I failed to achieve a single goal this year: It was a great year!
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. ~ Johnny Cash
So we start each year by setting goals for ourselves and I’m no different. I set some goals last year, I wanted to lose 20 pounds, I wanted to publish my book on the Appalachian Trail, there were some smaller ones but these were the biggies. So here we sit at the end of 2016 and in fact, I’ve lost 15 pounds and the book is a couple of weeks from publication. By any objective measure, failure. At least from one perspective and perspective is truly what we need as we set out on any endeavor. I failed to meet my goals, but the book will soon be published, I did lose 15 pounds and keep it off for six months. Those are hugely positive things. Improving my life can be called success. Like our happiness, things are often a matter of our deciding our reaction to the situation. I have a choice tonight, I can wallow in my failure or enjoy my improvement. I choose the later, I choose positivity, I choose happiness and I hope you do to.
On a friend’s Facebook page today he asked for advice for the new year. This is what I wrote, do something that scares you, find adventure no matter how small, and go someplace you have never been before this year. If you do it right, you can accomplish all three in one trip. One of the things I have endeavored to do since beginning this blog, 2017 starts the seventh year, is to follow my own advice and I recently did just that. They’ll be some posts soon but I just returned from a trip to Jordan in the Middle East. It’s a bit scary traveling in the Middle East these days as an American. I found adventure there in many ways, four wheeling in the desert, riding a donkey up insane stone stairs and even riding a camel across the desert, and of course Jordan and more particularly Petra, was someplace I’d never been before. One trip, all three, a magnificent experience. So Happy New Year my friends and my 2017 bring you many happy days. ~ Rev Kane
Rev Kane in front of the Treasury Building in the 2000 year-old stone city of Petra in Jordan.
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