HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope that you safely made it through the holiday season and that you're on track for a happy and prosperous 2019. Last week I wrote a little about goal setting and a number of you have emailed over the course of the last week asking me to elaborate and give more tips. To that end, here's something that I wrote at the beginning of last year that lays out what I have found to be the most effective means of setting goals. I hope that you find it useful.

I like the New Year because it offers an opportunity to “reset.” It's a good time to look at life and evaluate. A chance to look at what's going well in your life and make plans to do more of it, and a chance to look at what's not going so well and either do less of it and eliminate it entirely. It's for that reason that I never do “resolutions.” They don't work. Folks make some grandiose declaration to make a major life change and it's generally forgotten by mid-February. If you don't believe me, try finding a parking place at your gym next week and then do the same around Valentine's Day. The lot goes from looking like the Bay Bridge during the morning commute in January to a barren field of tumbleweeds six weeks later.

Instead of resolutions, make SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant and Time bound. Choose a desired outcome and make sure it applies to the SMART method. For example a SMART goal might be, “I want to lose 20 pounds by July 4, 2019.”
Specific – You want to lose 20 pounds.
Measurable – Pounds are “trackable” so you can see your progress.
Achievable – It's not 200 or 2000 pounds in six months so it's possible.
Relevant – It's something that will have an impact on your health and life.
Time bound – You have a definitive deadline.
SMART goals have changed my life and my level of achievement. All of my “somedays” are turning into concrete realities. Try this method instead of resolutions this New Year. Choose a maximum of three goals that you can apply the SMART criteria to. In a few months, shoot an email to me at Copie@BrianCopeland.comand let me know how it works out for you!

Here's what I've been into the last week...

The brilliant Stephen Hawking was among the treasures we lost in 2018. In the months prior to his death last March, Hawking was working on what would be his final book. Brief Answers to the Big Questions is a collection of essays, speeches and lectures he'd produced over the years responding to public inquiries on topics such as space exploration, the origins of the universe and time travel. It's a short and fascinating read.

Among the ideas Hawking presents:

• Time Travel may be theoretically possible but he doesn't believe we've ever been visited by anyone from the future. To test the theory, he held a “time travel party” and sent the invitations out... the day after the party was to have taken place. To his disappointment, nobody showed up.
• He was greatly alarmed by Brexit, the rise of Donald Trump and what he calls “the revolt against science, knowledge and experts.” He believed that the rejection of science  imperils our very survival as the embrace of anti-intellectualism discourages young people from exploring the things that they're curious about as well as discouraging them from possible careers in science. Without the next generation of scientists and scientific researchers, our very existence as the human race is in jeopardy.
• He believes that the Earth will become uninhabitable sooner rather than later from climate change, nuclear war or the inevitability of a collision with an asteroid like the one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Hawking says our only hope is to find other worlds to colonize in our own solar system. He believes it's possible by the end of the 21st century if we have the will to tackle the challenge in the same way NASA met President Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Hawking believed that the annihilation of the Earth is not a matter of “if”, but “when”.

I HIGHLY recommend this book.
READ IT

WATCHED
After reading that Netflix, which never releases the viewership levels of its original content, announced that its original movie Bird Box had been viewed 45 million times, I had to see what all the shouting was about. Based on the 2014 novel by Josh Malerman, Bird Box is a supernatural thriller that stars Sandra Bullock as Mallorie, an artist fighting for survival after the world is inhabited by entities who cause humans to commit suicide if they look at them. Flashing back and forth between the present, with a blindfolded Mallorie attempting to make it down a treacherous river with her blindfolded 5 year olds in order to reach a colony of survivors, and the past circumstances that led her there. The title comes from the fact that birds will alert people to the presence of the entities. It's a thrill a minute with a great cast including Sarah Paulson, BD Wong, and John Malkovich.
DEFINITELY WATCH IT. But... not right before bed.

SIDE NOTE  Netflix has had to warn people to stop taking what's being called The Bird Box Challenge in which people attempt to make I through the day blindfolded. Things like this were why the Darwin Awards were created.

MOVIES
I caught two pictures this week.

Second Act stars Jennifer Lopez as a middle aged grocery store assistant manager who can't get a promotion despite her superior “on the job” skills, because her education ended with her GED. To ease her frustration, her best friend's Stanford bound son creates a fake background for her (including stints at Harvard and Cornell) and submits her for employment. Lo and behold, she gets a job with a major company and, despite the fact that she lacks the Ivy League degrees, her diploma from the School of Hard Knocks leads her to excel.

It's a totally predictable and thoroughly enjoyable movie with an important theme; the lack of a high priced education does indicate a lack of competence, skill or innovation.
GO (If you want a light, breezy few hours.)

Escape Room was a pleasant surprise. Escape Rooms are adventure games where participants must solve a series of puzzles and clues to escape from their confines. The movie takes it one step further with a group of people who think they're playing a game for a $10,000 prize, fighting for their lives as each level of the game brings mortal jeopardy. Think The Da Vinci Code and National Treasure type clues and puzzles but... if you don't solve them in time, you die.
I absolutely loved it. Check it out!
GO

EATS
I found myself in Stockton last week and had a marvelous dinner with family at Bud's Seafood Grille. It's a great place with an extensive menu of seafood and steaks. I had a great grilled catfish that I liked so much I'm heading back there soon just to repeat the experience. Bud's Seafood Grille is located at 314 Lincoln Center in the Lincoln Shopping Center in Stockton. Weekends are packed so be sure to make a reservation.

NOT A GENUINE BLACK MAN RETURNS TO LOS ANGELES!
I'm really excited to announce that I'll be bringing GENUINE to The Actors Group Studio in Burbank on Saturday nights from January 12 through March 30, 2019. If you're in the area, please come out and support the show. If you aren't, please send this info to your friends and family in the Burbank area. There is limited seating available and I'd love to sell the shows out!
Tickets are available at BrownPaperTickets.com or by calling 1-800-838-3006.
A limited number of discount tickets are available through Goldstar.

If you or your friends are unfamiliar with the play, take a look at this wonderful profile CBS did on the work a while back and send it to them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opdbMDIZNyY

NOT A GENUINE BLACK MAN RETURNS TO THE EAST BAY FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY
Not A Genuine Black Man, the longest running solo play in San Francisco Theatrical history, returns to the East Bay for one very special performance on Friday, January 25 at the Douglas Morrison Theater in Hayward before I take it down to Burbank for an extended run. Find out why my personal tale of laughter, tears and sociology continues to endure!
For tickets, go here.

Have a great weekend!

Copie

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