I loathe New Year’s Resolution posts.  They always seem terribly self-indulgent and loaded with future failure.  They are the worst posts I’ve ever seen.  I bet you get a free bowl of soup with a post like that. (Looks good on you, though.)  So I don’t write them.  I don’t even do resolutions anymore.  The closest I get is to “try to do a little better the next time around.”  Seems like a good goal to have.

This year, though, the new year dropped a lot of change in my lap.  First, these new digs.  You like?  (All credit goes to Crystal Miller and her team at Branded Strategies.  Despite all my help, they still made this look pretty great and we’re not even done yet).  I’ve been wanting to freshen up the blog for a while and she made sure I didn’t go halfway.  It’s way better than I would have done on my own.

Second, my role at Dovetail Software has changed.  I’m now serving as the VP of Customer Experience, working on the entire relationship timeline, including implementation, training, support, professional services and account management.  Moving into a larger role with our clients is also pretty great, as it allows for some new thought paths to be shared in this space.

I’m also finishing up work on my second book, The Culture Equation.  More on that to come soon.  All together, it’s a lot of stuff to have happened already in 2015.  It makes me hopeful that we can make this a year full of positive change for ourselves and for others.

All these things made me think about the way we start the year, with a head full of dreams and a heart full of song.  When all things are new, all changes are possible, and all outlooks are rosy.  We are strong, we are determined, we are the crafters of our own future.  We need not speak of resolutions, which are so often met with a failure of will or crushed in early-February apathy.  Instead we can look to our own evolutions, turning ourselves into more than we were yesterday, a better version of the person that got us where we are.  A friend of mine once told me that when you stop trying to improve yourself, you’ve started to die.  So don’t stop.

And as we move through these changes together, it brings us closer to a shared revolution in the way the world spins.  The first few days of the year have brought us a sobering reminder that we, as a planet, still struggle in how we work and play together.  This has led to some uplifting shared moments, but I’d like to think we can get there without waiting for a tragedy to pull us together.  We can be more than we are, and we can make our world more than it is.  So as we dive into a new year and all the change it promises, I’d invite you to spend a moment and think about the people around you and the impact you can have on them.  Change starts with the individual, meaning each one of us.  There’s no better time than right now to start flexing your Atlas muscles.

I saw a question recently from someone who wanted to start making a difference, and wasn’t sure where to begin.  My advice to her was the same I’ll give here:  Start small.  Start simple.  Start local.  Smile at people you pass on the street.  Hold the door for the person behind you.  Yield.  Buy a couple of packages of socks on your next Target run and drop them at the homeless shelter (it’s the best $10 you will ever spend when it comes to rehabbing your soul).  Bring in bagels.  Make the next pot of coffee.  Be genuinely happy for someone else’s success, and be equally genuine in your sympathy when they suffer a loss.

That would be a pretty great resolution.  It’s certainly a worthy evolution.  And if we all did it together, you can believe we’d see a revolution powered by love.  And that’s a pretty great way to start any year.

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