Okay, I'm ready.On New Years Day at the Crescent Moon brunch at The River Room, Marge and I talked with Gayle Tabor and Jenn Beddoe of Glynnes Soaps about Chris Brogan's blog post that morning, in which he listed the three words he intends to live by during the year. We also talked about the concept with Clark and Susan Hipp and with Jake and Cynthia Hunt, all of whom we met for the first time at the brunch.
In our conversations that morning some people already knew what their words would be for the year. Mind you, this concept isn't about making a resolution to do something better or correct a fault, necessarily, it's really about picking one or more personal 'themes' for the year - at least that's how I view it.
So I took a few days and here are my three words: Kindness, Productivity, and Attention.
During 2010 I'd like to focus on Conscious Kindness. I would like to be aware of ways I can be kind to people, including everyone I meet, everyone else in the world, and even myself. Now, I like to think of myself as a nice guy, who helps other people when I get the chance and notice it, but I'd like to up that ante for myself and dedicate myself to being Consciously Kind. How will I do that? Read on to the bottom.
I'm also setting an intention of Increased Productivity for 2010. I'm laughing at myself a bit when I write this because I get lots of feedback about how much I get done already, but you know what? I know better. I know that I waste a lot of time. I'm not talking about relaxation or just playing or hobbies, but sheer wasted time filled with "busyness" but not getting much really done. So I'm going to up my productivity, a lot, this year. I have 11 books in the Quantum Results Business Mastery Series I'd like to finish and get published this year, in both print and audio versions; I want to ramp up my speaking appearances and seminars, and I want to develop more fully and finish two development tools I've been toying with and working with for years now (one for personal development and the other for business development). There are other specifics I'd like to accomplish, but these are enough to make the point - I AM having a highly productive year!
And I'd like to pay more Attention to the world. For me that really means letting myself just "be" in the world - not just "doing" all the time - and look around and notice. There is so much happening every day in every place and most of it goes entirely unnoticed. I'm not setting a mission here to record and report about everything I notice - though that would be my natural and impossible inclination. Rather, I want to just 'notice' people, and places, and actions, and weather, and seasons. Golly, I recall about a 10 year period (I think it was called the 90s') that went by so fast and I was so busy "doing" that if someone asked me what season it was or even what month I offhand didn't even know until I thought about it. Living in New England at the time I was more in touch with time zones in California, England, Israel, and Australia (I was writing about personal computer technology) than I was aware of whether it was Spring or Fall (usually winter and summer were more obvious). So this year, I want to pay attention to the seasons, and to the world.
Ok, so how will I work my three "words"? That for me is the easy part. Already each day I start with a three word saying, prayer, mantra, call it what you may, Gratitude, Attitude, Readiness (also known to me and some of you as GAR!). So now I'm going to add to that, and each morning before I really get cranking, spend some time focusing on my three words: Kindness; Productivity; and Attention. That will work for me.
How about you? What are your words for 2010? And how will you keep them in play?
