Your Forthcoming 2021 Accomplishments

On New Years Day I asked everyone in the family to come up about 10 accomplishments or contributions they were committed to make in 2021.  Last night we discussed them after dinner.  The idea is a) if you don't specifically articulate something you'd like to accomplish, it probably won't ever be a clear enough destination for you to reach, and b) if you tell and remind other people of your intentions, they might be able to help.   

There's a lot of things that derail our good intentions.  About 5 years ago we did a cool study showing the average person (or at least in the US, Germany, and Japan) starts gaining weight in October, and it takes them from January to April to lose it.  Some people saw this as discouraging (like the news headline below) because it meant that it would take them 4 months to lose the weight they gained in the last two.  

There's a couple other ways to view this. First, your life can be so much bigger and more meaningful than what you weigh.  You can contribute things and accomplish things that could overwhelm the importance of losing the 8 pounds you gained since October.  If you list out the contributions and accomplishments you'd like to make, it might help put that in better perspective.  

Second, the other good news here is that most people eventually did lose most of that weight.  It happened slower than they wanted, but most good things -- like the other 9 things on your list -- it wouldn't be worth much to you or to others if any of these magically happened overnight.

There’s a story about a 66-year old guy who always wanted to go to college.  After he retired, he was accepted to a local school, and showed up on the opening day of enrollment to sign up for classes.  He’s waiting in line and the kid behind him says, “Can I ask how old you are?”  The man answers him, and the kid says, “Wow, when you graduate in four years, you’ll be 70.”  The man chuckled and said, “In four years, I’ll be 70 anyway.” 

Imagine a year from now you're having lunch with a good friend and catching up on what happened in the past 12 months.  What would you have had to contribute or accomplish that would lead you to say, "That was an amazing year"?  What would the other nine accomplishments be?