New Year inventory time

Wow! We’re already into 2001 with a big plunge. 2000 went so fast I really don’t recall what I did with it. I always consider the end and the beginning of the old and new years as inventory time, much as companies do. Let’s both take a personal inventory of the past year and use it as a benchmark for the new year.

A. Personal Life:

What did we do in 2000 to improve ourselves? Did we read any new books? Did we seek out new ideas and use them? Did we strive to improve our relations with our spouse, children, friends? Did we learn any new hobbies? Specifically, what did we do to feed our mental and spiritual attributes? Or did we merely consume mountains of meat, rice, beer-thereby expanding only our waist line?

B. Business or Work Life:

Did we do anything to improve our business or work habits? Did we seek better relations with our customers or fellow employees? Did we learn about new methods of doing our work smarter, not harder? Or did we just do the same things throughout the year and curse the bad business climate or the lousy work we have to do? In other words, did we strive to become better employers or a better employees?

C. Social and Community Life:

Did we attend meetings of the clubs or associations we belong to? Did we participate in the religious life of the community? Did we reach out and help those less fortunate than us? What charitable and voluntary work did we do in the community? Basically what did we give of ourselves to better the society we live in?

These are only a few of the questions we should ask ourselves as we take inventory. Will we do any better this new year or will it be the same at the end of this year? Each of us will come up with different results. Place the results in a sealed envelope and don’t look at them until end of June. At that time take them out and see if you are improving on any of last year’s inventory.

It’s funny how few of us really take our direction in life seriously. We seem to float in a stream and wherever the stream flows, regardless of how fast or slow, we just drift along in it. When we hit an embankment, we cannot figure out what happened to us. To justify our action, we blame others for our misfortune. We never seem to ask: Why didn’t we succeed better in life? What did we fail to do?

A friend of mine is a U.S. Annapolis Naval Academy graduate who never continued his career after graduation. Though talented and well-educated, he had lost his direction and drifted for many years. After working with me for six years in the boat business here in Saipan, he returned to his home in the States.

Recently he was invited to attend his former Naval Academy roommate’s retirement party. His former roommate was retiring as an Admiral in the U. S. Navy. When he returned, my friend wrote how he realized life had passed him by. He felt that he had cheated himself after seeing himself in comparison to his roommate’s achievement. A year later, he has become active in the community and is working at a real estate business and doing quite well. He realized that it wasn’t too late to improve the rest of his life.

Someone once defined success as the “progressive realization of a worthy goal.” Start the New Year charting your progressive course. A Successful and Happy New Year to everyone!