Blog

As the year wraps up, I have been looking back at my goals and predictions from previous years. I found this piece from last year and thought it was worth sharing again. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

I’m not a New Year’s Resolution person. I have never been able to keep any resolutions past February, and when I drop them I just feel bad about myself. I also feel like the resolutions I make are often pulled out of the air based on what I feel like I “should” want, but not what really matters to me. 

When I’ve made resolutions, I’ve chosen the same generic stuff as everyone else. “I want to unplug more,” “I want to lose some weight,” “I want to read more books.” There’s nothing wrong with any of these resolutions. They just feel like they’ve been plucked off a list of resolutions everyone makes (and breaks). They aren’t personal or particularly motivating, so they go nowhere.

Anyway, if resolutions are your jam, I’m not trying to talk you out of them. Please ignore my opinion and continue to ratchet up your personal performance every January. If, however, you’re kind of done with resolutions and want something else to mark the end of the calendar year, might I recommend a nice reflection on what has already happened? How about a fun exercise of trying to predict the future?

I’ve been doing these two exercises for the last four years and really love them. The first is a reflection exercise. I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment and clarity from thinking deeply about what has happened in the last 12 months and deciding what I want to hold on to.

Some of the questions I ask myself to reflect back are:

• What do I want to remember forever about 2024? What were the achievements, surprises, and really great moments?
• What relationships got stronger this year? Who am I most grateful for?
• What relationships got weaker? Do I want to do anything about that?
• What life lessons did I learn?
• Where/when did I have my best experiences in 2024? 
• Who was there? What can I do to increase the likelihood that I’ll have more experiences like these?

I’ve found that the insight I get from thinking back on what has really helped and mattered to me is deeply motivating when I look ahead into the coming year. The things that made last year great will probably be things I want to focus on going forward. The hard lessons I learned are usually things I want to remember to avoid pain and frustration in the future. The exercise, overall, is worth the time.

The second exercise is about predicting the future. At the end of each year, I create a document and make guesses about what will be true at the end of the coming year. I try to make my predictions short and clear so it will be obvious if they are correct or not. In some cases, I even jot down the percent certainty I have about a prediction (e.g. I will get back into watching TV and will be actively watching at least 2 shows at the end of 2025 – 66% certainty).

It helps me to break my life into parts and then think about each area. I make predictions about: Family, Hobbies, Fitness, Job, Personal Life/Goals.

If you want to try this, just make sections that make sense for you and start writing down what you suspect will be different one year from now. Ask yourself things like:

• Will you be healthy? How about your parents?
• Will you have a new best friend?
• Will you be at a new job? Will you get that promotion?
• Will you have a new hobby? Will you have stopped doing one of your current hobbies?
• Will your spouse still be doing yoga daily?
• Will you still be stopping at Starbucks 3 days a week?
• Who will win the 2025 Superbowl or NBA Finals or World Series?
• Where will you go on vacation? 

At the end of each year, I get to look back and see where I thought my life would be at this moment. It’s always fascinating to see how much has changed and how much or little we actually knew about the future. 

If you’ve never done these exercises before, maybe give them a try. If you’re worried about forgetting what you predicted or set out to do, I like to attach what I wrote to a calendar event I schedule for the end of the year so I’ll be sure to see it when the time comes.

I hope these little rituals might help and that you might enjoy them as much as I do. Please take care of yourself as we head to the new year, and have a fantastic 2025!

Best always,

   Andy

I love to eat. It’s probably my favorite thing to do. Deep down, I believe there are few situations that can’t be improved by a snack. Celebrating? Mourning? Nervous? Bored? Let’s get a menu! For me, food is a social and emotional swiss army knife.

Obviously, this has some drawbacks that I have to manage. I’ve learned that I can’t eat mindlessly or even “listen to my body” (because my body is similar to that of a pug’s and believes it could die of starvation at any moment). I have to be intentional about how often I snack.

Not snacking, it turns out, is HARD. Especially during the holidays when there is food everywhere. To make matters worse, I have a food-driven autopilot mode that gets me into trouble.

Have you ever been lost in your thoughts and found yourself standing in front of the open refrigerator? I have. Much more frequently though, I find myself standing in the pantry. I will be talking on the phone and feeling nervous, or looking for my keys and stressing, or watching commercials on TV and battling boredom and then, all of the sudden… I’m standing in the pantry looking at the granola bar shelf.

Our minds are amazing things. They care about us, but they are pretty simple machines. Our brains notice how we are feeling, and respond in simple ways that have previously been positively received. They recognize a stimulus and immediately react in whatever way has brought us relief in the past. For this reason, I imagine my brain regularly saying things like:

• “Oh, you’re bored? You won’t feel bored with ice cream!”
• “Hey buddy, I hate to see you sad. We should have some chocolate.”
• “Congratulations!!! This is a huge accomplishment! TREAT YO SELF!”

