Buenos Lunes Mis Amigos,

While the holiday season means catching glimpses of Will Ferrell on TV’s on three separate occasions per week and wearing ugly Christmas sweaters that smell like the stale cardboard box you found it in, there are other perks… Such as it being Year in Review time for sports highlights AND Mike’s Mailbag. As much as I’d love for Natasha Staniszewski and Kate Beirness to host Mike’s Mailbag Year in Review, they politely declined so I guess my hosting abilities will have to suffice!

TOP 10 QUOTES OF 2016

1) “At one point in your life, you’ll have the thing you want or the reasons why you don’t.” – Andy Roddick (Week 21)

2) “We do not rise to the level of our hopes. We fall to the level of our training.“ – Archilochus (Week 40)

3) “Beware of destination addiction. The idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job, or even in the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.” – Robert Holden (Week 5)

4) “Your resume is your past. Your job is your present. Your network is your future.” – Terri Trespicio (Week 26)

5) “Empathy is a choice and it’s a vulnerable choice. Because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows the feeling.” – Brene Brown (Week 17)

6) “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito in your bedroom.“  – Dalai Lama (Week 30)

7) “I’m looking for what’s real. And when I find that, I take it right to the soul. I’m not a surface guy, I can’t stand living on the surface. I think that’s why people are so unfulfilled today. People text instead of communicate, people think their Facebook friends are their friends. Depth is what people are missing. I like taking people deep. That’s why people are so riveted because it’s so rare.” – Tony Robbins (Week 47)

8) “Life must be lived forward but can only be understood backwards.” – Will Arnett in Flaked (Week 20)

9) “We’re so attached to the identities, relationships, and dreams that have brought us this far. But like a cocoon, when a butterfly emerges the cocoon has served its purpose. It doesn’t mean it’s false – it means it’s served its purpose. And our dreams, our identities, our ambitions, our relationships, they’re often cocoons that lead us to the next. And we get so understandably attached that we get in conflict when it breaks or falls away; we don’t see what it’s opened us to.” – Mark Nepo (Week 48)

10) “The difference of a person’s fate is decided from what a person spends in his free time between 20:00 to 22:00 . Use these two hours to learn, think and participate in meaningful lectures or discussion. If you persist for several years, success will come knocking on your doors.” – Li Ka Shing (Week 22)

Feliz Navidad,

Mike