Your Best Year So Far

I hope the past year will go down in your book of life as one filled with great pleasures and grand memories. But whether the year was good, bad, or indifferent, I hope you’ll enter the new year wiser and stronger for your experiences and optimistic that the best is yet to come.

As you look forward to the future – the place where you’ll spend the rest of your life – it’s smart to look back at the immediate past and objectively assess what went well and what didn’t in your job, your relationships, your health, and your overall sense of fulfillment. What did you learn that can make your life better?

If you had a bad year, it’s possible you were a wholly innocent victim, or maybe your own actions or attitudes contributed to serious grief or unhappiness. Either way, please accept my best wishes and sincere condolences. Please be careful, however, not to wallow in sorrow, sympathy, shame, or self-doubt. Don’t allow yesterday’s pain to become tomorrow’s suffering.

Be accountable, but be fair to yourself.

Start the next stage of your life’s journey with optimism and confidence. Remember, you’re the captain of your own ship. Take the wheel, choose your course, and get on your way.

Sure, there may be more rough seas ahead, but there will also be peace, reconciliation, achievement, challenge, and true joy. You just have to find it.

Abe Lincoln pointed out that one of the good things about the future is it always comes one day at a time.

May this new year be your best year – so far.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Take a Year-End Attitude Inventory

It’s a wise custom to end an old year and begin a new one with serious self-reflection. What did you learn this year that could improve your life and make you a better person?

Start by examining the way you think and feel about your job, your relationships, and yourself. After all, the single most important factor in personal happiness and your impact on others is your attitude.

In the geometry of life, the axiom is “positive attitudes produce positive results.” They make success more likely, failures less harmful, pleasures more frequent, and pain more bearable. Some people tend to bring warm sunshine wherever they go; others bring cold chills. What do you bring?

To find out where you can improve, take an inventory of your predispositions, the attitude you’re most likely to start with:

Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic?
Do you tend to assume the best or expect the worst of people?
Is your first instinct to be empathetic or judgmental?
Is your first instinct to be supportive or critical?
Do you send the message that you enjoy life or that you’re barely enduring it?
Do you come across as the captain of your own ship or simply a passenger?

Wherever you are on the positive-attitude spectrum, think how much better things could be if you were more consistently and self-consciously optimistic, empathetic, supportive, grateful, enthusiastic, hopeful, and cheerful.

So why not resolve to think, act, and speak more positively about yourself, your family, your coworkers, and everyone else in your life?

Making a Strategic Plan for Your Life

The tradition of making New Year’s resolutions reflects two of the best qualities of human nature: the desire and ability to improve ourselves and our lives. But just as effective organizations formulate annual strategic plans to identify goals and create action plans to achieve them, we can use the New Year’s resolution concept to make strategic plans for our lives.

We can certainly do better than making random internal promises about dieting or trying harder to get along with difficult relatives. Instead, I suggest you organize your resolution-making by thinking of what you’d like to have more of and less of in five aspects of your life: 1) physical, 2) emotional, 3) intellectual, 4) social, and 5) spiritual.

First, what are all the things you could do to improve your physical well-being? Perhaps you should resolve to eat less or eat better, to drink less, or to exercise more. If you smoke or take drugs, you could resolve to stop.

In terms of your emotional life, identify the things that make you happy and fulfilled. Is there anything you could do to feel better about who you are and what you do? Would things be better if you changed your attitude by being more optimistic, enthusiastic, and cheerful and less judgmental, cynical, and critical? Should you spend more time with people and activities that bring out the best in you?

After you’ve dealt with your body and your heart, think of your brain. What are you willing to do to become smarter, wiser, and more interesting? Resolve to feed your mind and spend more time exploring your curiosities and passions.

Perhaps the best road to happiness is to improve your social relationships. Would it help if you were more attentive, patient, or empathetic? Is there a way to schedule more time with people you care about?

Finally, reflect deeply on the spiritual dimension of your life. Resolve to draw more on your religion or other philosophical convictions and to think about the meaning and purpose of your life in grander terms.

Remember, as Benjamin Disraeli said, life is too short to be little.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Looking Backward and Forward

As we throw out last year’s calendar and break out a new one, it makes sense to look backward at where we’ve been, inside to assess where we are, and forward to where we’re going.

Henry David Thoreau urged us to set priorities, warning that “Our life is frittered away by detail…Simplify, simplify.”

John Greenleaf Whittier reminded us that our future is often the harvest of our actions: “The tissue of the life to be, we weave with colors all our own. And in the field of destiny, we reap as we have sown.”

Lincoln added another dimension: “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” He also said, “A person is generally as happy as they are willing to be.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson urged us to find the spark within: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

According to Robert Byrne, “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” And the Prophet Mohammad instructed that: “A man’s true wealth is the good he does in this world.”

I’ll conclude with the observation of Rabbi Harold Kushner: “Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so our lives matter, so the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.”

This is Michael Josephson wishing you a Happy New Year filled with meaning and purpose and reminding you that character counts.

Lessons From a Carrot, an Egg, and a Coffee Bean

Let’s face it. Painful personal trauma and tragedy – like illness or injury, death of a loved one, loss of a job, or an unexpected breakup of a relationship – are unavoidable. The question is: Will these private calamities erode our capacity to be happy or cause us to become stronger and better able to live a meaningful and fulfilling life?

