Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away. – Maya Angelou
Year 24 was a mediocre year. I was too ambitious, having made my birthday resolution public for the first time the year before. Not in the sense I tried to bite off more than I could chew. But in the sense, I lost focus. In trying to focus on everything, I focused on nothing. In my pursuit of hitting all the marks, I became mediocre at all of them.
Don’t get me wrong. Despite the pandemic, which may have hindered some of my goals, namely:
- Getting two startups from 0 to 1 in a year,
- And sleeping earlier,
… I did “succeed” in all of my other endeavors. Frankly, some hit, some missed. Nevertheless, I didn’t become stellar in any one of them. Looking back, I’m almost embarrassed to say any of my resolutions were defining of my 24th year being alive on this planet.
So, no concrete compartmentalized goals this year. I will be living day-to-day with one goal in mind: I have to seriously impress myself at least twice this year. While I may not have “actionable” goals to head towards this year, in order to impress myself, I have to, what some might call, “risk it for the biscuit.” I have to take leaps of faith. I have to be willing to try and fail and try and fail. Because without trying and taking risks, I know for a fact, I can and will never impress myself.
Of course this goal is subject to change, although I imagine not by much. The past year has taught me how unpredictable our future is. Who am I to predict what I will do the rest of this year when even the best fortune tellers and professional investors cannot forecast with certainty what will happen next week. Be it $GME or the pandemic, I’m sure life will constantly throw us curveballs we will never be able to forecast. But that’s exactly why living is fun. The future is not the present we are gifted, but one we chase not knowing what’ll come of it. And the gift is in the adventure.
I quoted James Stockdale – for which the Stockdale paradox is named after – in a post last year, “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end – which you can never afford to lose – with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they may be.”
To confront myself and the most brutal facts of today, I will take the risks that will mold who I am tomorrow. The discipline of saying yes. It’s not about my batting average, but about the magnitude of the home runs I can get.
I’m confident that this year, I will continue many of the habits I picked up in the past year – writing weekly, exploring creative projects regularly, etc. But I won’t hold myself to promises that’ll lead me to mediocre, or at best, good, results. But rather, like in venture, I have to be willing to pass on the ‘good’ to make way for the ‘great’.
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
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