The last couple months have found me thinking about 2017 and becoming a bit more appreciative.

My initial thoughts about 2017 were not very positive. I was in a bit of an emotional hangover/mood the whole year. I didn’t feel like I was ever in a comfortable spot. There was a lot of struggle.

Today I was looking through pictures from 2015 and I was able to see the growth that I’ve been growing through for the last couple of years. It made me realize that I had some really significant growth events last year and in fact the last couple of years.

Yes, there were some things that I dragged my feet about. There were things that I was arguing with God about, and things that I probably should have focused in on that I didn’t do. The emotional difficulty of tackling some of these things made me feel like I wasn’t making much progress when in fact I was.

Things I’m most happy about from 2017:

• Getting Lasik
• Buying my new car and retiring the old car
• Making family trips a priority
• Speaking at my alma mater

More importantly the thing I was most excited about was the attitude shift that occurred around my birthday and extended into the new year.

This shift could probably be most clearly be reflected in my approach to money. I started to realize that saving money – just in of itself was less important than understanding the outcomes that I wanted money to give me.

Making the transition from saving money just to save it, to making sure that I was using money as a tool was super important in increasing my happiness.

It’s also made me realize that sometimes the things that I am chasing are really surrogate goals, and that by releasing my stringent adherence for these surrogate goals I can potentially end up closer to the actual  ideals I had in mind.

A big part of enjoying 2018 has boiled down to letting go of things I held to too tightly. It’s also meant surrendering some of my goals to a higher purpose.

I think in future posts I’ll write about my new perspective on relationships.

Fly or Fall.

OFO