There is a New Year’s resolution trope made world famous in the blogosphere by guru Chris Brogan advocating how to start the year off with 3 words. This is obviously not New 
Year’s but I’m taking the stance that I already hang too many expectations on the mid-winter festival so here’s something I can shift to summer.
June is my birthday month and far enough from January 1st to get away from all that New Year’s resolution/bucket list/mid-winter bubble. Now we’re into July and my old friend denial has weakened enough I can duck past her to post this.
For purposes of this post I tried tracing back to Mr. Brogan’s original post. It’s all laid out 
there about what each word is supposed to relate to in terms of personal achievement, global view and spiritual atmospherics. In the nature of the interweebs, however, where those embarrassing pictures from grad will never go away, the important stuff sinks out of sight buried by cross posts and about a giga-billion blogs all referring to either Chris or 3 words…
Don’t google it. There are some very disturbing sites that pop up for “3 words”.
Sounding just a tad cynical so lets get on with my 3 words. Don’t know why you’d be interested but here’s a picture of why I figure it’s time to do some major assessing of my current situation and where I need to pick up the slack.
Alberta Clipper clipped
(Entirely my fault. My logic circuits were locked out, judgement had taken a coffee break and the little voice of reason was watching Dick Van Dyke re-runs.)
So, details aside, my 3 words for the next year are:
Stop, Look, Listen
Yeah, I know, do be a do-bee and don’t be a don’t-bee. And avoid doobies especially when driving. Not that that was a factor in this case. The only influence I was driving under was ‘stoopid’.
Stop is in keeping with the year my first word was “Breathe”. Take a moment before acting or saying or proceeding. Put on the brakes. I tend to get into a forward momentum without realizing I’m passing all sorts of important things like, oh, the point.
Look goes along with Stop in that it means take current situation into account. Where I am, where I’m going and am I actually looking in the direction I’m traveling. Very important. I have a terrible habit of not looking where I’m going and, equally important, what’s behind me. This can be something as simple as taking a moment to make sure I’ve picked up everything I put down. I’ve written a few posts about this, most recently, Call me Blanche
Listen is the broader aspect of these words. Listen to my own intuition but, more importantly, listen to the people around me. Take advice and rely on the kindness of strangers. It has been an increasing theme this year and I’m pretty sure, like Saturn Return, a sign I should pay attention to if I’m going to close out this year in better shape than the Alberta Clipper.
Well, that’s it for now, boys and girls. Did you have fun today? I sure did…