As of today, you only have two months until 2024; and also, you are not getting more time to do what is on your heart, you are only getting now, the next moment is not a guarantee…
The typical list of top New Year’s resolutions has not changed much in the last couple of decades, save for mental health moving up the list. Get healthy, exercise more, eat better, lose weight, spend more time with loved ones, save money or improve finances are commonly at the top.
Essentially we all want to feel better, look better, have friends and do fulfilling activities… and have the money and time to actually live life.
How long are we going to wait?
These resolutions are nothing more than lifestyle changes and good habits. Most of us could achieve these goals right where we are at if we took a measured and careful approach. So how do we get to the end of yet another year and we haven’t taken any steps to bring about actual change?
Aside from the non-specific nature of the goals… (get healthy, eat healthier, lose weight, save money) the resolutions themselves are already “second place goals”, goals which are designed to fail.
If I am training for a race, I am training for first place. So get healthy becomes; “constantly improve my physical and mental health, move and learn and train daily, seek advice and inspiration, find compelling reasons to continue, develop a vision of the healthy me”… or: “Embody and embrace the identity of an athlete”.
Mostly though, we lack impetus. We don’t really believe. We think we have time. We are overwhelmed by life, by fear, by failure. The process and the change in front of us are just alien enough to our current reality that we make excuses, we live in our heads and the boundaries of our individual thought traps.
If we can believe, just long enough… or if we can trick ourselves into taking the first few steps, then this alien landscape can start to become familiar, start to feel possible, we can start to entertain different visions of self, of the future. But not without overcoming initial resistance, not without abandoning deep held beliefs, not without freeing ourselves from the shroud of the past and of the storms of negative thinking.
I ask you, dear reader, as we go into another winter, and another year is on approach, what is weighing heaviest on your heart? What words haven’t you said? What changes are you delaying? What love are you withholding? What dreams are you storing and why?
Don’t you know when you die, we all lose?
Don’t you know the value of you? Of your dreams? Of your time?
Every moment is precious, for death is at our door and he will not stop, he will not falter.
Breathe now. Dream now. Be now. Live now.