Revisit your Ambition. This is a great time to do it. Go back to those early dreams and ask God if you need to revise it and renew it. Ensure that it is alligned to the Word and God-inspiring.
Breakaway from the common and popular unless you want to remain unchanged. A lot of people do what they do because it has always been done that way. They do it without thinking about the reasons and the meaning behind what they do. Breakaway from what is norm. Seek God for something new, something purposeful, something uncharted, unrehearsed.
Care for the concerns of people that you care about. Think about being more of a blessing than you have ever been before, especially if you are over 40. Before 40, your life is baout getting but after 40 it is all about giving.
Demand more from yourself than anybody else ever will in the arena of the spiritual disciplines. You can act when someone asks you to act (external trigger) or you can act simply because you want to grow (internal trigger.) In the long run, internal triggers always work better.
Engage fully with what you are doing. It is not worth doing anything half-heartedly. Even if it is fun, engage in it fully. You only have 365 days in a year. With weekends and holidays gone, you have close to 250 days. That’s about 6000 hours. With sleep and some TV and rest, you get close to half of that available to you. That’s about 3000 hours. If you are not engaged in these 3000 hours, you can be guaranteed that you will be stressed out in whatever hours outside of those 3000 hours.
Fail fast. Fail often. Fail brilliantly. If you fear failure, you will stop taking risks and when you stop taking risks you will do what is common and popular (in other words risk-free). And you will never know what you miss unless you take some risk.
Give first. You get back so much more when you give and what you get back will have greater retrnal value than you can possibly imagine.
Humility is an “invisible” competitive advantage. With the world changing at breathtaking speed, there is no guarantee that what worked yesterday will work today and what works today will work tomorrow. Humilty helps you grow with greater grace. It oils your life for change in a fast-changing world.
Intensity wins. Big time. Think about the time you were playing a game and were totally engrossed in it. Those were the moments of high-intensity. Winning was important but at that particular moment, you were just playing with high-intensity. That is the way the game of life is played. With high intensity. Intensely hunger after God Increase your intensity by a notch or two in 2010.
Join a team. Join a movement. Join a tribe that wil forge for you a strong sense of community. Join something that will make help you make a bigger difference in this world. You can only do so much on your own. With the right tribe, the possibilities are endless.
Knowing what NOT to do is equally important as knowing what to do. Before the start of the year, think of a few things that are not worth continuing. Dis-engage from these activities gracefully so that you have more bandwidth to do things that do matter. Think a decade, not just a year. 2010 is the beginning of a whole new decade.
Love your work. How much you love your work shows up in your work. Putting your heart into what you are doing is that “extra” that can make your work extraordinary for the Lord.
Make meaning. Both for yourself and people who you touch. Everybody is in search for more meaning in their lives. And there is no meaning without God so ensure He is in the equation of everything in your life.
Nurture relationships for the long-term. There are only two kinds of relationships – one is long-term and the other one is very long term. Very long-term relationships won’t happen in the short-term or by accident. You need nurture those relationships.
Be on the lookout for opportunities to contribute. Opportunities are everywhere. They come to those people who are ready and willing to put in the effort to capitalize on them.
Passion on the right priorities with the right amount of patience will create profits. Identify your passions. Allign them to your priorities. Patiently wait for God to produce for you the profits.
Question your questions. If the questions you are asking until now have not given the results so far, it is time to question those questions. It’s time to ask new and powerful questions. The Holy Spirit seraches the heart that is open to questions.
Results matter. But they do not matter as much as the process to the results. The journey is more important than the destination. Focus on the process. Leave the results to God.
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Capitalize on your strengths.. AND, find good help to handle your weaknesses. But remember, if you only bang on your strengths, they have a way of becoming your weakness.
Thoughtfulness may not cost you much but people notice it. It shows that you care for them and they are important enough for you to walk that extra mile.
Understand first and then people would want to understand you. If you think someone is not able to understand you, think about the possibility that they might be thinking the same way about you . This is tough but yields great relational returns.
Check your values. They are the foundation for whatever you say or do. The building is only as strong as the foundation and you are only as strong as your values.
Don't lose your sense of Wonder to ensure that you are always learning. You can’t know everything. Not now. Not in a decade and not in a lifetime. Be in a mood of wonder as a student of life. Most of all, don't ever lose your Wonder of God or you lose your ability to worship Him.
Be very careful about SEX. It is a fire. Place in the right location(marriage) it contributes. Taken out of its location, it destrys. Don't let what you have build over the years be burned down in one night.
Yearning for more of God today will yield good returns tomorrow. Be more hungry foe God and His Word in 2010 then ever before. It is a discipline to be cultivated.
Zap negative thinking. Zap laziness. Zap procrastination. Zap skepticism. Zap anything that will reduce your capacity or the capacity of others around you. It is simply not worth carrying the extra baggage. Repeat with Paul: Rejoice and again I say Rejoice!