Consider how differently carrots, eggs, and ground coffee beans are affected by the extreme adversity of being boiled. Like a carrot, adversity can soften us. We can emerge more flexible, understanding, compassionate, and grateful, or we can let our life spirit turn into a soft mush.

Like an egg, boiling water can make us harder, stronger, tougher, and wiser, or we can become more cynical, pessimistic, callous, and inaccessible.

And like a coffee bean, we can willingly transform our lives into something better or lose ourselves completely.

We can’t control what happens to us, but we have a lot to say about how we react and, therefore, what happens in us. The first step to turning adversity into advantage is to get out of the hot water as quickly as possible. Don’t dwell on catastrophe. Grieve, but move on. Don’t define your life by misfortune.

Second, force yourself to move forward. Draw on your inner strengths, the people who love you, and your faith to transform your life into something better. Formulate a vision of a more purposeful life filled with people and experiences that will help you become more fulfilled.

SHUT UP
TRAIN MORE
Quit whining, smile
Be glad you’re here

Check all your equipment. You might use it. CHECK IT. When the tones go off, it’s too late. Do it now.
Every time you come on duty, look around and find out what needs to be done. Stay away from the TV and get on the apparatus floor. It’s time to Learn.
Every time you come on duty, check your pockets for your gloves, flashlight, rope, screwdriver, cutters, and more. Why carry all that? Figure it out.
Always help prepare the meal and make coffee..
When you clean the toilets, leave the clean, soapy water in the bowl so other firefighters know the toilet has been clean..
Volunteer to do whatever needs to be done. WHATEVER..
After eating (you eat last), be the first to the sink to scrub the pots, pans, and dishes — Perfectly..
Be proud that you are going to learn to help people that are having the worst day of their lives. Very few people get to do what we do..
Learn your firehouse or department policies and positive traditions- know them by heart and follow them!.
Always say “Sir,” “Ma’am,” “Chief,” “Cap,” “Lou,” to Chiefs, officers, and instructors. They’ve earned it..
When arriving at a fire, always get off the rig with your SCBA and apparatus tools. Some don’t do it and have to backtrack. Avoid being one of them..
When on a run, listen for your officers instructions and follow them..
Always stay with your company. If you freelance or wander, it can kill you or other firefighters..
At fires, Stay Low. Heat and Smoke rise. Listen for interior sounds..
Study and learn fire behavior, and get as much hands-on training as possible, no matter who’s paying for it..
Keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open—Always!.
LISTEN!!!.
Never give up. Everyone screws up..
Ask questions when you don’t understand. If you have doubt ask..
Learn, Study, Drill and Train, Train, Train. It never ends..
Respect those that have done the job before you. In your position that’s everyone..
Let your skills and actions speak for you; You will judged by your actions, ability, and enthusiasm..
Don’t be a 6-22: Someone who has 6 months on the job but acts like they have 22 years of experience. Be respectful, humble and learn..
Take care of yourself. You are priority # 1. Be safe. Never fail to wear your seatbelt. This is a risky job. We don’t have to stupidly increase that risk..
Earn your seat on the apparatus and your role on the fireground. EARN IT!!!.
Always act as if your Fire Chief is sitting on your shoulder and your mother is on the other..
Ask your boss about your progress in private. But don’t ask it in a suck-up way. Be professional..
Stay off those stupid, faceless, “mutt” populated internet chat rooms, your cell phone and instant messages. Focus on your job. Leave your electronic tools in your car. You don’t have time for them..
Always arrive early and ask or do what needs to be done..
Memorize your apparatus duties and what’s in each compartment on any rig you’ll be riding..
When you’re taught about a particular tool, become an expert in that tool..
Have an opinion? Most times we won’t ask for it. This isn’t always a democracy. Follow the policies — those who wrote them were here before you and are time tested..
Remember: The department is loaning you the temporary title of “probationary firefighter.” At the end of a specified time frame you will have earned it..
Be the first to do the dishes, take out the garbage, and mop the floor..
Don’t tell jokes or stories until you are accepted—and that’s a few years away..
Don’t gossip. Say nothing negative..
Watch your temper. Chop-busting is part of the firehouse life..
Help other with their assignments when you finish your; that includes cleaning and training..
Volunteer for assignment, standbys, special details, conferences, fund raising, teams and training..
Never turn your back on a rig that’s backing up. NEVER.
Don’t trust the public on the roadways. They don’t see or hear you. Watch the traffic..
Watch what you eat. Stay fit. Work out every day..
Respect EMS and be good at it. It’s part of being a firefighter these days and it matters. Treat every patient like your mom. Really.
Getting water on the fire can do more good to save lives than almost anything else. Learn the role of a firefighter—like an expert..
Study building construction. The building is your enemy. Frank Brannigan said that. Who is he? Figure it out..
Learn to calm down. No matter how bad it is and you are going to see some really bad things. RELAX.
At a fire, no exposed skin, use all your protective gear and don’t breathe smoke. Use your SCBA and DO NOT BREATHE THAT CRAP..
When you earn the privilege to drive, doesn’t drive like a lunatic. They let you drive the apparatus; it isn’t your apparatus..
Smile and remember how great this job is!!

Get Shareaholic

About Paul Stein

No Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

What is LAFCU All About?

From Our Business Directory

Upcoming Events

Find Us on Facebook

Follow Us on Twitter