By Stephen Tweed 
How is your year so far in 2022?
What will be your focus in 2023?
What new adventures will you experience in the coming year?
Over the last four decades in business as a home care business strategist, professional speaker, author, consultant, and executive coach, I’ve learned that we need to balance our focus on career with a balance of faith, family, fun, and fitness. The Thanksgiving holiday season is a wonderful time for gratitude, generosity, and grace. It’s a time to be grateful for the abundance and opportunities in our lives. It’s a time to be generous with our time and treasures to encourage others who have less. And it’s a time to extend grace to those who are having a hard time and don’t give the service we expect.
Thanksgiving time is also a great time to reflect on how this year has been, and have discussions about what we want next year to look like. My wife and business partner, Elizabeth Jeffries, CSP, CPAE, and I often take time around Thanksgiving to look at our schedules and plan time in the coming year for service to our faith, time for family and friends, a plan for fitness and health, and time for travel and new adventures. Some of our most amazing vacations have been planned in the car driving from Kentucky to Illinois or Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving with family.
Then, I take a day during the Christmas break to analyze our business performance this year, think about opportunities for growth, and develop strategies for the coming year. We frame this thinking based on three questions:
- What is working well for us in our business that we want to keep on doing?
- What isn’t working so well any more that we want to stop doing?
- What new ideas to we have for getting to our goals, and what do we want to start doing.
It’s the Start, Stop, Continue model for refocusing your business. We do all of this in the context of our Five-year Vision, our Three-year Picture, and our One-year Goals.
As you prepare for some special family time later this week, take a few minutes to reflect on your year so far. What has worked for you? What have you accomplished in your work or personal life? How have you given yourself away to serve others? What are you grateful for?
Then take some time to consider how you will use your gifts and talents in 2023 to do meaningful work in the service of others. How will you spend your family time in the coming year? How will you practice your faith? What will you do for fun and fitness?
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, and make 2023 another amazing year.
