A Glimpse Into the New Year

Things were quiet on the Schulte front. I was going to make a video for you, but I got the funk instead and lost my voice.

I hope you enjoy my perspectives of looking ahead into 2025.

The days leading up to New Year’s Day, after the hustle and bustle of Christmas, always seem like being in limbo.

That’s not a bad thing. We’re in a vacuum when nothing is quite back to normal or overly consuming.

Now that December 25 has passed, we contemplate the future and often wonder if we’re doing it ‘right.’ Lord knows we don’t want to fall off the goal or resolution wagon in a day or two and not have new adventures.

We want our expanded dreams to stick and come true.

Just maybe… we can prosper in this new year according to my definition of prosper, which is doing what we love in the way we love to do it and loving the journey.

Recently, I read some writings about living a meaningful life and the joy of constantly growing, no matter the circumstances. There were about 20 renditions, but I will share some favorites.

And then, I’ll point out the paradoxes between them.

1. Choose to go for something that genuinely excites you. Passion fuels the fire of motivational energy. You can’t fake this if you’re honest with yourself. It’s personal and felt in your heart.
2. Take action and keep taking action. Without action, there’s no forward motion. (Hmmmm – horses have something in common here with this idea!)
3. Set a goal and pursue it, but unequivocably let go of the need for the outcome to be precisely how you envision it. Something new might appear, and things may turn out better than you imagined. Stay nimble-minded and allow for new possibilities.
4. Seek positivity. When things go south, embrace those emotions. But we can all do our best to find the gift in the shortfall. We can grow more in values like acceptance, forgiveness, kindness to ourselves and others, etc.
5. When you get in a funk, check in with your brain and what it’s telling you to believe. A limiting belief is like a giant wall. You can’t go further. But as we become aware of beliefs that don’t serve us, we can dismantle them by saying, “I don’t think so! That’s not true!”

Here are some of the paradoxes.

1. It might seem like you choose something to pursue that you’re excited about and then easily toss it out the window. But that’s not the idea. We don’t always know how things will happen, and what transpires might be even better. Number four might seem Pollyannaish, but it’s not.
2. Positive energy keeps things moving forward. Returning to a more positive state doesn’t mean not feeling the pain of the moment. It means the opposite: stepping into the pain, seeing how we can use the experience to become stronger or wiser, and embracing that. Rising again from disappointments or huge setbacks is a part of the human experience.
3. It’s magical to check out our beliefs when we feel discouraged. It’s a shortcut to breaking the trap of accepting the things we want to improve as they are because we believe we can’t achieve our goals. I love that.

Happy New Year, my friend. This is going to be a great year!

 Print This Post     Email This Post   

Comments