“Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.”

- George Bernard Shaw

As I begin to finalize my list of goals for the upcoming year (and boy, I have a lot of them!), I keep coming back to this quote by George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950). These words, written so long ago, remind me that even if I don’t achieve each of my personal and professional aims by the time I ring in 2010, I still will have had a successful year if I have managed to stay focused on my loved ones. 

In today’s world, we measure our success through so many other means … whether or not we get that promotion or score that assignment, how much we can stash away in savings at the end of the year, where we can take our family for that week-long vacation, etc., etc., etc.

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to achieve. It’s a defining part of the American culture. I know that I have to constantly fight that inner voice that’s telling me, “Produce! Produce! Produce!” at the expense of pulling me away from the experience that’s in my immediate grasp, whether it’s cooking dinner or playing Legos with my kids.

Unfortunately, the success garnered by preparing a meal or building a fantastic fighter-jet out of plastic parts is not as measurable as a job title or a paycheck.

But that doesn’t mean that those intangibles should “weigh-in” any less. In fact, I think that I’ll keep that quote by George Bernard Shaw on my refrigerator door as a reminder that my greatest successes in life will not be measurable. 

New Years provides a great opportunity for looking at one’s life from the outside-in … as if we are spectators on the sidelines, watching our lives unfold. How did we perform in the last round, and what are our odds in the coming match?

But I think that I’ll try a new approach this year – observing this annual milestone from the inside-out. How have my actions over the past year impacted the lives of those around me, and what will I do in the coming year to bring love, comfort, and joy to both my family members and my friends?

From this revised perspective, that tasty lasagna and freestanding plastic sculpture suddenly fly to the top of the list of New Year’s Resolutions.