Beginnings

Each new year holiday, resolutions reflect the hopes and desires of our hearts, for the moment sidelining the habitual thoughts and actions that dominate our days the rest of the year.  A “pink cloud” tints our psyche with promises of dieting, exercising, patience, diligence, and other qualities that seem elusive the rest of the year.  The trouble with the pink cloud is that it feels real.  Those who have worked through mood disorders like depression or anxiety know well that a feeling can be “real, but not true.”

What IS true lies in the choices of our lives.  As we look back over our past, we see how events and relationships are a pattern rather than random or coincidental.  We see elements of codependency rather than interdependence, resistance and not acceptance, fear over love, doubt challenging faith that play across years or even generations.  Where we stand today is a point of time between past and future.  To pick a point in the future requires a path from here to there.  Whether weight loss, better parenting, changing a toxic relationship, or some other idealized form of yourself is in your dreams this new years, take a moment to write down your values, and weigh your thoughts and actions against those values with each choice of every day.  Then resolutions become results, and desires become destiny.

Here’s to another year and another chance to get it right!  —Oprah