Reflect and Project by Dana Forbes

As the year comes to a close, most of us cannot help but consider the past twelve months and plan for the coming one’s. We are busy thinking about all the things we want to achieve and reflecting on what we did and did not accomplish. I can guarantee that everyone reading this has set a goal and not met it. I can also assume that many reading this have BIG plans for the season and all they want to get done. So how do you get there?

Many of you know the saying “how you do anything, is how you do everything” I recently shared with a group of people that I am that person. I am the one who puts the grocery cart away, picks up trash when no one is looking and makes their bed, every single day. However last month I had to change an implement out on my 75 HP John Deere Tractor. This is a large machine and I needed to remove the brush hog and attach my 78” blower. Last year my neighbor helped me, but this year I was determined to do it on my own. I was, however, extremely intimidated. This was all quite new to me having just bought it a year ago. So I read the manual, watched the Youtube videos and read the manual again. I still had my neighbor come supervise because this is not something you want to mess up – and I crushed it! I spent the remainder of the day ticking off my list of things to winterize my property when I arrived at my final task…changing the windshield wipers on my truck. Now, if you have made it this far, in an effort to entertain you, picture this: I rip open the package and just dive in. If you have done this recently, you know that this may be one of the most complicated things to do as there is a secret decoder ring or riddle to solve just to figure out how to get the old ones off. I’m sure you can imagine how it went. To put it simply, they are still sitting on my backseat. Yes, I went back and attempted to read the directions and sort it out but I just wasn’t committed. The reality is, how I do anything is NOT how I do everything, otherwise I would have prepped more and likely found success.

Did you know that if you spend just 18 minutes a day on a skill, and do this for an entire year, roughly equivalent to 100 hours, you will be better than 95% of people in said discipline? While I have zero intentions on spending any amount of time on those wipers (look out NAPA here I come), there are things within my skiing I want to be better at. Since the average season is 100 days, I have decided to commit one hour a day to improving in that area. I am sure many of you reading this have goals around their teaching or sliding. Whatever it may be, set that intention now and know if you commit just one hour a day, you will succeed.

Does this mean if you do not spend an hour a day doing your “something,” you will fail? This, I do not know, and likely depends on how far you made it. With that being said, don’t fast forward to this exact time next year and reflect on what goals you did not reach. To avoid that, on the days when sitting in on another MA session seems unbearable, or it’s raining and blowing sideways and you just taught the family from hell, you may have to force yourself to just do it. There is power in one more day. In Alcoholics Anonymous, those in recovery are taught that if they can stay sober for just one more day, when they want more than anything to give up, they will not only make it through that day but likely the next one as well. It is also so much easier to just focus on the one hour you need to commit that day, versus the 72 more in front of you. Stay the course, commit and you will carry it through.