Hello New Year
Its the start of a new year and 365 shiny new days lie ahead of us like the first page of a new notebook. As one year ends and a new one begins it’s natural that we start reflecting on the year that has passed and the year that lies ahead. While some of us are excited by the possibilities offered by a new year, we can sometimes feel a pressure to achieve the dreams and goals that we had at the start of the last year.
I wonder what last year was like for you? In all of our lives there are seasons - some we want to celebrate and some we’d like to forget. I can recall times where being asked about my highlights from the past year felt like a painful reminder of situations I longed to see change but none had come. Fear that the year ahead would be the same as the year that had passed. Other years I’ve felt overwhelmed with gratitude and amazed at how much could change in the space of a year.
We can sometimes make the mistake of thinking we need to celebrate what we have achieved - in our career, in our spiritual life, in our relationships, with our health. New Year’s resolutions tend to focus us on what we want to do differently in the year ahead. As a coach I’m a big fan of setting goals, after all how can you succeed if you don’t know what you're aiming for? But when our resolutions or goals are based primarily on what we want to achieve, the end of the year can feel like a school report or work appraisal where we’ve just been told we must do better (and a quick glance around can make us feel like everyone else is doing better).
What if our resolutions focused more on who we want to be rather than what want to do? When we change who we are, we are changed from the inside out. It influences how we view our lives, the language we use, where we use our energy. This focus on who we are becoming (rather than what we’re doing) actually breaths new life into everything else we do. It’s not wrong to set resolutions and goals, we perhaps just need to start by focusing on our character rather than our situation.
So often we focus our time and energy on situations that are not within our power to change and it leads to frustration and disappointment. You can’t change what happens to you. You can’t change your colleagues, your family and friends. We can change who we are. We can choose to be more thankful, loving, patient, forgiving, hopeful, kind, gracious, trusting. Imagine if we all decided to be more thankful in 2016. Gratitude is transformational - the happiest people are not the people who have or achieve the most, they are the ones who are thankful for what they already have.
What problem in your work or personal life would you love to see change in the coming year? If you want to find a more fulfilling career who do you need to be? Perhaps you can be more resourceful, creative or disciplined. Rather than start the year with a ‘To Do list’ why not start the year with a ‘To Be list’?