Last Minute Gift To Myself

T-minus four days until Christmas and again this year the holiday seems to have crept up on me. How does this happen?

This year was going to be different.

I was ready.

You name it, I was prepared for just about everything.

Except bronchitis.

Showed up at the beginning of December and knocked me down for a couple weeks, refusing to leave.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving, for sure.

While my excuse is legit, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m behind on everything: work, decorations, gifts, and even holiday spirit.

Most importantly, I’m behind on planning for next year.

December is usually when I’m up to my eyeballs getting ready to kick off the next year. By now, I should have outlined my career goals for next year, along with a strategy and tactics for execution.

Instead I laid on the couch and binge-watched last-season’s Grey’s Anatomy.

Now I’m frantically trying to catch up. It’s hard to think strategically when my mind is going in a million holiday directions.

Standing in line at the post office, I started to think in broader terms about goals, more along the lines of a personal mission statement. Which is something I usually don’t like, BTW.

After much thinking about who I want to be as both a person and a professional, I came up with something I’m calling a “Last-Minute Gift to Myself”:

• Give everything your all
• Integrity is everything
• Work with purpose
• Always have hope
• Give of yourself
• Have fun
• Maximize every experience
• You can’t control much except your attitude
• Inspire others
• Do your best; always try
• Love deeply
• Take risks
• No regrets
• Forgive easily
• Exercise more; stress less
• Eat everything in moderation
• Buy the new shoes/handbag/whatever (Within moderation, of course)
• Take the trip
• Connect with friends

There are more of these; I stopped at what I thought was the best.

The point is that these over-arching ideas are what motivates me as a professional. If I lose sight of these, my career is going nowhere fast and any professional goals I’ve made will not be met.

This “Last-Minute Gift” to myself will serve to remind me of what motivates me as a person. This in turn will help keep me on the right track professionally.

(I encourage you to do the same. To give a “Last-Minute Gift” to yourself by thinking about personal motivation and goals.)

Now I’m ready to think about my goals and strategies for next year.

After I’m done shopping, wrapping presents, and decorating the tree, of course.