As we gaze on the precipice of another year, it is the time to not only recap this last season but analyze and formulate strategies for this new one.
If you are like most people you are either optimistic about this new season and you have plans on where you are going to go and what you will do or you have migrated to pessimism. You say proudly that you gave up on new year resolutions a long time ago because you don’t keep them anyway or the changing of the year is not a reason to start something you feel you will soon give up on anyway.
Allow me to ask it another way, are you set in your ways and feel that everyone has to accept you and your flaws as who you are. Do you think everyone else should change and adjust to you being “you” or are you hanging on with a glimmer of hope that this will be the year that everything changes for you; despite the fact that you aren’t doing anything different? Albert Einstein’s famous line: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” applies to both.
If you have tuned me out or said you are about to stop listening, then this moment is for you. Know that although some things are hard to hear, growth is not always comfortable. Be encouraged in this season. Whether you made new resolutions or you have purposely held out, give yourself grace and begin now. Here are four tips to changing your experience in this season.
1 – Practice Intentionality: Putting things off for later has a name – it’s called procrastination and it is the enemy of greatness. Do something intentional for the next 5 days. Set a time to read for 5-7 minutes each day , write for a few minutes before going to bed. It doesn’t matter what day of the week it is or when, just get it done. Add it to your calendar, write it down somewhere and check it off when you are done.
2 – Practice Optimism: Start with small changes instead of big one. Change your greeting or your exit. Take a moment when you wake up in the morning to get yourself in the right frame of mind and watch how your day follows your mindset.
3 – Live Unapologetically: Own your past, you can’t go back and change them anyway. Leave the coulda, woulda and shouldas right where they were. Make present choices that you are proud of and make every moment count. Which leads to my last one.
4 – Be in the moment. When you are at work, be at work 100%. When you are at home, be home. When you are with the significant people in your lives, be present, not drifting or on imagining you are somewhere else. Enjoy where you are when you are there and who you are sharing that moment with because you will never have another like that one.
Final Thought: Seasons aren’t just summer and winter, they are also fall and spring, the times of transition, you in one of the seasons and no season last forever.