I suppose we all want to have the opportunity to start again, to get out a fresh sheet of paper and say “this time I’ll get it right”! And I suppose that the beginning of a new year is as good a time to do that as any. But actually I don’t think this is the right thing to do.
A very smart friend of mine in technology/app development (who isn’t these days?!) said “I never hire people who jump jobs every year. They tell me “I have five years experience in app development” and I tell them “No you don’t, you have one year’s experience you have repeated five times”.
Good advice I believe. What we need to do is consolidate what we have learnt, sift carefully through the lessons, the hard knocks, the experiences and the delights and find those we want to keep and those we want to throw away. In this way we can grow, and learn and not repeat the mistakes but make lots of new ones!
I had a great year with astonishing experiences this year, and also some tough times, but if we don’t absorb these experiences they are lost forever. So my advice is “don’t turn over a new leaf at New Year, don’t get out a new plan, don’t turn a new page, instead, think of 2015 as a solid upward step, and put your foot on an even higher one for 2016. Use this last year as a real stepping stone to the next.”
There was a really good book published many years ago called “Being Happy” which is a pretty important thing in all our lives, and so hard to achieve. After lots of great stories, the final analysis of what makes us happy is so simple: it’s you, your thoughts, your moods.
You.
You are the only person who can make yourself happy or unhappy so start today and be happy for all of 2016. Take 2015’s happiness with you and add more!
Have a great year and enjoy Bali.
Alistair G. Speirs, OBE
