Reflecting on 2017The comedian Phyllis Diller once joked, “What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.” Hopefully, you’re not in that situation during the Holidays!

This is a great time of year to step back to see if we’re caught in the speed trap. As the pace of life keeps accelerating, it’s way too easy to race faster without zooming out on Google Maps to see where our little blinking blue dot is headed. Are we on the right road?

The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, wrote, “We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us, that they may see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.” Numerous studies show that the most effective leaders and organizations pause periodically to look at the direction they’re heading. Like an artist painting on a canvas, we need to stand back to get perspective. Are the individual brush strokes coming together to paint the picture we’ve been envisioning?

There are many Holiday movies to remind us of life’s bigger picture and purpose. In “Have a Purposeful Holiday for a Wonderful Life“, I wrote that one of my favorite holiday movies (and one of the highest rated at Internet Movie Database with a rare 8.6/10 by over 300,000 people) is “It’s a Wonderful Life” (if you’re not familiar with the movie, click here to watch a trailer). The main storyline of the movie is George Bailey’s agonizing journey toward realizing he’s living his life purpose. “Have a Purposeful Holiday for a Wonderful Life” includes links to resources on finding our personal purpose.

Purpose and meaning are vital elements to creating our own wonderful life. There’s a major shift in business schools, organizations, and society toward balancing purpose and profit. “Profit is a Means Not an End“, discusses this and the “good company” research showing how business success has shifted in our “worthiness era.”

Reflecting back helps us to better look forward. “Thoughts That Make You Go Hmmm on…A New Year” provides pithy insights to help you. Such as avoiding the trap; “a New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”

Happy New Year!