MY TWO CENTS:
It’s hard to believe, but we’re only three weeks from the end of the year. I don’t know about you, but this year has just flown by!
Around the Christmas and New Year holidays, I like to set aside time to reflect and to plan. This year is no exception as we’ve had an amazing year, and are excited to pursue excellence in new and exciting ways for 2022 and beyond.
As I was thinking about how to be most effective during this time of reflection and planning, I came up with a bit of a formula that I wanted to share. Here it is:
Excellence = Right thinking + Purposefully Practiced Action
If I have my thinking refined, well-defined, and personally committed without applying any effort to the thoughts, I don’t make much progress.
Conversely, if I practice a thing so I can’t get it wrong, exert tremendous effort, and have significant activity without having aligned my thinking with my purpose, I make a lot of progress toward something that, at best, is not what I want or, at worst, is destructive, divisive, and detrimental to those priorities I’ve identified in my life.
In order to achieve excellence in pursuit of our purpose, we have to make sure we combine solid thinking with action that is purposeful and practiced. Now, the challenge is to determine how we build right thinking and develop habits that allow us to practice our purposeful actions.
I have some ideas and methods I employ to keep myself in effective pursuit of excellence. Please note…I said “pursuit of excellence” because I don’t claim to have achieved it. The journey is amazing and part of the fun is learning new ways to be effective in the pursuit.
So, I’ll save my own ideas and methods for another time, and make two humble requests of our readers:
- Would you be so kind as to take a minute, or two, or 30 sometime during the quiet of this holiday season, to consider how you personally develop “right thinking” and what “purposefully practiced action” looks like in your life?
- Then, will you simply hit “reply” to share those with us?
Your experience, wisdom, and insight will certainly bless me and the Legacy team. I will commit to dedicating our first MTC edition of the New Year to sharing any and all appropriate thoughts so we can all better pursue excellence toward our respective priorities and purposes for 2022.
Make it a great week…and have a blessed Christmas!!
Scott Cousino, CFP®, CEPA®
President