And before I know it… I’m standing in the pantry (except for the ice cream).

Recently, it’s come to my attention that the pantry is not the only place that my mind takes me. In fact, my brain keeps a running list of “pantries” that it can walk me into whenever I have an unmet need (or simply find myself unengaged in any way). I bet your brain has a list like this as well.

Think about it. What are the ideas or imaginary scenarios that your brain automatically turns on when it notices you are stressed or bored? Do you find yourself thinking about the nastiest client encounter you ever had, the time you felt betrayed by a friend, or some future scenario that may or may not happen?

If you find yourself unintentionally returning to a stressful or painful idea again and again, your mind is walking you into the pantry. You might imagine your mind saying something like:

• “Oh, are you bored? You won’t be when you think about the medical board complaint that client made against you 6 years ago.”
• “It looks like you’re anxious because you had too much coffee? Let’s imagine the most horrible version of what might happen if the vet clinic where you work decides to be open on Sundays!”
• “Hey, I know you want to spend your time doing whatever is most important. Well, nothing seems to get your attention more than thinking about the kid who might be bullying your child at school.”

My point here is not to tell you that you shouldn’t work through issues or make hard choices. It’s that you and I should recognize when our minds are walking us into the pantry over and over again. We should notice when our brains are “helping us” by triggering thought or behavior patterns that we find interesting (but that are not good for us).

When we catch our mind slipping into these engaging but destructive patterns, we need to recognize that we are in the pantry and get out of there!

About the photo: A recent photo I took of a frigid morning at Bradley Airport in Connecticut. A much better view than the pantry or freezer!

A note for anyone who is trying to make a tough decision or going through a hard time

Someone recently asked me how to make hard decisions. “How do you know when to give up on a marriage or a complicated family relationship? When should you quit the job you’ve had for a decade or shut down the small business that’s barely profitable?” Decisions like these feel monumental, and there is often no objectively right answer. 

If you’ve been reading my stuff for very long, you know I believe our lives are defined by struggle. I don’t view that as a depressing thing at all. I believe we are all on a “hero’s journey” towards self improvement and personal development, and no one can become a hero without facing (and ultimately overcoming) challenges. (Let that sink in for a moment. Andy Roark believes that you are a hero and the hardship you are facing is a battle you will overcome. I hope that makes you smile.)

Given that life is defined by challenge, I agree with the Buddhist idea that empowerment comes from consciously choosing how we will struggle. We can struggle with boredom from sitting attentively at our kid’s holiday dance recital, or we can struggle with the frustration from our spouse and the relationship fallout with our kid that comes from being on our phone during something that was deemed important to the family. We can struggle to deal with the client who wants a giant bottle of antibiotics for her multiple dogs at home that we haven’t seen, or we can struggle with the ethical and legal ramifications of just giving her what she wants. We can struggle with the financial burden of buying a new car or the stress of limping along with the one we have. You get the picture.

This concept shouldn’t be seen as morbid. It should instead be a guide to setting healthy expectations and believing our choices matter. We have great power over what paths we end up walking in life. Let us never forget that.

If you accept this worldview, or at least see the value in it, then the question of how to make hard decisions becomes pretty straightforward. You simply look at your options and try your best to predict the type and quantity of suffering you will endure under each one. If you decide to fire the toxic person at your clinic, you will work shorthanded and may have to manage the emotions of those who actually liked the one let go. If you keep this person, you will continue to deal with crying staff members, a feeling of guilt that you aren’t providing people with the workplace culture you want them to have, and the possibility of good staff members leaving. If you sell the veterinary clinic that you built then you will suffer with a greatly reduced level of control over what happens there. If you don’t sell it, you’ll continue to carry the burden of making decisions and sweating practice finances. 

The biggest challenge in making good choices is thus the ability to predict suffering on a path you have not yet walked. This, my friends, is the value of experience!

Experience is the ability to more accurately predict struggles and suffering if you choose a given path. For example, if you have dealt with a toxic staff member before, you will be better able to predict the struggles associated with keeping or letting someone like this go. Alternatively, if you have never worked in a veterinary clinic that you did not own, you’ll probably find it quite difficult to anticipate how you will truly feel when you are no longer the chief decision maker in the practice you built. This is the irreplaceable power of life experience.

My father’s favorite expression has always been “Good judgment comes from experience…and experience from bad judgment.” If you’re having a hard time right now, I want you to remember that there is no path forward that doesn’t involve struggle. And even if you feel like you might have chosen the wrong path, you are still gaining experience – the most valuable thing you can have for making tough choices in the future. 

So, whether you are struggling to make a hard decision or just to get through the day, hang in there. You are most likely doing what you need to do to go forward. Remember, you are on a hero’s journey… and it’s going to work out.