2009 is coming!

2009 is coming and this got me thinking about the past year, reflecting on what I have learnt, sometimes too late and to my detriment and thus need to master next year. Thinking about this I found the below quote which poses an interesting proposition.

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. - Hal Borland

Assuming that Hal is right I must take all of my learning from the last year into 2009, even that which I would like to leave behind, those situations I would have handled differently, those decisions I would have made differently. If I must take them with me how do I take them with me positively rather than as something I have sworn never to do again and have identified as a poor quality in the picture of a perfect leader I have in my head.

Perhaps I need to spend some time thinking about what made me make those choices in the first place. Were those actions a result of my personal traits? If I made those choices because it was my gut reaction, something that frequently gets me into trouble, should I try to lose that quality completely or find a new way to use it? Can I take that gut reaction, a feature that is so intrinsic to my personality, consider it and re-evaluate before acting on it to achieve more positive results?

I would challenge all of you to think about a situation in the last year when you were not at your best and think about how you can take that into the new year in a way that is productive and still gives you that sense of self.