Accountability and Responsibility

I’m looking at my calendar and I can’t believe that it is February 22, 2007 — almost 8 weeks have passed since we all had to buy new calendars. Around New Year’s Eve many people make new personal promises for how they’ll do 2007 differently — and few will stick to them. That’s normal, we get stuck in our habits and our desires and tend to forget our past mistakes.

So today is a great time to open up to yourself and figure out what you would have done differently. Feel free to share at the forum if you have some good advice for others — especially in the realm of accountability to others or responsibility to people you forget you are responsible to.

My list of what I would have done differently — and am already actually doing — is as follows:

1. Spend more time with family, really.
2. Spend more time meeting new people just once.
3. Learn and memorize 3 out of 12 of my neighbor’s full names, and everyone in their house.
4. Shave more often (Business partner Christos tells me I look like a homeless guy!)
5. Take customers out to dinner more often.
6. Buy more gold.
7. Buy more silver.
8. Give more gold and silver away as presents.
9. Stop hounding my friends with “I told you so.”
10. Find more friends to set up for the “I told you so.”
11. Publish more posts, stop saving them in the “Saved Drafts” folder.
12. Sell the third car.
13. Stop “buy” bets on the craps table, stick to pass line + odds and come bets with odds.
14. Clean out my pipe more often (stinky).
15. Change my own oil, for real (won’t happen).
16. Get a smaller refrigerator, get rid of one kitchen cabinet.
17. Get out the “don’t vote” earlier in the year.
18. Stop fighting with various Pastors in the area when they come across my opinions.
19. Rip out all my closets and replace them with smaller armoires — less clothing, more space.
20. Change the bulbs more often rather than stumble around in the dark completely.

So what would you have done differently, and what are you actually doing? Discuss it at the accountability and responsibility forum.