New Beginning for a New Year

Hello! My name is Ryan Poterack and this is my blog. Today I am going to share with you some news about myself and my family, as well as some information about the new year. Dawn and I welcomed our son, Lincoln Oliver Poterack, into the world on November 10, 2012. Our healthy baby is now over 1 year old and has a world of opportunities in his future. What will he become? Is he right or left handed? Will he enjoy reading and the arts like big sister Reagan? Will he be a tortured Minnesota Viking fan like Pops? His life is a clean slate.

This is the time of year when many of us take stock of our lives, remember love ones lost and make commitments to improve. We all have a choice to start anew every day. We cannot change the past. We can absolutely affect our future and the future of others.  Many people say they “shoulda woulda coulda” done many things differently. Regardless of how you got to this point, here you are. It is now up to you to choose your future. It is never too late to make good decisions.

Helping people make better decisions is my passion. I recently had an interesting conversation with a woman in my office. She said several times she didn’t want to waste my time with her concerns. She also mentioned she was a person of committed faith. My faith as a born-again Christian, leads me to help people so I asked her if she liked to help people. She readily answered “yes” and commented she felt good when she is able to help others. My response was telling her to stop worrying about wasting my time, and allow me to feel good by helping her. She laughed so I took the liberty of saying she shouldn’t be selfish and let me share in the helping people goodwill feeling!

Actions always mean more to me than words. If a person says they like to help others, then that same person should appreciate the effort of others to help them. Oddly, many people resist help from others for many reasons. Helping others is noble. However, as a contrarian, I’d like to challenge everyone to be more accepting of this noble gesture of help in the new year.

I encourage all of you to shake thing(s) up this year and start fresh! Your diet, your exercise, the hobby you always thought about, have or adopt a baby, etc. Seek help from others who would enjoy seeing you succeed! Status quo is for the status quo! Boring.  Have a wonderful 2014!