For the next 15 days, I’m going to participate in Reverb 10. It’s an open online initiative that encourages participants to reflect on this year and manifest what’s next. It’s an opportunity to retreat and consider the reverberations of your year past, and those that you’d like to create in the year ahead. We’re connected by the belief that sharing our stories has the power to change us.

Today’s prompt – LESSON LEARNED: What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

I have a few beliefs about learning:

• a key element of learning is the act of doing, not necessarily the act of talking
• you have to be open and willing to learn
• learning is no good unless you apply it to make yourself and/or the problem better in the future

It has been an incredibly rich year. Not only in my personal life, but in my professional life. I’ve been here just over a year now, and I couldn’t ask for better people to be surrounded by. Their commitment to work, to listening (which is key in “learning”), to doing whatever it takes, to owning, to bringing their best day in and day out shows me something I can learn from every day. And I try to be aware and open to those moments so I can learn from them all.

I think the biggest thing I learned this year was centered around an attitude – the result from a year’s worth of action – that embodies courage and pride and ownership, and it’s the phrase broadcast by Texans early in their history (1800’s):  COME AND TAKE IT.

This year, we have adopted this as a slogan on our team. It’s a perfect reflection of who we are and what we believe in. And what it’s taught me is to be fearless, to fight for what’s right, to never give up ownership, and most of all, to be proud in what’s mine. These are all things that are not new this year. I try to work on them every year and every day that makes up those years. But the introduction of this slogan – the first Texas flag mind you – has formed them into an unbreakable shape that I hope only gets stronger in the coming year.