Here are some recommendations for your 2011. Feel free to add your own.
1. Move. Even if that means just parking further away from your office and hoofing it to the front door. I hesitate to use the word "exercise", since that word has negative connotations for people. Here it is in a nutshell: Moving is good. It gets your dopamine levels up in your brain. It makes you feel good. The end.
2. Turn off your TV. You are exposed to violence and just plain sadness and negativity when you watch TV. Afraid you'll miss your football/basketball games? Watch them at a friend's house. Which leads to...
3. Spend more face-to-face time with people. Texting is great for brief comments and questions, and email is great for quick communication, but actually take the time to see people in person.
4. Get enough sleep. My great-uncle took naps every day of his life. He's still alert and healthy at 98. Enough said.
5. Ask yourself, "Does it really matter?" Will winning this argument help you feel better? Will it give you a greater sense of satisfaction? Only very temporarily.
6. Ask yourself, "Is this in my best interest?" And then listen to your answer. And act on it.
7. Trust your inutition. It is right 99.9% of the time. And that remaining .01%? That's the part where you're not sure you should have listened to your intuition, but months, years from now you'll realize you did the right thing.
8. Spend part of every day in silence. Turn off the music, TV, anything that makes noise. Just sit. And be.
9. Read. And if you aren't into reading, listen to books on iTunes, MP3, CD, whatever.
10. Create a budget. You know what's scarier than having to follow a budget? Not having one at all. I'm not talking about a budget in minute detail - just know what you are paying for each month, and how much you are paying for it.
11. Take your medication as prescribed. And if you aren't taking it, see #7. Maybe you aren't taking it for a good reason (side effects, it's no longer effective, etc.) See your doctor. And be open and honest with him/her.
12. Learn to be okay with impermanence. Once you come to terms with the fact that every single thing in life is not permanent, you start appreciating it more.
13. Travel. Even if expenses are tight, find a way. Even if you are a tourist in your own city or state. People were meant to visit other places. It makes your neurons happy.
14. Make a list of lifetime goals. Some people call this a "bucket list". That sounds kind of morbid to me, but whatever you call it, write down the things you want to accomplish in your life - no matter how outlandish they may seem. The fact that you've written your goals down means you've taken a huge step towards accomplishing them.
15. Unplug. Spend at least 2 hours every day away from your iPhone, Blackberry, laptop, anything electronic. Sounds easy, right? Try it.
So this notion that somehow we are willing to compromise too much reminds me of the debate that we had during health care. This is the public option debate all over again. So I pass a signature piece of legislation where we finally get health care for all Americans, something that Democrats had been fighting for for a hundred years, but because there was a provision in there that they didn’t get that would have affected maybe a couple of million people, even though we got health insurance for 30 million people and the potential for lower premiums for 100 million people, that somehow that was a sign of weakness and compromise.
Now, if that’s the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let’s face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are, and in the meantime, the American people are still seeing themselves not able to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out.
That can’t be the measure of how we think about our public service. That can’t be the measure of what it means to be a Democrat. This is a big, diverse country. Not everybody agrees with us. I know that shocks people. The New York Times editorial page does not permeate across all of America. Neither does The Wall Street Journal editorial page. Most Americans, they’re just trying to figure out how to go about their lives and how can we make sure that our elected officials are looking out for us. And that means because it’s a big, diverse country and people have a lot of complicated positions, it means that in order to get stuff done, we’re going to compromise. This is why FDR, when he started Social Security, it only affected widows and orphans. You did not qualify. And yet now it is something that really helps a lot of people. When Medicare was started, it was a small program. It grew.
Under the criteria that you just set out, each of those were betrayals of some abstract ideal. This country was founded on compromise. I couldn’t go through the front door at this country’s founding. And if we were really thinking about ideal positions, we wouldn’t have a union.
So my job is to make sure that we have a North Star out there. What is helping the American people live out their lives? What is giving them more opportunity? What is growing the economy? What is making us more competitive? And at any given juncture, there are going to be times where my preferred option, what I am absolutely positive is right, I can’t get done.
And so then my question is, does it make sense for me to tack a little bit this way or tack a little bit that way, because I’m keeping my eye on the long term and the long fight -- not my day-to-day news cycle, but where am I going over the long term?
And I don’t think there’s a single Democrat out there, who if they looked at where we started when I came into office and look at where we are now, would say that somehow we have not moved in the direction that I promised.
Take a tally. Look at what I promised during the campaign. There’s not a single thing that I’ve said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do. And if I haven’t gotten it done yet, I’m still trying to do it.
And so the -- to my Democratic friends, what I’d suggest is, let’s make sure that we understand this is a long game. This is not a short game. And to my Republican friends, I would suggest -- I think this is a good agreement, because I know that they’re swallowing some things that they don’t like as well, and I’m looking forward to seeing them on the field of competition over the next two years.
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