How will you engage the new year? The second that brought 2011 into the present brought with it a new decade, a new year, a new month, a new week, a new day, a new hour, and a new minute. Why limit your celebration to only a new year? Oh sure, the beginning of a new year brings energy, fresh promises, and encouragement with a sense of new hope. For each moment of life to be meaningful you need such a revival more often than once a year.
The new year and each day in it offer an opportunity for you to grow and develop to be the person the creator designed you to be.
At the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2010, ... or was it January 1, 2011 ... the familiar and the unknown met at a single point in time. It was the end of one decade and the beginning of a new. I found myself in a familiar place. I and my wife were together in the privacy of home, champaign glass in our hands, watching Dick Clark lead the countdown of the ball dropping in New York's Time Square. This we had done year after year. There were some differences, however. Our children were not with us. Each of the three who live in New York had gone elsewhere to celebrate with friends. Dana, our oldest, was in Hawaii, six hours behind in time, getting ready for work. We dispensed with our annual seafood and pizza New Year's Eve feast; Jaci and I ate leftovers.
The way I brought in the year 2011 signaled that things would be different to start the new decade. I was retired. I had more of life to devote to other endeavors. I had already put into motion actions to publish a new book, upgrade my web site, and speak to groups who had not heard me before.
My son Dana asked me a few days after the new year began what resolutions I had made for the year. I quipped that I don't make new year's resolutions anymore. I make my resolutions daily. Doing so allows me to use the most up-to-date information for making commitments and completing projects.
How will you engage the new year?
THE MESSAGE
The second that brought 2011 into the present brought with it a new decade, a new year, a new month, a new week, a new day, a new hour, and a new minute. Why limit your celebration to only a new year? Oh sure, the beginning of a new year brings energy, fresh promises, and encouragement with a sense of new hope. For each moment of life to be meaningful you need such a revival more often than once a year.
Each time that you awaken from a restful night's sleep you awaken with revitalization and energy for the day's activities. You have the opportunity for a clear mind ready for fresh thoughts and new ideas. The setting is ripe for encouragement of your growth and development if you are willing to honor the in-coming of January 2 and 3 and 4 and each day of the rest of the year as you celebrate January 1. Each day to which you awaken is the beginning of new life.
You can begin each day with new resolutions. The content may be the same as those of yesterday, but today's resolve is a new one because there is a renewed commitment to it.
When you make promises to yourself, you can commit yourself to shorter segments of time instead of making them for a year. If you resolve to stop looking at the world around you with a negative attitude, for instance, you can make your promise for one day. If you break your promise today, tomorrow will give you the opportunity for a fresh start. If you keep your vow, you will find strength of will to repeat your successful action a second day. And then a third. Pretty soon you will have gone a week looking at things with a different attitude. It will become your new way of looking at life.
To help you keep your resolve, it is necessary that you set yourself up for success. If, for example, you promise yourself to lose weight, you must change the circumstances of your eating and exercise habits. You must remove from your reach the foods you want to avoid and change your schedule of daily activities to comfortably include time to exercise. The alterations in your surroundings and your time schedule will give you a true sense of a new beginning. In short, you should place yourself in an environment that makes it easy for you to keep your resolutions.
You must not forget to wipe the slate clean at the end of the day. It is likely that you will encounter disappointments and failures, but you should never dwell on these. You should remember them only long enough to draw lessons and to make modifications to tomorrow's plans.
The new year and each day in it offer an opportunity for you to grow and develop to be the person the creator designed you to be. You must first resolve to be that person. Next you must resolve to use every moment of your life for such growth. The time you spend being someone or something other than you, is wasted opportunity for your fulfillment.