We are pulled into this world kicking and screaming, gasping for our first breath. We depart from this world, with hardly a word, grasping for our last breath. In between we can barely find time to catch our breath as we race from one moment to the next, hardly taking the time to reflect on much of anything that happens in a day, let alone in a year. Minute by day passes, then week by month and year by decade, and before you have time to imprint part of your life on the history of the world, or at least the next generation, you are gone. That’s life, and how we don’t live it. I am afraid that most of us work at working so hard to survive or seeking for the life that could have been, that we never get to really live the life that should have been. I fear that more of us are hanging in there rather than grabbing for all of the gusto. It seems that we are more often under the circumstances than rising above them.

How about you? Do you tend to endure life more than enjoy life? Are you more experienced in complaining or celebrating? How often do you catch yourself laughing or smiling on any given day? So what it is with us, anyway? Why do we seem to grow too old to fast, yet too smart to slow? Why are we so prone to let life pass us by rather than seizing the day? Whatever happened to the pursuit of real happiness and freedom? Our country was founded for the purpose of it. Could it be that we have been going about it in the wrong way? Wouldn’t it have been nice if, in all of the years of education that we endured – anywhere from thirteen to twenty-one years, that someone would have taught us Life 101 – a course about life and how to live it? Unfortunately, we have to learn it, mostly on our own, day by day, for a lifetime. We actually never stop learning, and it’s struggling through the difficulties of life that actually shapes us to become more of who we were created to be.

Every year, we should be learning and growing more into who we were created to become. So, as you end this year, why not contemplate these questions? Think deeply about them, answer them, and on the basis of your answers, develop your life-plan for 2010.

1. What was the biggest mistake that you made this year, what did you learn from it and how will you live differently because of it?
2. What was the most valuable book that you read this year and how did it increase your knowledge and wisdom?
3. What is the greatest character growth you have experienced this year? (ex. deeper quality of love, more patience, better anger management, etc.)
4. What kind of skills have you sharpened and developed this year?
5. What relationships did you invest most in and how did they grow deeper and more intimate?
6. What did you do to strengthen and develop your financial strategy?
7. In what ways did you strengthen and develop your family?
8. How much time did you invest in your spiritual life and what one word would best describe your spiritual condition in 2009?
9. What did you do to build and develop your career and what progress was made?
10. What 3 things did you do towards building a life legacy in 2009?

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