Blog

By Anne Derber and Michele Goodrich

If you’re lucky, your organization will achieve key milestones or anniversaries. Maybe you’ll celebrate how many years you’ve been in service to your community or perhaps you’re marking programmatic milestones such as number of pets adopted, ministry impact or neighborhoods served. Whatever you’re celebrating, you have the opportunity to use that milestone to enhance the culture of philanthropy in your organization.

This January, the DBD Team is making resolutions to help us be better. Today Danny encourages all of us to try a new way to keep our resolutions – by being grateful. 

In this New Year, if you want to be successful in achieving your resolutions, don’t rely upon will power. Fewer than 10 percent of resolutions are maintained through will power. Instead, there’s a more powerful and successful way to change your life through a New Year’s resolution. Be grateful. How does gratitude figure into this equation?  Well, here is the research.  

Regardless of your feelings about the Duke Basketball team, no one can deny the leadership qualities displayed by Coach Mike Krzyzewski to bring out the best in young men year after year in the arena of Division 1 college basketball.

I was stunned by the phone call.

I generally hate to make New Year’s resolutions. No sooner have I made one than I find myself falling short. But I decided I could make one resolution this year… and… I may make it each year for the rest of my life.

I’ve never really shared my resolutions or talked with others about theirs. It always seemed a private thing to me. At the end of each year, I like to think about what I could have done better and what that means to how I will live in the coming year.

That being said, my resolutions usually turn out to be “character improvement”-type resolutions. I usually take on just one a year – and it will take me years to run out of things to work on!