New Year’s Resolutions…Part 1

I am the type of guy who, at this time of year, likes to look back on the year that has passed and look towards the next year to see how I can improve things and make things better, both at work and at home.

Last year, for me, was a year of ups and downs with fantastic successes at the practice and also a great first half of the year for my personal exercise goals. The year was also interspersed with family tragedies and personal injuries that acted as a counter-balance to the successes I have experienced.

As I look around at the turning of the year, I think that we survived 2011 pretty well and I look forward, with anticipation, to 2012.

I started to write the usual lists of work that needs doing and improvements that need to be made and at times like this, I could become completely overwhelmed with the workload that lies ahead. One of the things that has always helped me at times like this is a story from the fantastic, life changing book, ‘Healing without Freud or Prozac’ by David Servan-Schreiberegarding Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Colbert was the prime minister to Louis XIV and a brilliant man by all accounts. When he was approached by his admirals and told of the impending invasion of the English Navy, he told the admirals that the French needed to build more ships. The reply from the admirals was “It takes 100 years to grow a tree tall enough to make the mast of a new ship. We don’t have enough trees” Colbert’s response to this was something along the lines of “if it takes 100 years to grow the tree, we had better start now”

When the workload seems massive and daunting, looking down the barrel of a New Year, it truly is one step at a time.