Think Can-Do In The New Year

I’m sitting here New Year’s morning eyeing the Rose Bowl Parade, still chuckling from a traditional evening of Marx Brothers and thinking on the year to come. It’s been a year of change for the Schlegel household, change that has been absorbed, embraced and adapted to establish our next launchpad. Thanks to all who have taken part, helped and encouraged.

I grew up in the sixties on a healthy mix of impossible plans, building models of Apollo Saturn V’s and experimenting with solar cells. While I didn’t pursue a life in space, the mindset that practically anything is within the reach of a determined group never left me. Call me a product of Chicago where Birnham’s charge still sets the tone:

“Make no small plans: they have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

Double negative aside, it’s a neat way to live.

Is there hope in the new year? I taught entrepreneurship to undergrads at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business last semester and it helped recharge my own creative batteries. Why can’t we improve transportation? Why can’t we make housing easier? Why can’t we change the world? No reason. Building businesses and organizations that improve lives is hard, but never impossible. The students get that.

Good to see that American Dreams are alive and well as we head into 2011.

So what are my wishes for the new year?

For us all to have Big Plans. Impossible Plans. Amazing Plans. Get them on the table. Talk about them, argue them through.

Plow the road for entrepreneurs and visionaries. Bring on the Fultons, Fords and Wrights. Let loose the Hewletts, Andreessens, Jobs and Wilsons.

Create the economic playing fields that will usher in the next round of prosperity, protect the environment and improve life on (and off?) our planet.

I’ve never been one for giving things up in the new year. I’ve found it easier to replace a bad habit with a new, hopefully better one. Let’s get back to running forward on the path of what we can do, what we want to do.

Yup. Think Can-Do. It’s the mindset of 2011.

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Many thanks to all of you who read and comment here at Frogblog. Your additions make this a much more interesting place.  Happy New Year.