I hope you’re making mistakes.
 
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.
 
So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. 
 
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
 
Make your mistakes, now and forever.
- Neil Gaiman

I’m not one to make New Years resolutions. They never seemed realistic to me. Rather, I pick a word that can be influential – and every year I add on to it. Think of these words as values that are important to you. Whether it’s a value you need to experience or a value you want to prioritize. I started this a few years ago.

2017: Growth

2018: Be Bold

2019: Be Selfish

To be selfish has a negative connotation to it and one of the main reasons why I picked it. When I think of the word(s), I imagine curiosity without explanation. Have a desire, do it, and deal with the consequences later. It’s not a matter of searching for the truth or the right answers but filtering out the wrong ones. Why do we give our time and energy away for a program we really don’t know much about? To adapt as athletes and eventually filter out what doesn’t work for us. So, in ten years, we’re doing less to get to our end goal that we don’t necessarily ever reach. I’m not saying train without reason, but the bigger picture is key. 

We can’t ultimately reach a state of happiness. We can experience happy moments. We will probably never obtain a balanced life. That would mean we are excelling in ALL areas in a consistent basis. It’s a matter of knowing how to handle a situation a little better than before, hopefully.

Within this ‘be selfish’ approach; being bold and experiencing growth are still important values to me. Really, they all fall within the same umbrella. That’s the beauty of picking a word. It’s whatever it means to you and what you need. But like all things, you have to commit. If being selfish will piss other people off, so be it. They’ll forgive you later. If being bold means to start your own business, well, look at Dave Tate. Within all your decision making, you are growing one way or another. You are (mostly) failing and (rarely) succeeding and those are equally important. “With great responsibility comes great power” and the power is you are always in choice.

Selfishly, I’m choosing to put myself in situations or opportunities that I benefit from. A trip. An orgasm. Another geared meet. A brutally honest conversation (you’d think this would be an easy one). I’m ‘cheating’ my way to lift heavier weights and bigger totals in hopes that my raw numbers will go up. There’s also a possibility that my numbers will stay the same, and by then, I would have dedicated 18 months to only find out that I failed an approach. Now what? I know what didn’t work and I try a different approach. I still benefit from the experience.

What will your word be?