Every day, you wake up and have the opportunity to decide what kind of person you want to be. Am I going to get up early to exercise rather than roll over and hit snooze again? Am I going to volunteer for that organization in town which has been looking for help? Am I simply going to be more kind to others?

While most of our decisions are automatic, each and everyone of us has the opportunity to make decisions which can make you the best version of yourself - a person others want to emulate.

Just like an individual can change him or herself through intentional decisions, a community has that same opportunity. 

Every day, community leaders, organizations and individuals make decisions which determine what our community will be. Every day, we make decisions which shape our story. Every day, we make decisions which can make us be the community others talk about and want to be.

This doesn’t happen by chance and usually it doesn’t happen overnight, but all those decisions add up to tell the story about our community. To be the community others want to be, we need to be willing to make those decisions and some of them won’t be easy.

For example, we need to be willing to invest in ourselves through both private and public funding. 

Today is a great example of where each and every one of us can invest in ourselves. Big Give McCook gives everyone the chance to make an impact by making a donation to the 29 non-profit organizations, which help our community both exist and thrive. 

By working together to combine our financial resources, we can help these groups which are making McCook and Southwest Nebraska a place others will want to be like. They are building projects that will make families want to move and live here; they are serving those citizens who may be struggling and need the occasional helping hand; they are meeting the needs of our community and then taking those ideas one step further to make our community even better.

While these organizations are essential to our community, the role of government and our tax dollars also play a huge role in our community’s story.

Making the decision to raise or lower taxes is never easy but it has a tremendous impact. Some officials are proud that we have the lowest taxes in the state, but that decision means we also don’t have the funds to make impactful improvements in our community, affecting our story. Consequently, do people see our “story” and decide not to move here? Do they see a community that doesn’t want to invest in itself? Do they see a community which takes the easy road even if the hard road will be beneficial for generations to come?

It is the time to ask ourselves the hard questions, tackle the hard issues and decide what we want to be known for.

Do we want to be that community which invested in itself in a once-in-a-generation project?

Do we want to be the community which has policies in place which encourage people to open a business or renovate an aging building?

Do we want to be that community which is willing to make and learn from its mistakes? Willing to admit that we don’t know everything but will ask others for help? Willing to lift up those offering to get involved and invest their time, skills and resources in their community?

We must be willing to invest in ourselves and in our community if we want to make McCook and Southwest Nebraska the community others talk about and want to be.