2007 was painful. Managing a remote team all in separate locations was painful. Running out of money to spend on Village was painful. Watching my condo sit empty for months and burn through my savings was painful. Falling in love with a girl dating another guy was really painful. On the other hand getting to know the social entrepreneurs at the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford was wonderful. Connecting more with my roommates, and friends who have been helping me with Village has all been great. But, except for some new and stronger relationships with friends, 2007 was pretty painful.
Through all this pain, though, I learned a great deal about management and relationships. Regarding management you can summarize the lesson as don't let ambition and impatience compel you to skip steps. But more importantly, I learned a key thing about relationships: stay focused on what is right, and what is going well. As Tom Rath explains, it fills other peoples' emotional buckets (he wrote "How Full is Your Bucket?'). I really felt this lesson during the last week of August when I volunteered for a foster kid's camp. Our mandate was to catch kids doing things right. It was a beautiful moving experience for me. I think the kids enjoyed it too.
And then there was the girl. She personified this lesson while we had a chance to hang out in November. Just being around her kindness and generosity made me more thoughtful of others without really trying. Maybe that's why I felt so strongly about her. Positive people are contagious. I think that was the theme of basically what God wanted to teach me in 2007. Fill buckets, notice and celebrate what is going right. Pray that the lesson sticks in 2008.
2008 is starting off with a new theme: Take more decisions to God in prayer. This year is starting off with a great trend of more prayer time with my roommates and more clarity and confidence about decisions. I'm not going to predict a lot of milestones for Village. Instead, I'm going to follow the advice of more seasoned producers and entrepreneurs while pursuing more achievable short term goals. Beyond tomorrow, the only thing I'm relatively certain about is business school starting in the Fall. I find out Jan 24th if Stanford accepted me. I made a lot of great friends while I was living up there last winter so I'm really hoping to go ther
Comments