2011 - Every Year a New Challenge?

January First. No surprise that I would gather enough gumption to write a post, right? After all, today is the day so many of us insistently declare our new habits. How many of you are changing your eating habits, starting this very morning? Promising to exercise - even joining a health club? How about recommitting to following your passion and quitting your J.O.B.? Finding a new relationship, or improving the one you're in? Paying back debt?

The possibilities are endless.

Yesterday, as I started my soul-searching process by looking over 2010, and even a few years before, I discovered a few things that have changed - some that I liked, some that I didn't. I also saw that a lot hasn't changed at all.

- The last time I created a Top 100 Things to do in a Year List was 2008. I tried a short/medium/long term goal list in 2010, that wasn't very effective.
- 2010 saw me cross off many things from my Top 100 Things to do before I Die List - including speaking for a seminar company, going to Disneyworld, Paris, and rappelling down a cliff.
- I finally, as I've mentioned often, moved back to Colorado.
- While I successfully went off caffeine from 1/09 to 2/09 - I've been back on ever since. Two months did not a new habit create.
- The only goal I seriously set for 2011 that was accomplished in full was one I set with Kristi - finish her book - Thriving with Neurofibromatosis, and get it on the market.
- 2010 is the first year since 1999 I ended lighter than I started, though I haven't been at my lowest weight since August.
- 2010 was the first year since 2001 I did not compete in a Toastmasters contest - and I really miss it.

Beyond checklist type items, I still face the daily challenges and choices a husband, a father of six, and an entrepreneur face - balancing time, staying confident, staying committed (as anyone who reads this blog, or its companion blog, Speak & Deliver, cant attest to), staying focused, and, occasionally, staying sane.

In some ways, I've taken some amazing leaps forward in my life over the last two years. In others, I remain mired in the same mud I've been in for the last 20.

All results are still by choice, all results are ultimately my responsibility. Blaming the economy, the many naysayers in my life, the busy life of a big family, the way the healthcare system works (read my wife's blog, where she talks quite a bit about what challenges we have healthwise, and our efforts to Thrive through them), or any number of other easy excuses is unacceptable to me - it's an easy way out, and an easy way to accept less than what any of us are capable of accomplishing.

I'm not going to list a set of goals here to live up to today. I have a private list, and I'll record my process and progress this year as I go. That is, I guess the only goal I'll disclose - that I will write more, be more helpful and more open, and follow through on what I wanted this blog to be for all of you who have ever stopped by.

That, and I'm off caffeine again. So far, so good, on both counts.

Make 2011 your year to be a Champion of Choice!