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Hi Team,

Season's greetings and happy new year.

I hope you have all had a lovely break from work and have been able to dodge the surge of the Omicron variant?

I have never been a big believer in "New Year's Resolutions". However, I do believe that the birth of a new year and time away from the daily grind is a good time for reflection and to gain perspective about what really matters and how you should be spending your time, your energy, and your resources? Several books have recommended that the best question you can ask yourself is "how do you want to be remembered when you have gone?"

It has been just over a year that my mother Pam McCallum passed away, and as I have written previously she was a remarkably capable woman who I think about regularly and miss greatly. Her absence around the Christmas table this year was filled with the legacy she has left behind which lives on in her extended family and her friends. Whenever her name comes up in conversation it is often followed by "is there anything she couldn't do?"

"The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy." Unknown

I am sure that my mother never asked herself how she wanted to be remembered. She was never big on self-reflection or philosophy; she was a doer and a woman of action. There were very few things she refused to have a go at or was not capable of doing. But her real joy was doing things with others (except cooking, she was the master of her own kitchen and not the most tolerant of intruders into that space!). All her most memorable endeavours involved groups of people, and these are the stories that come up most frequently and live on as her legacy.

"The power of a person's life is the stories they leave behind" Bill High

Two of the greatest gifts my mother has given to me are her love of the mountains and skiing and her love of gardening. These two passions have become an intrinsic part of who I am and forever connect me to who she was. Success isn't about what you accomplish in life, it's about what you inspire others to do.

"If you don't want to be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."  Unknown

So I encourage you to ask yourself, what do you do that inspires others and do more of it??

Thanks for reading,
Stay safe and enjoy your downtime.
David