This is my growth plan for 2025

Sharing the hard data because someone has to

A women's softball baseball game showing a woman on the pitcher's mound about to pitch the ball - Library of Congress

Resolutions only highlight how you failed

Seriously, we should stop calling them resolutions and start calling them failure reminders.

We are habitual creatures, and it’s no surprise that we often look to the turning of a new calendar to look back on the past year and acknowledge all the things that went wrong so that we can resolve to do better in the coming year.

I no longer do New Year’s resolutions because I’ve never been good at sticking to them, not because I can’t form habits (which may be true) but because I get distracted and think by other goals I want to achieve that seem more important.

I make plans, but Mother Nature throws me an inspirational curveball by mid-March, and you’re telling me I’m not supposed to swing at it?

It’s easy for me to reflect on the past year and find the faults in my efforts, but I’m changing that up this year. Instead, I want to look back on all the good that 2024 brought me.

Like watching my son achieve greatness in the pool to become one of the fastest 14-year-old swimmers in the region.

Or when we finally returned to Maui as a family for the first time in twenty years since my wife and I were married on the beach in Wailea.

There was also the day I finally put together my art wall featuring dozens of pieces from some of my favorite local artists’ work alongside mine.

Then there’s the weekly coffee jaunts with my buddy Adam, where we talk about business and not-so-graceful aging.

If we’re trying to grow, it’s essential to look back at our missteps to see if there’s a way we can improve, but I believe we don’t give ourselves enough grace. We tend to focus more on the errors than we do the wins.

Instead, I’m taking stock of the challenges I didn’t overcome but not letting them define how I’m moving into this next year. So let’s talk about it.