Monday, December 31, 2012

Greet the New Year With Gratitude

Today marks the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2013.  Our celebration of Christmas is often soaked in nostalgia and now, many of us look for a fresh start in the New Year.

We look ahead with new resolve, new behaviors and new habits to create the new person we have always dreamed of being.

For many of us though, those resolutions are famously short lived.  Rather than a new start, we wind up with a continuation of what preceded it.  We're the same people, facing the same challenges, often with the same disappointing  results.

Here's some thoughts about ringing in the New Year and that new future we're dreaming of:

  • The future begins now.  Think about it.  The future doesn't just arrive out of nowhere.  The future grows out of the present moment.  I suppose, in some very important ways, the future is the fulfillment of the present moment.  It's what the present moment means.   Isn't that what Christmas was all about?  God born at a particular time, in a particular place and that's where God continues to be found.  God enters our time to be found nowhere else but here and now.
  • Change your relationship to now.  If I'm angry now, the future is likely to be filled with bitterness.  If I feel cheated now, the future will bring disappointment.  If I'm fearful now, the future will bring anxiety and dread.   On and on.  We can't have a new future until we figure out a new way to be right now.
  • Gratitude is the most powerful tool we have to create the future we hope for.  At this end of the year, simply hold everything that brings you to this present moment in grateful awareness.  Even the pain that might come from this exercise.  Or the fear, or the anger, or even the grief and tears.  They all exist now too, and they have a right to be here.  Resist the urge to push them away.  Instead, try this.  Pull up a chair.  Invite them to sit with you.  Introduce yourself.   Serve snacks.  Don't worry, another guest will be arriving at any moment.  It's called healing and healing hangs out with some of the very people you've been dying to meet.  

 



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