The season may be past; but there is still time to bestow a gift that can bring positive change in the coming days, weeks and throughout 2013.
The gift? A clean slate. A fresh start. A new beginning.
Give it to everyone with whom you interact — family, colleagues, team members, clients and customers.
And give it to yourself.
Forget the past — successes and failures, hits and misses, promises broken and opportunities missed. The preconceived notions and expectations that come with past experience inevitably inhibit our ability to imagine what might be.
A clean slate enables clear vision. A new beginning fosters the capacity to dream.
This is, at least in part, why we celebrate the turn of the calendar and the promise of a new year. Few things are more potent a change agent than the idea of a new beginning.
Beginnings come with renewed emotional energy and uncluttered perspective. There is no quicker way to adjust the course of relationship or enterprise.
Want the benefits of a clean slate to last? Try this:
- Forget about making a case for or justifying decisions, actions and plans of the past.
- Begin with and build upon shared aspirations.
- To the degree possible, judge success based on the degree to which decisions and actions align with these aspirations.
Resolved to make 2013 more productive on every front? Work with these basics and the slate will stay relatively uncluttered.
What would you add to this list?