I did a lot of thinking and reading this past week about goal setting, motivation, and change.

I discovered Matt Cheuvront’s blog – Life Without Pants – and his eBook – The Inconvenience of Change – and will be reading that tomorrow while I wait in line with Peter to see Avatar (I’m transferring it to my Kindle).

This poem is especially inspiring to me today:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

-from the "Think Different" advertising slogan created for Apple Computer in 1997

 

Sometimes I think that people must think I am one of the crazy ones…because I refuse to give up and usually choose the path less followed.

But that’s ok.

Sometimes I think that I worry too much about what others think.

I typically write a few resolutions each year. Usually these are written in the form of goals. I rarely keep most of them. So I’ve decided to do things a bit differently this year. I’m going to try living a good story. I learned about this idea on author Donald Miller’s blog this morning. Donald says that “if you plan a story this year, instead of just simple goals, your life will be more exciting, more meaningful and more memorable.” And that this should make you more likely to stick to your goals. It’s the idea of writing your goals as a story in a narrative form rather than listing ‘I will do x, x, or x’.

It took me about 30-45 minutes to write my three paragraph story. I wrote it from the perspective of what things would be like for myself and my family next December. It was an interesting exercise for me because I had to think in terms of activities/events/etc… that would have happened already and that I had accomplished my resolutions. I’ve never looked at it that way before – maybe that’s why I rarely accomplish my resolutions? I realized that most resolutions I make aren’t really that important to me. But while writing my story – thinking about living a good story  – I seemed to naturally write about those things that are most important to me.  I feel so excited and hopeful about 2010.

Project 365

I’ve decided to join a Flickr Project 365 Group. The goal of Project 365 is to take at least one photo every day – the purpose being to document your life and to improve your picture taking skills. I’m going to try and post my pictures daily here as well. Here are the first two images I selected (I actually had a lot of January 1 but that is because we were still in Prague –  I think the tough days are going to be the every day when nothing particular big is going on):

Project 365 Day 1 – My favorite Caramel Sundae – we get this every time we go to Prague.

Project 365 Day 2 – Prague Ruzyně Airport – we were headed back to the States.