The stereo­type of rich and suc­cess­ful peo­ple is that they were all born with sil­ver spoons in their mouths. We have already learned from the most pop­u­lar post here in Ang Pere­grino, that that couldn’t be far­ther from the truth.

I would like to start this brand new year by rec­om­mend­ing a great web­site that you should all try out. This is a to do list you can open in your browser. And since most of you have you browser (i.e. fire­fox, safari, chrome, etc.) open all the time, then teux deux is a good alter­na­tive to do list.

This is a reprint of an arti­cle I wrote a year ago. It’s about love. And in this sea­son of love and hope, we pray for mag­na­nim­ity of heart.

The word mag­nan­i­mous, really comes from two words: magna (or great) and anima (or spirit). When we are mag­nan­i­mous, we are asked to have a great spirit: A spirit of love. A spirit that is so much greater than the things that may hap­pen to us. A spirit that is able to pause, and see things from a greater, longer per­spec­tive. A spirit that does not have to win all the time. A spirit that can allow pain, and not be destroyed, but rather, made even stronger by it.

At the tail-end of this year, we take stock of our lives and ask our­selves some ques­tions that really matter.

I used to ask these types of ques­tions to my stu­dents. I call them “Ms. Uni­verse” ques­tions. They’re ques­tions that make us pause and think about life. They make us laugh and cry and stop and think more deeply. They make us eval­u­ate where life has gone, where it is at present and where it is head­ing. They are the ques­tions that really matter.

Pick up a jour­nal, set aside a few hours, and spend time with your­self answer­ing these ques­tions. Make it fun: treat your­self to a nice lunch or din­ner at a restau­rant you like, and write as you eat. By the time the check arrives, you’ll have more than a few new ideas about how to change your life or busi­ness for the better.

Some­one asked me that the other day, and we won’t get into the cul­tural dif­fer­ences that made the con­ver­sa­tion even more inter­est­ing, but rather I’d like to focus on the ques­tion and how I would answer it. In his book Beyond Civ­i­liza­tion, Daniel Quinn sums up what he sees as the dri­ving force behind civ­i­liza­tions fail­ure to curb it’s own destruc­tion like this:

Old minds think: if it didn’t work last year, let’s do MORE of it this year.

New minds think: If it didn’t work last year, let’s do some­thing ELSE this year.