In the spirit of the first holidays for BadskiBlog I thought I would keep with one of the major themes of the blog and write about some things I learned during my first year of blogging.
5. People Are Inherently Good – My experience with the formation of Checking For Charity, shared experiences with fellow Air Force people going through adversity, and playing/being around hockey people have reaffirmed my belief that mankind is inherently good. There are always some bad apples that take up a disproportionate amount of the headlines out there but in general there are people everywhere lining up to contribute positively to this earth. I think as long as I surround myself with good people, do in my heart what I know is right, and try to improve I will be alright no matter where life leads me.
6. Too Many Opportunities Can Be Paralyzing – Many of my biggest worries and struggles in the past year have been the paralyzing effects of too many opportunities. I am healthy, educated, pretty motivated and excited for what the future brings but there is a problem….I don’t know what I want to do! There are plenty of things I could see myself doing but I just don’t know where to start. I discussed this in my blog post entitled desire spiral earlier in the year. My antidote for such feelings is focusing on achieving happiness NOW! It is important to look forward to making your next day better than the last but who knows whether we will even see tomorrow. Keep that future state in your minds eye but ensure that you are happy today. Content but never satisfied.
7. The Road To Wealth For Many Should Be Boring – People who strike it rich overnight are the exception. For the majority of people wealth should start with the Badskiblog definition of rich and continue down a long, boring, steady road to wealth. Keep more than you spend, develop good habits, think long term, and maintain life balance! In our world of short attention spans it is important to remember there are no shortcuts or it would simply be the way. Take the long term boring approach. It is much more reliable and much less stressful than the alternatives.
8. Happiness Is The Ultimate Goal – I have talked about the quest for happiness in almost every one of these nine musings and it is a constant theme amongst all BadskiBlog posts. Ayn Rand said in her masterpiece Atlas Shrugged "Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values." Rand believed, as I do, that the pursuit of happiness is the highest virtue man. If you are always looking ahead to attain happiness you are wrong. Happiness starts now and should be a constant stream of your memories past, a focus of your present, and a goal of your future. If it is not then you know it is time for some form of change in your life.
9. Family Friends and Familiarization – Going with the theme of happiness as the ultimate goal, I have reaffirmed what I believed well before 2009. The best ways for me to achieve happiness are family, friends and familiarization. The first two are fairly straightforward and have been a mainstay in my happiness fix for quite some time. The last reference refers to self awareness and development. Through experiences, learning, growing we gradually come to know the person we spend the most time with….ourselves.
Hopefully my posts weren't too cheese ball and cliched in the reflection of the last year. Although it is difficult to try and encapsulate all you have learned in the past year within a few bullets, I think it is a valuable form of reflection that I will likely carry on in future years of BadskiBlog. What did you learn this year?
No comments:
Post a Comment