I mentioned in my Shorts post on Friday how much I like New Year’s Day. It’s so full of possibilities.
To be fair, every day can be full of possibilities. But on any given day we’re usually just moseying along existing from waking to sleeping. As we go through the motions of daily life, the possibilities of every day are apt to be squandered.
The beginning of a new year reminds us, seasonally, to take the time to be intentional about the way we want to live. New beginnings remind us that we are able to choose to invest time thinking about and planning to (as they say in the old Star Trek series) Make It So. The beginning of a new year is a recurring, gentle reminder that we are the Captains of our own (star)ships, and we have the power to create the life we want to live.
Now, that’s not to say that we’re terribly successful at planning and creating our lives. The time we take to do that, usually only annually, is a fleeting priority. Without making it a constant priority, the effort to shape your life simply flitters away until the next new year rolls around and we run around in the same circle. I know that from experience.
This year I’m going to do something different. I’m going to be more specific and more intentional in what I want my life to look like. In year’s past I’ve vowed to be healthier. That usually involved losing weight and getting more exercise, neither of which I ever accomplished with any lasting effects.
This year I want to be more physically flexible. That’s it. Just more physically flexible. I want to be able to get up from a chair (or sitting in the car for an hour or more) and not have to wait, painfully, for my body to unfold like a brochure you want to see laying flat. I want to be able to bend and stretch and twist without worrying about pulling something that’s been disused, then risk being in pain for the rest of the day.
This year I want to expand the habit of writing more regularly than I did last year. My friend, Michele Rose, was the catalyst last year on one non-new-years-day for beginning this blog and Randy’s blog, Our High Places. That got us in the habit of writing to make sure we had something to post twice a week, but I really want to set aside a block of time to write daily. I have no real goal in mind about what to write…but writing seems to me to be a worthwhile endeavor and I want to develop the skill. Perhaps I’ll start writing snail mail letters to people I care about. Or begin a book that will probably never get published (because I don’t care about writing a book that gets published).
And the last thing I will do more diligently this year is ponder how to make the rest of my life meaningful. This is a subject I’ve also written about before, but it was brought to the forefront again on New Year’s Day when Randy passed on a video called The 4 Stages of Retirement. It’s worth watching if you’re retired. I’m not sure I need to leave a legacy or anything, but I do want to stop squandering so much of my time.
To do those things, I need a plan, and more discipline than I possess naturally. This year I’m going to make appointments with myself, as in previous posts I’ve described I do to keep up with relationships I care about. I’m also going to draw on my Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People training. I need to especially remember Habits #2 and #3, Begin With The End in Mind and Put First Things First. Let me know if you’d like me to write a future blog post about those things.
It’s good, at the new year, to take stock of the learning and knowledge gained over the years. Dig deep for the dreams, tidbits of advice, great ideas, our “someday I’m gonna try (or do) that” mental files that’ve been buried under the clutter of daily living for so many years. Far too many things are forgotten far too easily. This is a good time to review your bucket list. My post next week will talk about my bucket list more extensively.
That is why New Years Day is so exciting for me. And as I settle even deeper into retirement this year, I have time to resurrect more and more of those possibilities.
Share yours in the comments below!
P.S. We went to the beach near home yesterday for the first time since the hurricane. It was way too long since we’ve been there. I’ve forgotten how relaxing and renewing beach is for me. I need to make sure that NEVER happens again.
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