End On The Positive

We’re only a few weeks out and I, for one, am glad to be closing the book on 2020.

I don’ need to waste your time outlining why this last year amounted to a crap-ton of anxiety, misery, fear and dismay for nearly all of us. Simply take your pick of any number of sobering, mind-numbing events.

It’s safe to say that nearly everyone is looking forward to 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1 as a push of the big red RESET button. A metaphysical whipping the slate clean. A universal mulligan. Let’s all cash in our chips and move forward like the last year never happened.

Not so fast. I was a talking to a member of the snow and ice community who had a different take on how to close out 2020. He proposes for us to go out on a positive note, to end 2020 on our terms.

Ok, bear with me for a moment because I didn’t buy into it at first either.

His hypothesis was that we start every year with the best of intentions. We often formulate lists of action items we want to accomplish both personally and professionally (for example, increase our business while reducing our waistlines) over the course of the next 365 days. Now, granted, the events of 2020 threw a colossal monkeywrench into the works that caused the gears of life to grind to a screeching halt. And many of us are just happy to have reached this point with our companies/jobs intact, healthy and still kicking.
So, with less than three weeks to go, why not dust off 2020’s To-Do List and see what still can be accomplished?

Salvage this year by bearing down and completing a few of those tasks because any progress toward a goal is something. So many times, our confidence and self-worth takes a hit because we fail to achieve 100% of the goals we set for ourselves. But my snow contractor friend chooses to see it a different way. Instead, making strides to reach or meet a goal is still something worthy of note.

And continuing this thought, challenge everyone on your team to tackle just one of their personal or professional goals before year’s end. Can you imagine the impact on your business from all this positive momentum? Just think of the positive mojo you can bring into 2021 with everyone marking a tally in their own win columns.  

So, get to it. There’s still time to draw a thick, black line through one, two or three of those items on that 2020 list. And by doing this you’re flipping the bird to the last year and proclaiming: “Yeah, well, get a load of me!”

Kevin Gilbride is the Executive Director of the Accredited Snow Contractors Association. You can reach him akgilbride@ascaonline.com