New Years and Mondays

What is it about a new year that fills us with so much hope? Why is January 1st such a special day that makes us fill that anything is possible? I think it’s because we all need a fresh start at some point. January 1st is like the biggest Monday of the year, for those that have started a diet before (since all good diets only start on Mondays!) It’s like being released from the jail of your thoughts that plagued the year prior. It’s like Harry Potter being taken from his room under the stairwell and given a new lease on life as a wizard. We can do anything on January 1st. We can lose weight…start writing that book…begin learning a new skill…it’s all possible!

The trick, of course, is that we have also have to work it on January 2nd, and March 28th, and November 30th, and every other day of the year.

True change doesn’t happen in a day or usually on one day, or even just on Mondays. I don’t say that to be discouraging, but to give the insight that just as change doesn’t happen in a day, change can be started on ANY day. Change is a process, like a long trip in a U-haul that requires stops and starts and frequent trips to the bathroom. It is a plane ride in the middle seat with a moody teenager at the window and an entitled business man in the aisle. It is a walk back to the house after the car has broken down and you have the choice of dragging your important belongings with you or leaving them behind to potentially be stolen. Change is hard, uncomfortable and totally crappy sometimes.

But…eventually, the U-haul pulls into the new driveway, the plane lands in a new airport and the long walk home allows some shedding of belongings that you didn’t need, and the victory of changing something is celebrated. That is, until it’s time to take the trip again with a new goal in mind.

I’ve spent years starting a new exercise routine on January 1st only to “re-set” every Monday in January and then give up by February. I finally did start losing weight again last year, and I think the secret was that I started on a Wednesday. I didn’t wait until Monday to start…I just plowed in one day and started eating differently. My health became important to me so I just began, and I was far from perfect. What I learned, however, was that I didn’t “re-start” each Monday when I made a mistake. I just got on track with the next meal, and it’s working. Go figure…it took me to fifty-five years of age to figure that one out.

My goal for the New Year is to figure out some other misconceptions that I’ve carried around for half a century. For those that spend time with me at work, I’ve spent years saying, “2017 is going to be a good year…2018 is going to be a good year…2019 is going to be a good year.” Then 2018 kicked me in the teeth on the way out and 2019 threw me on a trampoline and watched me struggle to find my footing. Both of those years, however, created opportunities (however uncomfortable) to grow, change and restructure my priorities.

Here is what I’ve learned. Each year IS a good year. I wouldn’t trade any of them…even the years that felt like I was in a U-haul with a UTI. Each year is full of craziness, happiness, pain, sorrow, joy, and the like. Each year will be like that until we die, at which point, we will park the U-haul and hope that we’ve learned all that we were meant to.

So this year…decide today that it WILL be a good year, and that last year WAS also a good year, even if it didn’t fit that definition previously for you. This year is starting with promise. It will be what you make it, and it will most likely give you some situations that you may not have control over, but that doesn’t define good years or bad years.

We make that definition ourselves.

Have a great 2020!