To help you stay motivated everyday you can do a little exercise called “hunting the good stuff”. The skill is not hard to learn or to practice, but the results can change your outlook toward life and help you value and appreciate the people that you interact with everyday. The skill builds positive emotion, optimism, and gratitude and counteracts our tendency to pay more attention to the bad things that happen during the day. At the end of each day, or anytime you feel overwhelmed or stressed out, take a few moments to think of one or two things that went well that day. No matter how simple those two things may be, positive memories will lead to a positive mood.

This New Year’s Day I want to hunt the good stuff from the previous year. I like to keep track of a few small details as each year passes. It’s a good way to reflect on a year to see where you went, what you did, and what you enjoyed.

States Visited

2011 was a big year for traveling. Not just for work, but also for pleasure. Two particular trips stand out. The first was a family trip to Kansas City, MO for a short vacation. It’s where we had our most memorable meal and our most memorable moment. Second was another family trip to the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, NE. We took all back roads on the way to Omaha and the experience was fantastic. When you see miles and miles of farmland in far off remote locations you gain a respect not only for the people that work the land, but for the land itself. In Hawai’i it is believed that the people are part of the ‘aina, or land, and that the ‘aina should be cared for as a family member. I don’t believe it is any different anywhere else in the world.

Kansas
Georgia
North Carolina
Arizona
Texas
New Mexico
Oklahoma
Missouri
Alabama
Nebraska

Books Read

I had the opportunity to read some great books this year. This is only a partial list as I am sure there a few that I am not recalling right now. If I had to make a recommendation it would be Carte Blanch for fiction and Focus for nonfiction(there is a free and a premium version). Click would be a close runner-up.

Focus by Leo Babauta
The Proper Care & Feeding of Marriage by Laura Schlessinger
KIA by Thomas Holland
400 Photographs by Ansel Adams
Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Khaney
1491 by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
Thwarting Enemies at Home by William R. Johnson
Lost Light Michael by Connelly
The Reversal Michael by Connelly
Second Son by Lee Child
Afghanistan by Stephen Tanner
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
Carte Blanch by Jeffery Deaver
Click by Ori & Rom Brafman
Descent Into Chaos by Ahmed Rahid

Best Dish

I made a simple rigatoni pasta salad with jarred artichoke hearts, fresh parmesan cheese, and olive oil that turned out spectacular once marinated for a few hours.

Best Meal

Hawai’ian Poke and sweet potato fries with a pumpkin spice beer at the Yard House in Kansas City. Poke is a raw fish salad, usually made with ‘ahi (yellowfin tuna), shoyu, sesami seed oil, and limu. I was shocked to have had such an incredible version in a landlocked state in the middle of the United States. And the bacon aioli that was served with the sweet potato fries was incredible.

Most Memorable Moment

During a short family trip to Kansas City we spontaneously decided to visit a Cabela’s sports store. It turned out that the Cabela’s had one of the largest collections of taxidermy deer and trophy animals on display in their Whitetail Museum. It was an incredible experience to see so many of these beautiful animals in one place and to be educated on their history, habitat, and numbers.