How to have a Happier New Year
Happy New Year!
Are you a diamond in the rough? Is life a little wonky right now? I wrote this column in my other blog way back in 2009 and it came to mind again. I overheard my Dad counseling someone who had lost his job: Diamond in the Rubble
I’ll add my own two cents to this — it’s my surefire way to move beyond all the stuff that’s making you nutso ~~~
The best way to have a Happier New Year is to look at your past few years objectively without beating yourself up. Take these quick steps:
- Write down briefly what happened.
- Think about how you may have participated in making things harder for yourself. Accountability & Responsibility are wonderful antidotes to stress and guilt. Just own it and move on.
- Ask yourself what you would do differently if you could. This gives you ideas for a new blueprint.
- Think about how you can change, modify, alter some of your behaviors and choices for the future. These are what we usually call “Resolutions.”
- Take a deep breath and forgive yourself for past choices and choose now to make better ones. If you want to be dramatic, take a pen and cross off all the dumb choices you made. Then take that list out to your BBQ and set it on fire… or put it in the shredder as a symbolic way to dump the trash and get ready for a NEW and shinier year.
This is a simple process. It works. I do it every year on the night before my birthday and the evening before the New Year. I usually write item #1 on a separate piece of paper. The ideas for change – my resolutions – are on a new piece of paper that I can keep and post somewhere in my office.
The most important efforts in the above list are the ones that involve taking responsibility for our own mess and forgiving ourselves. Everybody messes up. Learning from it is the real gift. Dumping all the guilt and trash from it is a secondary and important gift as well.
This has been a rough year in many ways. It seems the whole country is at each others throats. Relax. Be willing to listen to each other. Have conversations instead of yelling and hurling epithets. We all see the world from our own unique perspective. Maybe the person you are mad at has a perspective you haven’t thought of. None of us has a corner on the truth. And, really, ignore politicians, celebrities and lobbyists with a bone to pick. Remember, they are all getting paid to say the things they say. You are better than that. Think for yourself and resolve to have a happier new year.
You can do this.
I’m hangin’ right in there with you.
Happy New Year! Happy New You.
Be safe,