The start of the year comes with a few welcome days off. We could use them to take a break from our endeavours, from ‘doing’ and to preoccupy ourselves with ‘being’, with casting ourselves into future, reflecting upon ourselves, and upon what we would wish to have. I would take those days as an interval where we can gather our thoughts, put ourselves “back on track”. During the year we do not have such a period when (almost) everyone can switch to ‘relaxation mode’, when we do not receive emails, and no one wants anything from us.
I believe this is an ideal moment to think about what we want for the year ahead. Ideally, this plan should be in sync with a bigger personal plan. If we do not explicitly have such a plan, at least we should make an annual one.
Setting higher goals apart from going to the office, going shopping, cooking and other household chores, helps us live a better life, rise above our daily lives, it provides a breath of fresh air when we seem to be suffocated by our daily tasks.
When we have higher goals, some that make us better, or through which we can contribute to a better life for others, then over the year, at nighttime, when we come back home tired, when we are sad, when we do not have the hope for anything better, we can remember our goals, we can draw a line and see what was accomplished and then take our energy from there.
It is good to dare to dream out of our narrow circle, to start taking steps in that direction; not big steps, but little by little, every day, based on the principle of improvement by 1% every day. We can even test this principle in a different area: put 100 lei in a piggybank on the 1st of January. If we add 1% to the balance every day. At the end of the year we will have 3778 lei. Imagine how it would be if you added 1% towards your goals.
Establishing a purpose, an objective, helps us grow beyond our routines, and keeps us above the floating line that many people inhabit. Staying afloat it is not necessarily constructive and it does not set us apart from the crowd. A life without purpose, dreams, leaves room for mediocrity. And mediocrity kills the spirit.
Therefore I recommend:
Let’s set our goals today, the goals for this year (if we have not done it).
Let’s write them down somewhere, where we can see them, for us (I still put them on the door so I can see them every day); I write them in French, so that I don’t get questions from my mother. If we can’t, we can have them somewhere handy, so we can easily see them again.
Let’s have a special jar for objectives, where we put, on post-it notes throughout the year, what we have done regarding our objectives. Any action, no matter how small, is welcome, any step; don’t expect something big, but pay attention to small steps. Do you know the mosaics made of small stones of different colours? Our objective is the same.
We should rummage through this jar filled with the colourful notes of a year, every time we are tired, without a purpose, like a mouse in a wheel.
We should get involved in helping others (for a cause, a school, a child, some elderly people).
At the end of the year, when we look back, the feeling of satisfaction will replace tiredness, meaninglessness, stress, dissatisfaction and other negative feelings.
