I’m pretty bad at celebrating accomplishments and being thankful for what goes well. Instead, once I accomplish a goal or take care of a responsibility I tend to quickly move to working on the next one without much thought on what I’ve accomplished. Also, when I look back on my performance, whether it is at work, or in my personal life, I tend to be pretty self-critical. I always know what I want to do better but rarely take the time to acknowledge what I’ve done well.
I already have a list of goals for 2016 but haven’t really taken the time to consider what I could be celebrating from 2015 – what I accomplished, what went well and what I can be grateful for. I’m learning about the importance of reflection and celebration for our personal well being and about how it can help motivate us to accomplish future goals. So this post is my effort to write down just a few things that I’m celebrating and am grateful for from this year. I hope maybe it inspires you to do the same.
- Started a meditation practice that has been really helpful
- Read the Bible more regularly
- Helped recruit a record number of students from Hawaii to George Fox
- Applied to be a host on a travel TV show
- Kim and I invested in our relationship and celebrated 14 years of marriage
- Played drums on the worship team at church about once a month and continued to improve as a musician
- Surfed the North Shore of Oahu
- Made it through a very busy spring and summer at work with lots of events and without a full staff
- I have an awesome family
- Hired two awesome new employees
- Started blogging
- Invested in my boys in many different ways
My boys - Went on lots of adventures with my boys
- Got to explore new parts of Oregon this summer
- Invested in the lives of college students
- Built new friendships and invested in old ones
- Went on a class field trip with both Eli and Calum
- Helped Calum start Cub Scouts
- Had an awesome long weekend at the beach with family in June
- Helped recruit, hire and build another awesome University Ambassadors group
- Visited 40 high schools to give presentations about George Fox
- Exercised pretty regularly and stayed in decent shape
- My mom is healthy
- Got to go to some awesome concerts
- Got to go to a university of Oregon football game
- I work with an awesome team of people at a great institution
- Got to go sledding on Mt. Hood
Each year has its ups and downs, its victories and defeats. I know some of us have had some pretty crippling defeats this year and I don’t want to diminish the impact of those.
It can be really important to grieve those but hopefully eventually we can get to the point of finding some things to celebrate even if it has been a hard year. Sometimes we have to look hard but I believe there’s always something. Being able to recognize and celebrate those will help us as we go into the New Year. Hopefully we can take even a few minutes as the calendar turns into next year to find those bright spots and carry them forward as inspiration for what’s to come.
Note: The pictures in this post are of just a few of the people I’m so grateful to have in my life.