Happy New Year! I love the time of year when we can use the lessons of our past to guide us to our future, and start a whole new year over again. Without a doubt, the last couple of years have been ones like we have never experienced. They have caused us to think and act differently than we otherwise would have, and in ways that we could have never imagined. For some, that action wasn’t necessarily a good thing. For others who used the experiences to dig within themselves to find their true inner strength, we found building blocks for our future that will help us navigate this new world of ours.

With change often comes fear. Jawaharlal Nehu, who was India’s first prime minister after the country gained its independence said, “Fear builds its phantoms which are more fearsome than reality itself”. Leaving an old year behind and starting anew, not only comes with fresh possibilities, but it also has a way of raising the fears of our past as we strive to wipe the slate clean and start over again. However, starting over in the new year doesn’t mean that we forget everything we learned. Every experience we had leading up to this moment was preparation for those things that we will deal with in the future. Hopefully, we have learned from our mistakes, filed them away for reference, and made course corrections that will help us avoid those mistakes again. If we live in fear of repeating those mistakes, then it is likely that we will repeat them. If we celebrate conquering those mistakes, then the chance we will need to revisit them again becomes less likely.

As the clock turned on 2021, I made a vow to make 2022 an amazing year, no matter the adversity. I consciously made a decision to not let the crazy that is going on in the world have an impact on the life I want to live this year. I choose to make the next minutes of my life, ones I will never see again, minutes that enhance my life path, rather than lead me astray. Will it be perfect? Of course not. Things will arise that will do their best to take me off my path. How I face them, work through them and ultimately defeat the negative, will have the profound impact on how I want this year to go.

#morningswithron