Whilst stopped in a service station last week I glanced at the magazine rack, and once headline stood out to me: ‘Change your life (in just 12 months)!’. If there is one thing I have learned in the last couple of years, it’s that is doesn’t take 12 months to change your life.
What it does take to change your life, or to make any change worth making, seems to me to be two things. The mettle to start something, and the discipline to finish it.
When I look back over 2012 this seems even clearer to me. I thought about a lot, and I learned a lot too, but what was most important was what I started and what I finished, both on my own and with others. Sometimes making sure something has started properly and will go on to be finished also means saying no to other things.
It seems to me that to start and to finish are not really about time, they are about making a commitment, or changing a mindset. Deciding that it is worthwhile and possible to do something, scoping what it will take and committing to getting it done, sometimes to the exclusion of other things.
Making things happen involves changing your mind. That’s often hard but it doesn’t take 12 months, it can take just a moment. That is my focus for the next year; concentrating on choosing the right things, making the commitment of starting them, and getting them finished.
Image: CC BY NC SA Steve Garfield
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