Happy New Year! Now What Are You Going To Do With It?

Okay, well, officially, it’s already 12 days past the New Year so let’s just say I take my time in thinking about how to move forward.

In the old days, I would have a crisp set of goals that I was writing on January 2^nd.  I would aim to move forward with gusto and purpose.  In old days, I approached everything with a hard line, I was “determined,” to be successful, “determined,” to be happy.

Then the years got busier, and I ran out of time to write the epic list of my goals and objectives, whilst humming to the tune of Auld Lang Syne.  Incidentally, I believe after years of being in corporate America, the theme of goals and objectives is hard-wired into some of us, like a painful but necessary annual tradition.

Those years, when my family and I were on vacation through the holidays, I was unable to get concrete with my G&O.  But something magical happened when I backed off my purposefulness a bit.  When my mind was a resting…vacationing…I was able to let go and forget about G&O.  Those years, I just started the year.  No written goals, no written objectives, nary a thought as to how the year would proceed.

And quite magically, those years, I enjoyed my life very much.  In fact, there were things that happened that I would never have predicted OR even added to my G&O list that contributed so much to my life…like when my husband made the decision to buy a dog even when I refused (quite adamantly).   If you have read my other blogs, you would know indeed how much Skye, my Siberian Husky, means to me.    And yet, that was never a priority, never a manifesto, never a resolution, never an item on a to-do list.  One day she just fell into my heart, and I’m better because of it.

So while you may read 100 other blogs telling you all the resolutions you have to make in 2017, for me these days, rather than a litany of G&O crafted specifically as the New Year reigns, I opt for thematic expressions of what I may want to see this year.   One that even my kids are preaching to each other now (likely because I have repeatedly mentioned it to them), often in jest as they play-fight, is KINDNESS.  That’s all.  I’d like to be surrounded by and share in delivering more KINDNESS this year.

When we are able to step back and recognize that feelings are the true core of our deepest happiness, it’s easier to measure a life not by the to-do lists it accomplished, but by the feelings it enchanted.  May your New Year be a wonderful mix of all that you want to feel.  Happy 2017!