Birthdays - A time to think, smile and drive on.

I recently celebrated my birthday and of course, I tried to recap my life in the previous 365 days to see what I had accomplished and whether or not that met up with my expectations.

 What I have learned over the years is that your life now is a sum total of all your past decisions. If you don’t like your life, you have to make new decisions.

 Let’s be honest. We are humans. No one is perfect. Certain things I’m proud of and others are still a work-in-progress. But it helps to introspect…in fact, it’s imperative that we all introspect periodically about our past and use it to better ourselves now so that our future can be so bright that when it finally does becomes the past, we can look back and be proud. (Hope that wasn’t too confusing!)

 My list that I evaluate is composed of my 5 values in no particular order.

Family (my own/my parents/my siblings/my nephews/my in-laws)

Health (physical/emotional/spiritual/financial)

Career

Personal Growth

Marriage

Rather than give myself a grade or points I think about them all and how I’ve done in the past year. Keep in mind that many times one value is prioritized over another at different points in your life. So for example, this past year I get full points for Family (because I delivered my son!) but my career did have to go on ‘hold’ if you will as I was on maternity leave for most of the past year. That’s life. At different times in our lives, different values will trump each other depending on circumstances, environment, people…different stimuli really.

 You can’t do it all at once, so don’t.  Enjoy what you are doing, focus on it and do it willingly.  When the tides change (and they will) you get to focus on your other values as well.