2020 will be the Year of Chad Everett Harris. This will be the year that the last 1642 days of work pays off and things get back to my normal chaotic life that I love. This year will be filled with achievement, challenges, and excitement. It will also be a year of living in the country, exploring new opportunities, and working on Chad E. Harris, the person. That sounds funny when I type that but, it is true. I recognize that I need to work on myself, and the time I spend doing that will be more important that anything else I accomplish.

I wasn’t sure what the fuss about the a new year was all about until I realize that we were starting a new decade. Not sure if that even matters in my world. I say that because I have been in a 1642 day battle with life and a series of events that produced some difficult results. I will be the first one to take all responsibly of the results as I was the decision maker for the company that I ran. Yes, the buck literally stops with me. I ran a family owned business that operated in the New Orleans area that closed. The closures was a result of not being able to negotitate a lease extension that snowballed into a magnitude of business issues. I am grateful that this happened, because I would not have had to scrap and fight my way to my current place in life.

I read a note on Facebook that a friend wrote the other day and it has been said before, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” I am 100% guilty of this practice. Over the last 39 years ( I started my hustle at age 11) I have hit the reset button 3 times. Over the years I have found myself getting distracted and when I get distracted, my focus goes with it. When I lose my focus, I lose my direction and therefore I cause a train wreck in my life,. I have also come to realize that in the past, some of the disasters were self inflected… I like to fix things. Here is the best part, after the last 1652 days, I am done with self inflected disasters, the last one almost cost me everything. I won’t be doing that again, ever. I would also say, you can not buy that kind of education. Today, I work with a group of people that are half my age. I spend a lot of time, providing input to situation that are parallel with the challenges I have experienced that they are facing. Those difficult days that were the results of my distractions provide great real life case studies of how to make the right set of decisions that produce the desired results.

Here is to a new decade, and the third Chad E. Harris reset.