Today was a reflection of both the triumphs and the failures of the year, both big and small, the sorrows, mistakes, successes, the good choices, the bad, the happy days and the sad. I am grateful for change, and that I’m not the same person I was last year, regardless of how painful it was to get here. Stagnation is more painful. I know now that joy is sweeter, when you have felt great sorrow. We may not have full control over what happened yesterday, but we do have the choice on how we live today.
Every year we are given a gift, a “do over,” a chance to right the wrongs of last year. What a beautiful, forgiving plan…. we don’t get it right the first time, we get another chance. On average, we get to do this 71 times, more if we are lucky. Less, if we eat too many Twinkies.
Today is a new beginning, a renewal, a tabula rosa, a chance to change our course, or stay the course…. but progress and not fear change. We may not have control of how our story started, or how each day plays out, but what we do have control over is our choice to act or react each day, to live in fear or stand in faith, to have gratitude and create abundace or to spiral in never ending scarcity, to be the authors of our own story, or the victims.
Victor Frankel taught through first-hand experience, “ Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation…. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Today I turn the page and start anew…