What memories do you have about extreme cold weather? You know it’s colder than normal when every newscast leads with the weather person talking about the dangers of “wind chill” and how many hours it’s been without getting above zero! Yes, we know, we are a hearty bunch here in “Minnesnowta”, but this prolonged, frigid weather is capturing our attention.

What is your reaction when you are inundated with too many choices? We got to thinking about this subject recently when we went shopping for some everyday things, toiletries and clothes. It made us realize the vast array of choices that are available to us.

What do you do when you feel angry? We recognize that there’s a lot of anger being expressed in the world today. Sometimes it’s between countries and sometimes anger happens closer to home. Many families and friends are divided over political beliefs and other issues.

Have you ever been afraid? If you answered “no”, you must be the only one! Everyone has some fears. Maybe you call it anxiety, a lower level of fear. If you read our last column, we both are picking one word to live by for a year. Doug chose “bold” and I (Lynn) chose “stretch”. Being bold and stretching will involve overcoming fear because we’ll be moving into the unknown this year.

Were you able to keep last year’s resolutions? Also, now that we are a few days into this new year, how are you doing on this year’s resolutions? We don’t want you to be discouraged if you made resolutions last year and you didn’t achieve them. You’re not alone. Over half of Americans make resolutions for a new year but research shows that only 8% remain committed through to the year’s end.

We’re coming to the end of the year and it’s a good time for reflection. Looking back on this year, what’s a life lesson that’s important to you that you want to take forward into the new year?
Life is busy and making the time to reflect is not easy but it will pay off. Reflection is important for many reasons. For us, it provides guidance into understanding how we want to live life and how to become the caring people we want to be.

This year was going to be different. We made the decision last year when we were caught up in the overwhelm of the holidays to never let that happen again. Does this scenario sounds all too familiar to you, too? It seems that there are so many extra tasks to do during this time. We were determined to be ready, as maybe you were also – but what happened?