iainhamp

For several years, I made New Years Resolutions. In fact, my tradition until two years ago was to make twelve New Years Resolutions, a number chosen partially as symbolic of the twelve months of the year but also a number that meant I probably had a shot of achieving at least a couple of them!

I started a series of exercises, somewhat by accident, a couple of years ago that approach assisting me in identifying, defining, and achieving my goals in life in a different way. Now that I approach the first New Year’s Day following the instatement of this new method, I am realizing that New Years Resolutions would not only be somewhat redundant to make, they might also be somewhat detrimental to the process.

I should put the disclaimer in, before we get too far, that I am married. Some of the methodology I have used has marriage, or at least being part of a couple, as a filter. I am confident that there is equal value for singles in the process I have gone through, but there may have to be some adjustment, “tweaking”, in parts to make it fit well for your life if you are reading this and are single. I will try to make suggestions, when applicable, to help that process.

The three main parts to my process are listed below. In the coming days, I will discuss each of them in detail.

Step One: Paint the Big Picture
Step Two: Increase Self Awareness
Step Three: Life is a Beach

I’m going to stop there for today, but I want to say one last thing about New Years Resolutions in general. As you will see in the exercises over the next few days, one of the big take-aways I am trying to suggest is that it is somewhat dangerous to tie resolutions down to just New Years. In fact, it is dangerous to tie goals and resolutions down too much to anything. You want goals to be simultaneously quantifiable and flexible, to give to drive and direction while recognizing that life is always changing and what it important one year may have a totally different level of importance the next, relative to other things in life.

iainhamp

I presume these people aren’t referring to songs about George Michael giving his heart to someone the previous Christmas who proceeded to throw it away. Nor do I suspect they yearn to clash eternally with a thousand soccer moms in the toy aisles while trying to make their way back to the electronics department at Target.

No, I imagine people wanting every day to be like Christmas comes down to some combination of the following:

* receiving kind gifts from people who care about you
* giving gifts to those we appreciate
* sending cards out to people we haven’t communicated with as often as we’d like
* celebrating the birth of Christ (if that’s what you’re in to)
* volunteering or collecting food for the hungry, or giving toys to kids who can’t afford them, etc. – charitable works
* forgiving others (and if need be, yourself)
* spending quality time with family and friends sharing meals, playing games, etc.

I guess my point of all this is… there’s really no reason any of these things should be limited to one day a year.

So enjoy your Christmas, one and all. And have a Merry January 17th too, just for the heck of it.

iainhamp

As you may have seen in the news recently, Time Magazine has named “You” as the Person of the Year. 

“But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It’s not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.”

I could not have asked for a better summary of what my experience at the Social Media Club Phoenix meeting in December was like.  The primary objective of the club is to continually explore the ways in which new internet technologies, particularly those wrapped up into the “Web 2.0” label, are changing the way we can connect, interact, influence, and inform one another.

If you are in the Phoenix area, or one of the cities where the Social Media Club is meeting, I highly encourage you to attend an event.  Even if you’re not near a meeting though, check out their website and do some research on what is going on in the internet world.  Reality is changing in really interesting ways, and understanding them can be a powerful asset.