Fresh Starts
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
It’s the end of the year and about when we start thinking about 2021 and what our plans are for the New Year.
Some of these ideas that we’re considering are new - new hobbies we want to take on, new skills we’d like to develop, new ventures we’d like to create. The thrill and excitement of doing something we’ve never done before is intoxicating, something to really look forward to.
But some of our ideas aren’t new at all. They’re ideas that we’ve been tooling around with for a while, possibly even years: to lose weight, to take our careers to another level, to reinvigorate an old, troubled relationship. We’ve started - then stopped - these ideas multiple times, for good reasons, for bad reasons and at times for no reason at all.
Still, they’ve persisted, even as they’ve been battered by the years of false starts, disappointments and indifference, layered over with our own unique, personalized emotional baggage of why we didn’t do what we wanted, what we knew we should have done, and what that says about us. The baggage that has formed itself into that voice in the back of our heads that tells us why we can’t do it, why it won’t work, why we won’t keep it up.
For sure, that voice is real. I don’t mean to say that it’s right, rather that it exists. It’s there in all of us.
The ideas, though, are also real. And the ones that have persisted over the years - even when we didn’t do what needed to be done - have done so because they mean something to us. They move us towards who we are, and who we want to be. Which is why they’ve persisted.
So while it’s normal that we feel a sense of wariness as we think through our goals for the New Year (Can I really do this? I’ve tried this before and it didn’t work.), it’s also important to remember that each false start and each stall, happened for a reason. We didn’t do this, we didn’t try that, we didn’t commit in some particular way.
And those are important lessons for us to take away, lessons that teach us to perhaps be more conscious, be slower, to not be hurried, to manage ourselves a bit better. Lessons that are borne of our own personal experiences that teach us the right path for us, to navigate our personal obstacles along the path to wherever we need to go. We shouldn’t minimize the value of this knowledge and its ability to help us get what we want (finally). This experience - and our ability to apply it to good effect - is what ultimately silences that voice in the back of our head.
The point is, we can’t be afraid to take on that old, persistent goal (again). It doesn’t matter that we’ve started and stopped multiple times.
The truth is, that we can always start again, but this time with all of our knowledge and experience.
