New Year's Resolution

I personally have never been very good at New Year's resolutions. I just never seem to think of things that seem worthy of a New Year's list and maybe I am a little afraid that I won't actually stick to them. Instead, I find myself contemplating various items that would have been perfect resolutions in the months and days following. One particular one has stuck with me the last couple of months after reading "The Last Lecture." I must say there are many principles in this book that are worth further contemplation and even worth adoption in my life, but this particular one continues to linger in my thoughts.

Now I'm not going to sound as elegant as the book, but it goes something like this, "Listen to people in conversations. Don't just hear them speak." With life as crazy as it is, today's society values our ability to multi-task in every possible situation. The problem with multi-tasking is some times you don't give 100% to whatever five things we may be doing. When you are having a conversation with someone and thinking of the nineteen other things that you must do that day, you are not actually listening to that person. If you commit to paying attention to what people say and turn off your thoughts about what story you have to counter with, what your next step might be, and/or what happened to you last night, then you really do learn so much about the people you talk to. And you may just in the end have better things to say.

So this is my Aprilution, to consciously pay more attention to people when they talk. I will try to turn off my thoughts and develop my conversations, which in the end will better my relationships. Another Aprilution I am committing to is to make my bed every day.


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