Tag: reflection

Posted in Fitness, Opinions and Thoughts, Travel, Work

#oneword2012

Posted on by M Garcia
English: Two New Year's Resolutions postcards

I’m not anti-New-Year’s-resolutions. I just don’t do them. For as long as I can remember, I’ve set goals for each calendar year and tracked my progress along the way. Things are no different this year.

For 2012, I identified 7 categories that are important to me and established 3 to 7 goals for each category. I know that I’ll be stretched as I try to attain my goals for the year. That’s usually what I have in mind when I go through my goal-setting exercise – things that take me out of my comfort zone, things that will make me a better person, things that will stimulate me.

As I was refining my goals, I learned about a new concept through a women’s leadership group on Facebook. The idea is that you pick one word and you use that word to guide you during the year. In her 2007 post, Christine Kane called it a Resolution Revolution. The WLI group’s #oneword2012 was gathered and turned into a Wordle.

My #oneword2012? Risk.

It’s a word that I’ve had in mind for many years because I’ve felt that as I’ve become older, I’ve become more cautious and content. It’s a word that I think of – along with “fearless” – whenever I watch young children learn new sports. Or 20-somethings who hop from job to job because they’re looking for something that their current job doesn’t give them. Or 40-somethings who leave a stable, satisfying job to pursue a lifelong passion. Somewhere between childhood and middle age we lose our appetite for risk. The risks we take become more cautious, more calculated, less…well, less risky.

So I chose “risk” for my #oneword2012 to remind me that the safe choice is not always the satisfying choice, that the pragmatic option is not always the passion-fulfilling option, that the expected decision is not necessarily the exceptional decision. As John A. Shedd wrote in 1928, “A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” I hope that my #oneword2012 is a constant reminder throughout the year to push and stretch myself and to move out of my comfort zone.

What’s your #oneword2012?

And the thought processor churns on . . .

Posted in Etiquette, Opinions and Thoughts

A Kinder, Gentler Twitter

Posted on by M Garcia

Do you use Twitter? Do you actively tweet? Or do you lurk? When you tweet, what do you tweet?

Do you tweet only to promote yourself, your business, or your blog? Do you tweet every little detail of your day? Do you tweet every random thought that comes to your mind? Do you tweet your workouts via DailyMile or Nike+ or some other fitness website or app? Do you auto-tweet when you’ve liked something, pinned something, poked someone, dug something, or klouted something?

I’m a pretty eclectic tweeter, I think. My tweets include complaints about companies and people, quotes, jokes, business articles, fitness articles, some (not all!) foursquare check-ins, and random thoughts. I’ve not made a concerted effort to have a cohesive Twitter voice just like I don’t obsess about how many followers I have or how many tweets I’ve made.

These past few weeks, it felt like a lot of my tweets were angry tweets. I didn’t like that feeling because I love this time of year and it felt like my tweets weren’t honoring my true feelings for this season. It felt like I was always complaining about a work project or something else that was upsetting or annoying me.

I have gone back through my December tweets thus far and discovered that I wasn’t as whiny or complaining as I thought I was. Thank goodness.

Have you ever thought about what your tweets say about you? About how your tweets sound to your followers? About how your tweets sound to someone who sees your tweet via one of your followers or if it’s retweeted?

Twitter has made it easy – and relatively anonymous – to complain about a company, product, or person. It’s so easy to type out 140 characters and hit “send” or “tweet” that often we put our thoughts out there without thinking it through completely. Without stopping to think about the consequences of that tweet – for yourself or the person or company you’ve tweeted about. Without pausing for a moment to consider your own mental and emotional state.

Of course, all this applies to Facebook status updates, too.

So the next time you’re about to tweet or update your Facebook status, pause for a moment before hitting “send” or tweet,” read your tweet or status update, and think about what it says about you. I certainly will try to be more conscious of my tweets in the future.

And the thought processor churns on . . .

Posted in Opinions and Thoughts, Travel

Life Is a Grand Adventure

Posted on by M Garcia
Hot Air Balloons in China
Up, up, and away!

I watched Up for the first time recently. I enjoyed it so much that I watched it a second time before returning the DVD to Netflix. It’s about a boy who dreamed of grand adventure and met the love of his life who also dreamed of adventure and exploration. They got married and grew old together without ever going on their big exploration trip. A series of incidents after his wife’s death fills Carl with determination to fulfill their youthful dream and off he goes to South America to explore.

There are a lot of life lessons embedded in the movie – persistence, the power of dreams, good guys win in the end, unconditional love, heroes with feet of clay – any of which would be a good topic for reflection. The life lesson from Up that struck me the most is that life is a grand adventure. But all too often, we get caught up in planning for our adventure that we forget to actually go on our adventure.

Think about it. Were you one of those people who created a bucket list when the movie of the same name came out? If so, where is your bucket list now? How many items on that list have you checked off? How many more items have you come up with that you didn’t add to the list? How many items on that list are left? And why haven’t you done them yet?

Likely you’re waiting until you retire. Or until the kids graduate from high school. Or college. Or medical school. Or until you finish your degree. Or your graduate degree. Or until you’ve paid off your mortgage. Or until you get your dream job with months of vacation and a huge salary. Or until you meet Mr. or Ms. Right. You plan and plan for your grand adventure so that when the conditions are perfect and the time is right, your grand adventure will go off without a hitch.

Conditions will never be perfect. The time will never be right. Adventures aren’t adventures unless they have snags, hitches, hiccups, and the unexpected.

So stop planning already. Life is the grand adventure. Don’t let life pass you by while you’re planning for it.

And the thought processor churns on . . .