Project Live It: Do something great. Inspire others.

I have some pretty inspiring resident colleagues. Besides being awesome residents, they do all kinds of interesting things outside of the hospital. A family practice resident is organizing a "Residents in the Legislature" day to advocate for seniors' care. A physiatry resident who brews craft beer has partnered with a local cafe. A psychiatry resident sits on a geriatric housing board. An internal medicine resident has recently taken up fencing. An oncology resident volunteers with Big Brothers Big Sisters. I could go on... Life is full of opportunities to pursue new things. Meaningful things. Things that enrich our lives. Sometimes it just takes a bit of a push to take that first step -- enter Project Live It.

I can't take credit for Project Live It. It was something mentioned to me by a resident colleague in passing on the ward a couple of months ago. Essentially, he'd like to motivate as many people as possible to try something different. Something new. Something they've always dreamed of. Something they're afraid of. Just something that they think would be great to accomplish.

It doesn't have to be a feat like skydiving or climbing Kilimanjaro. It could be as unassuming an accomplishment as baking a cake or biking to work. The wonderful thing about this project is that absolutely anyone can participate. It is endlessly customizable. Try cross-country skiing. Volunteer for something. Pick up an instrument. Build that new shelving. Go to a comedy club. Grow herbs on the patio. Run the stairs in the river valley. Join a book club. Try a new cuisine. ...I'm sure we all have similarly overflowing "to do someday" bins.

Well, there's no time like the present to take one of these great things and put it into action. Just one. Don't put it off until next week, or next month, or next year -- don't sit back and let life pass you by. Live it!

While the first objective of Project Live It is to motivate people to do great things, the second objective is to inspire people to pay it forward: once you've accomplished a personal goal, help someone else to accomplish theirs. And don't hold back -- share with others what you've accomplished -- that might be all it takes to inspire a friend to pursue a goal of their own.

Project Live It has inspired me to strive to try something new every week -- which I'll do my best to share in a "Live It" blog post each Friday. I'm sure many of the things I'll accomplish will be small, and may not seem like great accomplishments to a lot of people, but all of them will be things that I would not have done had I not put some pressure on myself to do them. So, by means of Project Live It I'll hopefully create 52 great new experiences/opportunities for myself within the next year. And perhaps along the way be able to help a few others to do the same. Here's to great things!