Do you believe in the traditional practice of making New Year resolutions?  Did you make a resolution this year, but already broke it less than a few minutes into the new year?  Well, if you’re the type to think New Year’s Day magically presents a clean slate, guess again!
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People often say “Can we start over?” However, wouldn’t life be great if this were really possible? Too bad it’s not. What’s done is done, even if we attempt to fool our minds into forgetting. We can’t erase the past — but we can repair it and pave the way for a new direction.
Such is the case with our concept of New Year resolutions.
The annual countdown and raucous celebrations of the new year play into our erroneous belief that we’ve each been given a magical reset button that somehow only works on New Year’s Day. Like the myth of Santa Claus passed down from generation to generation, we’ve all convinced ourselves that the stroke of midnight miraculously deletes the old and presents us with a clean slate. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.
Although it’s not the worst thing you could fool yourself into believing, the truth is, it’s not really accurate.
There is no magic spell that falls over the entire world and hands us each a fresh and new beginning at the tick of a clock. That beginning we celebrate at the stroke of midnight is already within us. So, it really doesn’t matter if it’s midnight on January 1st or 3:30 in the afternoon on July 7th. If we are seeking change within our lives, that change can come on any date and at any time. We don’t need to wait until 11:59:59 to reinvent ourselves. We already hold the power to reinvent ourselves whenever we want.
If you want to stop smoking, you don’t need to chain smoke a carton of cigarettes up to the final second of the year, then think you’ve done something special when you announce at midnight that you’ve suddenly kicked the habit. No! If you want to quit smoking, make the decision and make it happen whenever it feels right for you. If that date is January 1st, then OK — but if it’s April 16th that’s ok too. Your reinvention, your “clean slate” happens when YOU decide and not when the calendar decides.
So, if you made New Year resolutions but have already failed to keep them, all is not lost. Pick up the pieces and start fresh TODAY.  No need to wait until next January 1st for what you can fix now!
