As I am already blessed beyond anything I deserve, with a wonderful wife and family, good health, dear friends, work that I love, all the material things I need, and most of the material things I want, I find that my list of Christmas wishes digs, in some cases, deeply into the realm of the trivial, and in other cases, the seemingly unattainable. I, like many others, wish for peace in the world, the elimination of poverty, and that my Jacksonville Jaguars would have a winning season. But if I could sit down and make a list of wishes this Christmas, it might look like this:
I wish that people would:
- forever ban the use of the following phrases from their language:
- the fact of the matter is
- to a person
- I’m reaching out to you
- “I was like,” when they mean “I said”
- “No problem,” when they mean “You’re welcome.”
- At the end of the day
- Does that make sense?
- stop referring to the “Queen of England”. She’s the “Queen of the United Kingdom”, or the “Queen of Britain”, which probably sounds better and is easier to comply with. What about Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland? We don’t say Barack Obama is the president of Hawaii, do we? I told you this was trivial.
- use their turn signals.
- speak more quietly on their mobile phones in public.
- learn when to use “Reply All” on emails, which is almost never.
- know what they want when they’re in front of me at Starbucks.
I wish the graphics operators at my local TV station would learn to spell, and to proofread what they put on the screen.
…that the socks I put into the laundry in pairs would come out as such.
…that my stapler had a gauge on it so that my first indication of its being empty would be something other than clamping down with a staple-less stapler.
…that Microsoft Windows was better than it is. Please don’t tell me to switch to a Mac to solve the problem. I know, I know…
…that I could figure out how using Twitter would help my business.
…that I could make better naan bread.
…that fast food restaurants were.
…that people were less uptight about the phrase “Merry Christmas”.
…that I could consistently remember where I put my sunglasses.
…that there weren’t so many things in my life that rely on batteries.
And I wish that our elected representatives would do a better job of representing us, and would behave with greater civility toward each other and people who disagree with them. I told you some of these were probably unattainable.
That’s really about it. Like I said, I’m lucky…very lucky. But as long as we’re wishing, those are my wishes.
And finally, I wish that everyone reading this has a Merry Christmas, if you celebrate Christmas, and that everyone has a blessed and prosperous 2010. That’s something we can all celebrate.
Richard Hadden (twitter at http://twitter.com/rehadden) is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the new book Contented Cows MOOve Faster, as well as the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

We’ve recently witnessed a rash of boorish public behavior by people who should know better. Without naming names, let’s just say that athletes, actors, and politicians of every stripe have been well represented. Time will tell whether society is willing to accept this latest ratcheting up of coarse behavior as the new norm.
Just about this time last year, then-candidate Barack Obama repopularized the phrase “lipstick on a pig” in a campaign speech in Virginia, in what some thought was a not-so-nice slap at Sarah Palin, who had just referred to lipstick in her VP nomination acceptance speech. I’ve never been an Obama fan, but I don’t think he was guilty of that one.
Anyone who has spent even fifteen minutes genuinely listening to the current “debate” about health care reform can’t help but conclude that, as with most things insurance related, there is a whole lotta ignorance goin’ on. Sadly, most of us couldn’t find our insurance card with both hands in a full moon. We don’t really understand our own health care coverage (assuming we have it), and haven’t the faintest idea how the present health care business model, payment system, and having 47 million uninsured using the local hospital ER as their primary care physician impacts each and every one of us.
Yesterday, at the conclusion of a routine office visit with my primary care physician, I asked for his opinion on the most important aspects of fixing our health care system. Actually, use of the word “system” is off the mark, because we really don’t have a health care system at all, just a bunch of component parts that don’t work together especially well. I digress.
Recently, three bright, hard working guys got together (sorta) over a simple, residential police call and managed to turn it into a national incident. While the facts remain somewhat muddled, it seems likely that all of them contributed to the fiasco. One perhaps was a little too eager to be a “victim”, another would have done well to simply leave when it was clear that his job was done, and the third opened his mouth a bit too quickly and widely in front of a world-wide audience.