Are you still on track with your New Year's resolutions? Not to worry, just like the inspirational year-end articles that got you into you current mess, there is also help to keep you motivated and hopefully salvage some of those well-intentioned resolutions.

Like everyone else, I made a couple of resolutions that I intend to keep. They are not directly related to family, friends, work or finances. I am blessed to have relative normalcy in those areas and just a little tweaking should do. My resolutions have to do with getting back in shape. I'm not talking about building bigger biceps or getting washboard abs. I'm talking about being able to run a 10k or swim a mile whenever I want to. I have been in that kind of shape not too long ago and I find that it gives me the confidence to confront any challenges in any area of my personal life. This year I want to complete an X-Terra off-road triathlon. I did one several years ago and I have fond memories of what was then, a quaint little race in Big Bear. I want to do an X-Terra because I hate gyms and the only way I get in shape is by doing outdoor activities like trail running or mountain biking. Having a race to show up to, with the intention of successfully completing it, has always been a great motivator for me. The other resolution also involves sports. I have been planning it for the last seventeen years: Completing the Newport to Balboa Pier-to-Pier Ocean Swim with my son and having him beat me. All he has to do is to show up and get in the ocean. The rest is inevitable!

While reading all about motivation, resolutions, financial tune-ups and all the assorted year-end crap, I came across a truly creative approach to make one reflect about the coming year. It is The Edge Annual Question which for 2006 is simply genius: What is Your Dangerous Idea? Pretend you are a Copernicus, a Galileo or a Darwin and think of an idea "...that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false but because it might be true..."  A panel of experts, people smarter than you and me, tackle their dangerous ideas and "...stray...into the land of morality, religion and philosophy..."

My dangerous ideas are that of a simpleton: I'm glad that most of my synapses fire properly; And that my skeletal-muscular system responds instinctively to commands from my brain. I'm glad that the atoms that form my being are arranged in their current configuration and not in that of an asteroid or an anemone. More than anything, I am glad that the Godhead has endowed me with a glimmer of consciousness so that I can faintly perceive It, even if all my thoughts and ideas are the byproducts of the cauldron of biochemicals bubbling inside my head.

Do you have a dangerous idea? I think it is worth a thousand resolutions!

Labels: ramble