Do you start each New Year off with hope and anticipation and a belief that “This year I will meet the man/woman or my dreams” or “This year I will improve the communication in my marriage?” or “This year I will find the job or career I love and create solid relationships with co-workers, neighbors, relatives and friends?” At the end of the year, do you look back with a true sense of warmth and appreciation for all the joyous experiences you have had and all the love you have shared? Do you stop to think: "How have I loved?" and "How have I been loved?" in this past year?
If you are like most of us, perhaps you had a few wonderful moments and some really delightful shared experiences but if you reviewed your past year you may focus your attention more on what went wrong as opposed to what went right. You may reminisce more about the broken promises, severed relationships or relationships that caused you pain and tend to overlook all those wonderful moments of sharing and communicating with an open heart.
Life is filled with happiness, sadness, disappointments, rejections, wonderful connections and broken relationship ties. What you choose to focus on makes all the difference. Although it is valuable to look back over the past year and provide yourself with an honest appraisal of what went well and what didn’t, you have the choice of how we want to view our experiences. No matter what has happened in the previous year, you can always choose the way you want to perceive it and remember it. You can see the year as half full of love and joy and deep connections or half empty with pain and suffering and loss. You can view the pain and suffering as life lessons that you may not yet comprehend.
Now, as you approach the New Year, once again you have a choice. You can decide now what you truly want to create in the 12 months ahead. You can create a marketing plan for your life including details of what you want in every single aspect of your life. Your one year plan can be written on a simple piece of paper or inside an elegant notebook. You can create a vision board with all the elements of your desired dreams portrayed there in images and words. And you can sit quietly, meditate and visualize with all of your senses what it would be like for your dream to be happening right now.
Imagine 2012 spreading out in front of you like a set of railroad tracks extending way out into the distance, so far that you cannot see the end. What would you like to take along with you on this journey into a brand new year? Are there some emotional burdens, old memories, old unproductive thoughts and feelings, or sloppy habits that you would like to let go of now? Is there something you really want to accomplish that will require a lot of time, energy, work and concentration to do?
No matter what the question is, no matter what the desire is, and no matter how difficult the journey appears, the answer and solution is always love. If your relationships have been stressful and conflict ridden, ask yourself “What can I do to bring the love back?” If you are alone and longing for love, ask yourself now “How can I bring more love into other people’s lives? How can I be more loving?
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