Hello,
I like this time of year, but not for the reasons you may think. Christmas is fun, but I like it for another reason. Goal setting is enjoyable for me. I like setting my aspirations for the next year around this time each year.
At this point in the year, I can see my successes or failures of the year and adjust for the following year. This motivates me. Figuring out what worked and what hasn’t and what should be tweaked is essential. Part of setting goals is knowing that failure is not final. Failure isn’t a person, but it’s an event to learn from.
This weekend I had a lot of time to think. Our house sits on an acre lot, and half our property has trees. We have a LOT of leaves each year. In previous years I’ve had time to blow the leaves over the course of a few weeks as they fell. That made a big job palatable. Even with my commercial grade leaf blower, our leaf removal is a major task! Amelia loved the leaves, though, as seen below.
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For some reason, I thought I had a good idea this year. I thought I’d fix what wasn’t broken. This fall has been busy, so I mentally justified waiting until all the leaves were off the trees to clean them up. I’ll never do that again! We had more leaves in our yard than I’d ever seen at one time. Walking through the leaves meant sloshing through the thick leaves.
One of the thoughts I had as I cleaned the leaves up was that there is power is in doing small things in small sessions. Often, the hardest thing to do is the first thing, but when I practice doing a little every day, it results in accomplishments over time.
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James Clear, a popular author, adapted the famous quote about how Rome was built when he said, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour. You don’t have to build everything you want today, just lay a brick.”
Retirement comes with a set of adjustments, and how we set goals may need to be adjusted. I read an interesting article this week about the challenges of beginning retirement, and while the article was largely geared toward men retiring, there is practicality for women as well. From the article:
“Here’s one of the main factors that lead to a good adjustment: Both of you must recognize that your husband will still have a deep need for significance and contribution—including beyond the family. This doesn’t mean that he won’t enjoy some time off. But sooner or later, many men have told me that they feel ‘rudderless.’ I should note that this is not just a “guy thing”, but it appears to be more acutely felt for men in retirement than for women in retirement. We all have a purpose for our lives, after all—deep callings and ways that we are built to contribute in a meaningful way.” For more practical tips check the article out here.
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Turing a corner in life can be a rewarding time where you’re able to refocus on important things, and invest time in people and organizations that matter to you. I’ve quoted this Zig Ziglar saying before but its truth never fades. “Every time the opportunity clock (alarm clock) goes off is another opportunity to get up and go.” We're granted new opportunities each day.
Consider what you’ll aspire to achieve in 2022. Start thinking about it now, so you have time edit it or fully think it through. Then, write those goals down, so next year around this time you can see what you’ve achieved. It’s important to commit our goals to pen and paper because we can’t improve what we don’t track.
Until next week,
David C. Treece,
Financial Advisor
864.641.7955
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