A few years ago, I found a Pinterest idea to have a New
Year’s Wish Jar, where you write your wishes for the year on slips of paper,
place them in a jar and then take them out at the end of the year, to see if
the wishes had come true. I thought this
was a great idea for a few years and so my ex-spouse and I would write our
wishes down. But the problem with wishes
is that if you just wait for something to happen, it won’t. Wishes are worthless unless you act on them. Wishes are also worthless if you wish for
something you can’t control. So, needless
to say, none of these wishes ever came true.
You can’t just wish for good health.
You can’t wish for another person to fix their problems. You can’t wish for things to magically
happen.
But, you can take action.
And wishes can be goals. So,
instead of a Wish Jar this year, I am creating a New Year’s Action Jar. In it, I will put ideas for things I want to
accomplish and I will hold myself accountable.
Part of that accountability is writing this post. If I tell others what my goals are, they are
more real. And if people occasionally
ask me about these goals, I don’t want to be embarrassed that they haven’t
happened. So, please – hold me
accountable. I will need the
encouragement.
The only things I put in my Action Jar are things I can
control. The first goal is actually one
that I have put in the Wish Jar before, but just never acted on it. I would like to have a recording session of
me singing some of my favorite songs.
This is totally a vanity goal – it serves no one but me. But I think it would be fun and singing is
one of my joys in life. I remember the
first time that I realized that I loved to sing. My mother, who is a talented pianist, played
for me while I sang a Winnie the Pooh song when I was about four years old. I would sing it twenty times in a row, if she
would let me. If you’re not a singer,
you don’t know this feeling you get when singing. Your whole body is part of the action. It is cathartic and emotional. Throughout my life, I have always been a
singer – in different groups as well as a soloist. I do not have the most trained or most
beautiful voice, but it is pleasant. I’m
never going to be a rock star or an opera singer, but I would gladly be a
back-up singer or sing at your wedding.
Luckily, I have a built-in orchestra with my family as musicians. There is a lot of preparation involved in
getting this goal together, but I plan to have fun doing it. After all, this might be my only time I get
to pretend to be a superstar.
And of course, there are other goals going into the Action
Jar. They are all things that involve
some risk on my part, but should also be fun.
One of the things that has become so abundantly clear to me in the past
few years is that life really is short, so you might as well take the risks you
want to take. It’s so stupid to regret
what you didn’t do because you were afraid or didn’t think you were
worthy. So, just like at work, I have
created my action plan and I plan to complete goal number 1 by summer. This new year, 2017, will be a year of action
and joy for me – but not because I hope it will. It will be because I have taken actions that
I want to do and I have created fun and joy in my life.
