Lesson Learned in 2009:
Many people want to get to the top
It’s crowded at the top
BUT…
Everybody want to get to the top of the same mountain
So there is a lot of competition
There is a simple solution…
Find a new mountain!
Now that the year is almost over I’m also almost done with the last book of this year, which is a management book by Matthew Stewart. Great read by the way! Bought it yesterday and already I’m at page 200. I’ll try to finish it this week.
As I kept a reading list this year it is easy to look back what I’ve read this year. It’s probably the most I’ve ever read in a year! 121 books. That’s 10 books per months, or 2,5 book per week. Wow, I’m proud at myself.
The 5 books that made the most impression on me, or that I clearly remember from the whole bunch are:
This is for sure one of the habits I’m most proud of, taken in account that I wasn’t a reader at all 10 years ago. Let’s try to read even more in 2010!
Imagine this; getting out of bed at 5:30 in the morning. Packing your snowboard stuff and getting in the car at 6. Driving 300 kilometers and arriving on location at Winterberg, Germany at 9 in the morning. Buy a 1-day ticket and snowboard for 6 hours straight with only a 15 minute wurst-break. Get back in the card at 3pm and drive back to home and arrive at 5:30 pm. Take a shower and get at the diner table at 6pm.
Sanne, Marieke and I just did that! And I must say it felt like we had a long weekend-vacation with this trip. Amazing to go from the clear flatland of the Netherlands to the small mountains of Winterberg and have a whole day of snowboarding.
Okay, it was not Solden in Austria, but it still beat the hell out of the indoor terrains here in the Netherlands. Great stuff! And for sure something we have to more often.
My son turned 9 today. 9 already. Every year I say the same, about how fast everything goes. But damn, he’s already half way about becoming an adult!
As a gift from us to him he got a keyboard so that his creative and musical intelligences will be further developed 
. Without kidding it’s amazing to see what the boy can do within 10 minutes pushing buttons and playing around with that thing if you compare it with me after 1 hour of reading the manual.
Great to have the whole family and circle of friends together in our house. My son must really have had a good day I guess. Especially with all the new toys he now has. December is really about being spoiled here.
It isn’t over yet! Tomorrow it’s time for the children’s party where he and his friends will go to a big indoor playground where they can be themselves for several hours without me telling them to keep quiet.
Son, I love you and I wish you a lot more healthy and happy years to come!
Today my son got his first snowboarding certificate! After 7 weeks of intense training in the snow he has now earned his first level in his snowboarding education. That means that there are now two people in the Jansen family who want to go on Wintersport vacation! Only 1 to go and we are in majority!
As a birthday present from me to him he can continue his snowboarding education in January with the follow-up course to the one he just finished. This way we can go a few days to Winterberg or something like that around in the near future.
As you can see in the picture Rody is just as crazy in the snow as I am.
My planning for the new year has already started and a lot of stuff overlaps a certain end result. And because everything is a project anyway, I thought I would combine the stuff and start Project 99.
On January 4th 2010 I will start with this new project and it will take some months to complete. At the moment I’m filling in the details and will post about it later. For me, it combines everything I learned in the last 33,5 years of my life.
Pretty excited about it, and can’t wait to start. In the mean time I’m wondering what steps to take for some high goals I’ve set. Still 2 weeks left for some investigation and coming up with solutions.
Wow, this month is crazy! Every year the last month of the year is busy, but this year it’s just crazy. Family, personal and professional life have never been so busy and it’s even getting worse (or better depending how you look at it).
Besides the regular busy ‘Sinterklaas’ weeks, Christmas days and new year gatherings, we also got my sons birthday on the 20th. And after new year the busy days only end after my daughters birthday on the 8th.
Most of my year goals have already been done, but I still got a few that I really want to complete and have to work hard for to finish. And professionally we’ve got a bunch of new customers who really want to finish their projects and work before the new year, so also there a lot of work.
During the month I sometimes wished it was January already, but then again I’m proud about how much I accomplish these days each day. And then I remember:
It’s not about the destination, it’s about the road towards it!
I’ve always been an organizer. Tomorrow is our first event from Mario and my new company Shark Sports; a small freediving competition in Eindhoven. I’ve been looking forward to do this. Organizing as always been in my genes, but due to some private situations in the last 2 years it was just not possible to organize anything.
Glad to see I’m back on the right road and that organizing is now part of my professional life. Nothing better then to do stuff you like and earn a little bit of money with it at the same time. I’ve missed it.
It’s funny to see how different people organize stuff. I’ve talked to quite a few event managers in the last weeks and in short you can see two kind of event managers out there; the one that will write everything down and plans everything, really everything. And there is the one that works with emotions and feelings and knows what to do.
Of course there are all kind of levels between these two opposite polars. The strong thing is to combine the best part of both polars. So it’s good to see that Mario and I each belong to an opposite and can combine the best of both worlds! For the coming time you can expect the following events from Shark Sports:
In the mean time you can take a look at our website.
Whoo hoo! I just came back from my first weight training after several months of looking for a new weightlifting room. After I stopped at Fit For Free in Eindhoven, because of lack in good material and positive atmosphere, I really wanted to go back to my roots with weightlifting.
Weightlifting has never been about high repetitions and creating stamina or conditioning. Weightlifting is about training your muscles and creating strength and power. This has to be done with heavy weights and not with high repetitions and mediocre weights.
After looking at all kind of possibilities in the region of Eindhoven, there was only one option left. Back to Fitzijn in Waalre! And oh I’m glad I did! A real working spirit over there with some hardcore training materials and 70 kilo dumbbells. Great stuff! Fun to be back again.
In the coming 4 weeks I will do some easy training to get back into the groove and training with weights. This way my muscles and tendons can get used to the stress again. Lets see where my 33 year old body can take me.
