Goals for the New Year? How About Your Legacy?

I’ve spent some time with my grandmother this week as she lies dying in hospital.  

My grandmother doesn’t react to many of the things that I say to her but she appears to enjoy hearing me read from Scripture. 

As she rests, I take out my journal and think about her life.  She brought 12 children into the world.  She lived in a small rural town that has seen it’s boom and bust cycle now settle into the steady decline so unfortunately common in remote, rural places.  She never had much but she made do with what she had. 

Now here she is – alone and in her final days.  She doesn’t have time to change anything even if she wanted to.  Everything she can create has been created. 

Her legacy lives on in her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

How is your legacy coming along?

Do you ever factor your legacy into your plans as you come up with your list of New Year’s resolutions and promises to yourself and others?

If you don’t, the odds of you achieving your resolutions have been proven to be staggeringly not in your favor.

So as you go through the typical year-end gyrations for what the New Year brings, ask yourself these questions:

1. How can I live a life with purpose?  Better yet, do I know what my purpose is?
2. Who can I love more and in an unconditional manner?  How can I welcome more love?
3. What can I learn in 2010 that will make me a better person?  Once I have learned it, who can I share it with?
4. What legacy am I leaving behind?  How will I be remembered?  Am I happy with this?

Our end-0f-days draws closer for each of us with each passing day. 

As you establish your resolutions, dreams and aspirations for 2010, keep the big picture of your life and your legacy in mind.

Your life, your gifts and your talents are too valuable to settle for anything less. 

I raise a toast to your legacy.  May it be everything you wish it to be and more.

I wish you all a blessed 2010 filled with abundance of life, love, learning and sharing.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

To read my detailed version of “Goals for the New Year?  How About Your Legacy?”, please click here.

A Christmas Tradition From My Family to Yours

Dear friends,

Some years ago when my oldest son was very young, we had pulled into a Toys R Us parking lot in New Jersey on Christmas Eve to buy our son even more "stuff".  After all we mused, for our son to have so much stuff that he rivaled Toys R Us in inventory still didn't seem enough.

Just before we stepped out of our vehicle, a story came on our National Public Radio station (WNYC in New York to be exact) and something about it caught my ear.

For the next 10 minutes, we sat in silence and listened to the story.  When the story was over, I started the truck and we drove out of the parking lot in silence. 

I had received an important message about Christmas when I needed to hear it. 

The teacher always appears when the student is ready and our Christmases have never been the same since.

Of the many traditions we have in our family at Christmas, there are two that we find important.

1. We always listen to this story at least once.

2. We always share it at least once.

The story we listened to can be found here - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5028755.  Click on the "LISTEN" link right under the title "John Henry Faulk's Christmas Story".

Besides my family and life itself, I consider myself blessed to have so many incredible friends.

With that, I thank YOU for what you do - for the light and love you bring to so many.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Happy EID or Merry Yule.  However you celebrate these days, cherish them.  In an uncertain world, these days are still an incredible gift for all of us.

In service and servanthood, love and gratitude.

Harry

The Value of Results - Do We Care Anymore?

I was recently speaking to someone who has a position of influence within the Canadian Government and he was going on and on about how great Canada's influence is in the world.

“After all”, he said, “Canada was a driving force behind the land mine treaty of the 90s and the Kyoto Accord and we both know how fantastic both of those initiatives were”.

I reminded him that the players who own 97%+ of the landmines in the world never ratified the landmine deal and even Canada has never lived up to the measures outlined in the Kyoto Accord.

"It doesn't matter", he said proudly, "It's the principle behind it that counts.".

Is that true?  Do we really believe that results don't matter and that life has become filled with the mantra of "good intentions are good enough"?

As I look back over my professional career, I see some glaring examples that support this theory and so I am reaching out to the readers today to prove me wrong.

I want to be proven wrong for if this is an accurate assessment of where the world is going, then we have greater challenges before us that make our current challenges look pretty tame in comparison.

It seems in a world focused on hype and appearance, that it is possibly better to create images of unlimited potential, secure the funding to deliver it, not deliver it (or deliver a small subset of it), disguise the result and then celebrate it as exceeding our expectations.

Maybe that's ok when it comes to the small stuff in life - the important projects that don't really matter.

Of course for those projects, if they don't really matter, why are we wasting our time on them in the first place?

But if we do it on larger scale projects where health, safety, or fiscal, social or ecological responsibility are on the line, then we need to take a closer look at who is delivering one thing while describing the result as something else.  Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch comes to mind.  Click here if you want to see it (warning - there are some delicate words in it).

After all, If we accept a description of a result that is not accurate, it is not the fault of the person delivering the inaccurate message. 

It is ours.  They only gave us what we wanted to hear and not what we needed to hear.

Shame on us.

I understand all the reasons people give as to why this phenomena happens.

That’s all well and good.

However, let’s forget about the reasons and look at the results.

Results still matter …. I hope.

In service and servanthood.

Harry

To see my detailed musing on “The Value of Results – Do We Care Anymore”, please click here.