.
Secondly, there’s the “kind list” — where we send gifts to people whose services have been important to our life: the guards, the trash man who promptly collects all our cans from the street, the yard man who mows our lawns, the people who don’t require tips but considerably is an extra touch of nice, when you actually show them a present or a red envelope that’s unexpected over the number of hours they have officially spent doing the chores you hate doing, or secure your premises over the years.
I am most partial to the third one, the “resolution list” — which is officially something that requires the rest-of-post-xmas-day week to muddle over, perhaps over a hot mug of coffee, in some last minute getaway you were forced to have at the end of the year. On this list, you are required to introspect and partially map out your life in the next year, responding to your hopes, and your wants - or just do a year on year, like your life was a project and you were reporting about your positive data to yourself - like something that you would use in a life-SWOT.
In a life-SWOT, it’s not as obsessively accurate or data-sensitive as the ones you probably are used to making at work, to get a hold of how to handle your data, from where to start (cope), since when (year on year or month to month), or what time that actually helps in assessing your life in comparison with, well your life.
It’s a sticky chicken-egg thing.
Then we have what we call, the Freeze-Frame sitch — where i use what i like to call the “standard year” or banner year (applicable to some situations, where measurement could range from: no real disasters happened, to OMG, that was amazing) as it were in corporate reaping years, is required.
This helps you (co-ordinate) frame the situations or circumstances that happen, on the collective, and find a bar to reach up to each year - in terms of achieving what you actually can — and want.
Without needing to spell it out - or even having to spoil the process for you, it sums up a simulcast-roster of: what to look forward to, cleaning up after ourselves, and having more to write in the next year, so we can be more like goal-setters, consciously achieving our best, year on year.
(Also, the best thing about this, is you’re never too old to adopt them.)
Best of luck to all your Listing endeavours.
