I’m loving all the updates on stuff you’ve done to make the most of the time you have left in 2011. Way to get busy. Deadlines always make me hustle, too.
I was thinking this week about how it feels to know that you need to act on commitments you have previously just been thinking about, for a long time even. This was prompted while watching yet another football game at our house on Sunday afternoon, and because it’s the holidays there are now commercials showing guys proposing to women where before there were mostly beer and car commercials. Why Thanksgiving and Christmas equal engagements, I have no idea, but there it is.
So a commercial comes on, and we watch this woman finish hiking something like Mount Everest and then pulls off her gloves to celebrate, only to encounter her adoring boyfriend kneeling in the snow, presenting her with a rock the size of a snowball. I remember what a pressure-filled time dating and engagement was for me, and how high the stakes felt in deciding to commit myself to this one person for the rest of my life. I think about how many people feel burdened by expectations of success and accomplishment- “I want to make this much money by the time I’m this old”, “I want to own a house by the time I’m 30,” “I want to have kids by the time I’m 35,” etc. As my younger son dances and sings along to “Every kiss begins with Kay,” I ask myself.
What if there are resolutions we shouldn’t accomplish?
What if there are really good reasons why we never made that call, sent that e-mail, took that risk?
What if that conversation we’ve been waiting to have for months or even years really didn’t need to happen? What if it only made things worse?
Are there ever times when the wiser thing to do is to NOT do what you’ve committed to do?
And is there a way to know that BEFORE we move forward?
Because I would have paid good money if someone could have told me 20 years ago that having my bridesmaids wear pantsuits was going to be a decision I would regret.
Then I saw this TED talk by Kathryn Shulz, about regret. And it made perfect sense. Although I am not part of the 17% of the population who regrets getting my tattoo, I definitely needed to hear that some of my own regrets are not as ugly as I think they are.
Even if they are eggplant-colored pantsuits.
Click HERE (or on the image above) to watch the talk.
May this inform what you decide to do – or, perhaps more importantly, NOT do – in the remaining weeks of 2011. And remember, please remember- you can do better.
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