This past Thursday, as I sat with family members around a traditional Thanksgiving table sharing great food and conversation, I couldn’t help reflecting on how it doesn’t get any better than this. But then I caught myself asking, or does it? And as I thought about it, it occurred to me that, yes, it could get even better. I could spend the rest of the weekend engaged in one of my favorite pursuits – hiking and exploring the countryside, which always helps me to better focus on the things I really hope to achieve.
In the course of multiple hikes, I felt like it truly couldn’t get any better than this. But as the weekend progressed, I was once again aroused by the conviction that it is going to get better yet — incredibly better – in 2015. And that I personally am going to help that come about, beginning before the current year is even over.
I recently ran across an old paperback book that was literally falling apart in a forgotten corner of my bookshelf — the iconic Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, first published back in 1937. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read and given this book away — and it reminded me that I hadn’t really given any thought to how I intend to position myself for 2015 and beyond, or clearly defined what it is I hope to accomplish next. That’s probably the result of life having been quite good to me these past couple years, with the downside being that it tends to make one a bit too comfortable and complacent. Perhaps that’s why some of our greatest accomplishments have been fueled by adversity, exemplifying the old cliché about making lemonade when life hands you a lemon. By the same token, good fortune can have just the opposite effect.
So, with a glorious Thanksgiving holiday under my belt, I realized that it’s up to me to forge ahead and get a handle on my goals for 2015. True, I may be a bit older now, but that doesn’t mean for a minute that I’m about to ride off into my “sunset years” just yet – and I hope you aren’t, either. It’s never too late for us to “think and grow rich” – by which I’m not necessarily talking about accumulating personal wealth, but rather conceiving and implementing new ideas that can help enrich the human race (and which often can often make us both materially and spiritually richer in the course of doing so).
I began with a call to my friend Amy, a highly talented PR professional with whom I worked in the late ’90s, to find out what she regards as the most underserved environmental, health or social need that some innovative thinking might find a new way to address. Then over the weekend, I read a new book that I consider to be the next phase of the process described in Think and Grow Rich, which is The Top Ten Things Dead People Want to Tell YOU by Mike Dooley. It’s much more heady (and contemporary) than Napoleon Hill’s motivational classic, but inspired me in a similar if not more profound manner to want to brainstorm with our wonderful ad hoc creative team of Bill, Paul, Marc, Jeff and Dave on how we might develop a business to meet these needs. As a result, we will be talking every day about ways of taking our individual and collective ideas to the next level, with our only requirement being that whatever we come up with leaves a positive social and ecological footprint, is sustainable, and helps enrich people’s lives.
My purpose in writing this blog is to hopefully encourage you to do likewise – that is, to get one thing done each and every day this month, no matter how small, that will help set the stage for some extraordinary achievement — something above and beyond what you thought you could accomplish. It might be just planning an agenda –for example, emailing an associate to arrange a time to talk about a new industry, a new project, a new artistic endeavor, a new anything that might just end up exceeding your wildest expectations. And whatever you do along these lines, be sure and keep a record of it.
So let’s get busy thinking and doing to help make 2015 the break-out year we’ve all been waiting for!