{"id":14254,"date":"2017-06-26T19:41:47","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T19:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sparkvisionnow.com\/?p=14254"},"modified":"2017-06-26T19:41:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T19:41:47","slug":"milestones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunneez.com\/sparkvision\/milestones\/","title":{"rendered":"Milestones"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>The Power of Milestones: Celebrating Life\u2019s Markedly Important Events and Our Never-Ending Evolving Stories<\/h1>\n<p>In my workplace, we are nearing the end of the fiscal year. Each of us is required to write one or more self-assessments and, for those of us who manage, we assess others.\u00a0 There are many reasons to think of milestones that I, and those on my team at work, have experienced.<\/p>\n<p>In my personal life, \u00a0milestones have been reached for me and those around me in the past and coming year:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One mentee finished her undergrad studies and moved to Baltimore.<\/li>\n<li>Another mentee finished law school, passed the bar exam, and was sworn into the Maryland bar.<\/li>\n<li>Next year one son graduates from college and another graduates from high school.<\/li>\n<li>My youngest son won the \u201cUnsung Hero\u201d award for his hockey club.<\/li>\n<li>My wife and I are celebrating 25 years of marriage this month.<\/li>\n<li>I had the opportunity to give a TEDx talk and passed 10,000 miles run in the past five years.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These accomplishments inspired me to think about what &#8220;milestones&#8221; really mean.\u00a0 Why do I enjoy recognizing and celebrating them?\u00a0\u00a0 As someone who enjoys poetry and word play, I constructed an acrostic\u2014or a phrase related to milestones in which the set of the first letters of the words spells \u201cmilestones\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #008080;\"><strong>M<\/strong>arkedly <strong>I<\/strong>mportant <strong>L<\/strong>ife <strong>E<\/strong>vents <strong>S<\/strong>hared <strong>T<\/strong>hroughout <strong>O<\/strong>ur <strong>N<\/strong>everendingly <strong>E<\/strong>volving <strong>S<\/strong>tory<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Maybe \u201cneverendingly\u201d is not a real word, but it gets the point across.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s my thinking.\u00a0 Milestones are <u>markedly important events<\/u> in my <u>life<\/u>, the lives of those around me, or the \u201clife\u201d of my workplace. In my opinion, milestones are more special when they are <u>shared<\/u>.\u00a0 When I share events with those around me, the events are part of a <u>never-endingly<\/u> <u>evolving story<\/u> that I experience with those around me.<\/p>\n<p>How do the stories in my life evolve? The people in the story evolve\u2014some come in, others drop out, and I\u2019m lucky enough to have a few who remain forever.\u00a0 The roles of the people who stay in the story from year to year evolve.\u00a0 The circumstances around me, around other important people in my life, and around my workplace evolve.<\/p>\n<p>The beauty of the phrase is that I can apply it across all parts of my life.\u00a0 It is not <em>specifically<\/em> about romance, but I can talk about \u201cour neverendingly evolving story\u201d in terms of how my wife and I have grown together and as parents.\u00a0 It is not <em>specifically<\/em> about parenting, but my sons and I clearly have evolving stories as they grow toward adulthood.\u00a0 It is not <em>specifically <\/em>about work, but the sense of \u201cour story\u201d in the workplace is tangible as I am lucky to work in an environment in which many people are actively engaged in the workplace and hoping to be part of a success story. It is not <em>specifically<\/em> about friendship, but each of my friendships evolves in interesting ways over time as the topics that get discussed broaden and the willingness to be vulnerable deepens.<\/p>\n<p>Despite how I can wrap milestones throughout my life into the phrase, it is missing one word\u2014celebrate, but there is no letter \u201cC\u201d in milestones.\u00a0 For my own milestones, I celebrate through sharing.\u00a0 For others\u2019 milestones, there are a myriad of ways to celebrate.\u00a0 <strong>Each celebration is like an extra punctuation mark or a closing of a chapter in the story that makes the story more interesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So, I\u2019d encourage everyone to ask yourself, \u201cWhat do milestones mean to me?\u201d\u00a0 Not everyone will answer by writing an acrostic.\u00a0 But think about whether there is a unifying theme about milestones across the many aspects of your life and take time to celebrate them when they come.\u00a0 You and your family, friends, and colleagues will have a much richer never-endingly evolving story to tell.\u00a0 For me, that brings joy.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Kevin Frick is the Vice Dean for Education at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. \u00a0He has been an avid runner for the past 11 years &#8211; participating in 9 marathons (including Boston in 2013) and one 55 mile ultra marathon in South Africa.\u00a0 He has spoken about mentoring to the Carey Women in Business student association and for TEDx JHU DC.\u00a0 You can follow his <a href=\"http:\/\/connectingdotsnourishingsoul.blogspot.com\">personal blog<\/a> where many of his poems appear as well as his <a href=\"http:\/\/economistlens.blogspot.com\">professional blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Power of Milestones: Celebrating Life\u2019s Markedly Important Events and Our Never-Ending Evolving Stories In my workplace, we are nearing the end of the fiscal year. Each of us is required to write one or more self-assessments and, for those of us who manage, we assess others.\u00a0 There are many reasons to think of milestones [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":21666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,9,10,13,35],"tags":[17,19,4,34],"class_list":["post-14254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emotional-intelligence","category-engagement","category-experience","category-leadership","category-mindfulness","tag-emotional-intelligence","tag-experience","tag-leadership","tag-mindfulness"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Milestones - Sparkvision<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Explore the significance of milestones in personal and professional life, celebrating achievements that shape our evolving story.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sunneez.com\/sparkvision\/milestones\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Milestones - 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