HOW FAR HAVE YOU COME THIS YEAR?
Specifically, count your blessings.
List the things you're most proud of.
This is not limited to money. Family, friends, school-- anything you can look back on and say "Wow!"
Seems that millions (billions?) of folks make new years resolutions this time of year.
Some people spend months thinking about what their resolutions are going to be.
Others take just a few seconds.
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But when the clock strikes midnight,
What do you have?
A New Year.
A chance to begin again, or start things anew.
An opportunity to get rid of old habits.
And develop healthy, new habits.
**********
When I first moved out to California (back in 1984), I was sitting alone, in my tiny house trailer, thinking about new years resolutions.
No matter how hard I thought about them, though, my thoughts kept going not to what I *wanted* to accomplish in the new year . . .
. . . but what I had *already* accomplished in the past year.
I was 23. That year (1984), I had:
-Graduated college
-Sold most of what I owned (including all of the cars I'd been working on, fixing up)
-Bought a tiny travel trailer and an old Ford van
-Packed all of my possessions in the trailer (and van)
-Moved "up north" (Michigan) to clear my head and figure out what to do with my life
-Figured out how to live on next to nothing (I was single, no kids or pets)
-Got a job working as a dishwasher at my favorite German restaurant
-Got promoted to asst cook before the summer was out
-Decided to move to California after Labor Day weekend, to pursue a graduate degree at Berkeley, or just see where life carried me
-Visited a great friend in Indianapolis, stayed w/him a month with my cold feet (afraid to make the big move to Cali)
-Found someone to share my drive out to the coast (this helped with my gas costs)
-Rented a car in Cheyenne, WY when my car (towing the trailer) blew a head gasket.
-Surreptitiously drilled a few holes in the bumper of that rental car, and towed the trailer the rest of the way to CA.
-Got to CA, and within 1 week, found a place to put my trailer and live, and a place to work.
As I sat there in my tiny, warm trailer (it was 7 feet wide by 11 feet long on the inside), I watched the rest of the world celebrate New Years on my TV.
And while some might have sat there, lamenting the fact that they were living in a trailer park, spending New Years alone, without friends or a love interest, here I was,
Overjoyed.
I was so happy!
Not because I was living in a trailer. Not because I had no friends or girlfriend to celebrate with.
I was happy for all of the other, fantastic things that had happened to me that year.
I was following my dreams.
DOING my dreams, each and every day.
It was bliss.
********
So every New Years since,
I've been doing what I call my
"New Years Review".
It's a list of the things that I accomplished this past year.
Some years, the list is long.
Others, short.
Some years I wind up curled up in a comfy chair on NY's eve, working on my review.
Others, I wind up doing it on Jan 1 or 2, since I'm out partying (or working) on Dec 31.
But each year I do it.
It's kind of a record of the past year.
What was important to me.
What I considered accomplishments.
The things I treasure about my life.
********************************************
So here's my New Year's gift to you:
Instead of making resolutions this New Year's Eve.
Do a New Year's Review instead.
Look at where you were a year ago.
And where you are now.
What you've done.
And how you've grown.
Celebrate your accomplishments.
And, if you have things that you regret, don't think about them tonight.
For now, be happy, count your blessings, and welcome in the New Year with joy, celebration, and anticipation of great things to come.
-Russ H.
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