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Let me preface this post by saying thank you to everyone for following my idle ramblings and often sharing your own thoughts with me through email, comments, Facebook, and Twitter.    I feel privilaged to share and interact with every one of you and I hope you’ll continue to connect more as the years go by.

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I also want to say a sincere thank all of the great folks who contributed the incredible free swag so that I could offer such great stuff for my Christmas giveaways.  Since I’d just done the drawing for the final free stuff I can officially announce that Evan scored himself a copy of The Single Leg Solution and Ernie will be pleased to know he is now the proud owner of Assess and Correct.  Congratulations to you both!  And to everyone who participated in the comments, please keep interacting.  It has been great to hear from you all!  I never imagined so many people really cared about what I write.

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Finally, I want to share with you a story about Christmas.

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In 1986 my family’s home had a terrible fire on December 23rd caused by our dog knocking a lamp onto a couch.  Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but we really didn’t know the extent of the damage except that we could see that the house was black with smoke damage, windows were smashed out, and everything in the basment and kitchen was either burnt, melted, or flooded (from the firefighters putting out the fire).    We only had the clothes on our backs, whatever presents my parents were able to salvage, and were going to move in with my grandfather for a couple of months while our house was rebuilt from the inside out.

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The following afternoon my father was outside our boarded up, melted, flooded house leaning up against the fence  and probably wondering what he could do to salvage Chirstmas for our family when a man he’d never met came up to him and asked “Is this your house?”.  My dad replied that it was.  The man extended his hand to shake my father’s hand and wished him a Merry Christmas.  As the man pulled his hand away my dad was left with $500 in his palm.  Of course, my father said “I can’t accept this”.  The man replied “You need it more than I do.  Merry Christmas!”  and he walked away.  We never saw that man again, but he was the embodiment of what I think the Christmas season should be. 

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While I might not have nearly as much influence as many of the bigger names in this industry, my wish for this year is that everyone who reads this blog will step out of their comfort zone and do something for someone they don’t know and make that someone’s day.  Whether you hand money to the homeless guy you pass every day (that you might normally ignore), help an old lady carry her bags across the street, or just let someone in when you’re stuck in traffic trying to escape the mall after purchasing your last minute gifts I think it all makes a difference.  I know it did to my family.

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Have a very Merry Christmas!

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