Welcome to the New Year and I hope that your holidays have filled your life with joy and grace. It’s a wonderful time of the year, as the New Year ushers in, to begin to identify the patterns in our lives that serve us well, as well as to determine what we choose to do about those that don’t.
There are many glorious things I love about life and one of them is that in each and every moment we get the opportunity to begin again, to choose anew. So often, particularly as we find ourselves within the routine patterns of our every day living, we can begin to feel that we have limited options. This time of year, however, the air is ripe with possibility and pregnant with potential.
As each New Year comes, we are more inclined to sit and take stock of our lives. We resolve to change the things that don’t please us, to improve the situations that aren’t as we desire. Part of why I love this time of year so much can be realized at any time.
The feeling you get when you make a decision that is more closely in alignment with what you need and what you believe is exciting. You’re taking a stand for yourself, declaring it to be important enough for you to include within your life.
When we’re able to not only make that decision, but also to act on it, true miracles can begin to take place. Those kinds of decisions impact not only our health and our own lives, but the lives of people around us.
Our feature columnist this month, Jenn Dubey, has written a great article that discusses the way to move forward in a positive direction with your goals, which is so great for so many of us this time of year.
One of the aspects that we don’t always remember when we’re considering the changes that we’d like to incorporate into our lives is the positive impact it has on our friends, family, co-workers, and others.
You all know by now that I’m very much an individual who believes that in one way or another, we’re all here to help each other. We think of the things we can do to help others. We might hold the door for someone, take our neighbor’s children home from school, donate to a charity, or even offer someone a job. What if making positive decisions for and in your own life was one of the most powerful things you could to do help others?
Think of when you’ve been in a place in your life that you felt most positive, most empowered, and most yourself. Now think of a time in your life when you felt out of sync, maybe even a bit of a victim or unempowered. How did you respond to those around you in these two different scenarios?
It’s not hard to imagine that when you felt the most empowered, the most fully yourself, you were more giving, more open, more gracious and helpful to your family, your friends, even strangers. It’s also not a leap to guess that you probably weren’t that magnanimous or giving when you felt less in alignment in your life.
In the 1920’s a Hungarian writer posited the belief that we are all essentially six degrees, steps or people away from any other person in our world. It’s a fascinating idea that has spawned numerous studies and even a movie at one time, and there does seem to be some documented proof at this point from the studies.
If you consider that each individual is just six people away from any other, the impact of our actions on others takes on a whole new layer of meaning. What you put into your life and therefore your immediate world in terms of your energy and your outlook influences people and situations that are so exponential it’s challenging to even consider. When you consider that your energy and outlook are often the direct result of what you, yourself are creating, you begin to understand just how enormously powerful you are.
Part of the power of this time of year is not only the time spent identifying what would make you happier, feel more powerful, joyous, and peaceful within your life, but also imagining how those things or actions would help those around you. By nature we take into account either specific individuals, in the case of family or friends, or broad categories of people such as colleagues, clients, etc. The people who are left largely unfactored are the people that we don’t yet know, those who pass fleetingly through our lives almost without notice. We may never even know their names.
How we feel about ourselves, our own lives, and our own possibilities and potentials influences everyone we come into contact with. The more that we move more completely into the fullness of the possibilities and essence of whom we are individually, the more we open and elevate the possibilities in each other.
So as we go into this New Year of possibilities, I hope that we all take the time to decide to make some choices that make us feel good about ourselves. Even small decisions and choices are great. I don’t think there’s one person who doesn’t need or want to work on something in their lives. Even if your life is perfect and wonderful, who doesn’t want to feel more or give more joy?
Cheers to a happy, joyous year full of possibilities. As we’ve all seen so recently, we all individually can begin to make a difference in the world. And I believe, it’s easier to make a profound impact than we know.
