Is it how we start, or how we end?

After a long, inexcusable absence I was working on a post last night. For whatever reason, Blogspot managed to lose about half of it. I will get that missing part retyped and get the post up soon. It'll be a good one, commenting on a recent Seth Godin post (read it here...).

In the meantime I have a thought for your reading pleasure:

This morning I slowly came awake. My alarm clock display has the option to dim it completely, so I wasn't sure of the time. I normally wake up once or twice between 4am and when my alarm goes off at 5:51am, so I assumed that it was around 5am.

Still groggy, I activated the display. It was 6.31am. I was waking up a full 40 minutes late. Which means I would be 40 minutes late for work. I hate being late for work.

My mind immediately began to try and determined what had gone wrong? Did I sleep through my alarm? Not likely. No matter how hard I'm asleep I always wake up for my alarm. Did I forget to click the switch to on? Nope, It was on. Then I looked a little closer... The alarm was set for 5.51pm, not 5.51am!! Arrghhh!

Fortunately, my boss is pretty understanding about this sort of thing, so there was no significant consequences.

But, it did get me thinking. The most common response to this sort of mistake is "what a horrible way to start the day." But this had nothing to do with how I started my day. It was all about how I ended the previous day.

And then I realized how much that concept applied to life. We have to ask ourselves: How did I finish my last assignment/mission/task? Even if I successfully completed it, did I leave a wake of destruction in my path? Did I burn bridges and ruin relationships?  Did I hurt people? Did I compromise my principles or sacrificed my integrity?

If so, then any perceived victory is empty and meaningless. I may of got the job done, the price paid is too high.

Yes, we should start strong. But we must finish even stronger.