It’s the last day of 2011, and here we ven­ture into a “new” year where we renew our cheque writ­ing habits and scratch out the 1, and replace it with a 2, and ini­tial the error. But, that’s just a technicality.

Really, the New Year always seems to have a refresh­ing sense of renewal, a clean slate, a sec­ond chance, a new step, new energy and resolve, a dust­ing off, a shed­ding of old, and a new deter­mi­na­tion of march­ing for­ward. I love the sen­sa­tion, yet, the real­ist in me says “it’s just another day”, and noth­ing has changed. Thank good­ness, the spir­i­tual side of me chooses to embrace the illu­sion of new­ness, and pulls up the new clean agenda with hope.

New Year’s res­o­lu­tions can become a dan­ger­ous con­coc­tion of expec­ta­tions, unat­tain­able aspi­ra­tions result­ing in dis­ap­point­ments, so I step around the rit­ual with cau­tion. One of the peo­ple I have “met” online, and fol­low is entre­pre­neur­ial men­tor Chris Bro­gan. He offers us a sug­ges­tion to replace the over zeal­ous res­o­lu­tions by choos­ing three words for your 2012 guid­ing track. You have to dig deep inside and fig­ure out what words res­onate with how you would like to drive your year. I like this.

So… in the spirit of Chris, I would like to write three words that rep­re­sent for me my depart­ing year, and also my arriv­ing year.

The main energy for 2011, for me, involved fam­ily, and some new steps towards my busi­ness. I learned that there will always be dif­fi­cult chal­lenges in life, and the other chal­lenge is to bal­ance it all, with­out guilt, with laugh­ter and pleasure.

2011: Show­ing up, lead­ing, cocooning

2012: Embark, Focus, Manage

Happy New Year to you all. I sin­cerely wish for you a road of good life, with good lessons, and laugh­ter. And, if you would like to share three words with me, here, I would be honoured.

Cheers!!

Our inspir­ing neigh­bour­hood… Happy New Year