I could never quite wrap my head around New Year’s Day as the day for making resolutions regarding any type of new beginnings and now I think that I understand why. While as a society, we celebrate together on the beginning of the new calendar year, I believe that our individual New Year begins on our birthday, our personal day of the year and the anniversary of our birth, our beginning. With that information in mind, I feel ready to begin anew with a few new birthday New Year’s resolutions of my own.
Each day is a special gift. Why would I think that only special days like birthdays and holidays are the only ones that I can really enjoy and celebrate? I want to keep the happiness and excitement and motivation that I felt on my birthday alive every day of the year.
For the first time ever, I took my birthday off from work and can’t imagine why I never have done so in the past to celebrate my personal holiday. The day was absolutely outstanding and I owe it all to Kirk, my husband. He didn’t miss a detail. My present was selected after many months of researching, searching and deciding that this was the one that was perfect for me. We spent the day doing everything that I wanted and I ended up with the most super birthday cake ever, one that I will never forget (yes, that is it, the overgrown cheeseburger cake photo attached to this blog). As I headed for bed at the end of this most fantastic day, I found that I really wanted to make a resolution to appreciate and honor this most important person in my life in ways that I had not considered before. For all that he is and all that he does, he deserves my best and that is what he will get and this is my first new resolution.
Then I reflected upon the situation at my current job and made resolution number two. I will do everything to make the workplace as special as possible. I resolved that I will do everything that I can to not spend so much as one minute of my time judging the behavior of my co-workers and how they choose to treat others. I am not going to try to figure out how some are motivated to behave in a way that is disrespectful or insulting to others. I will keep reminding myself that there is no way that I can understand the choices that others make because I have never walked a mile in their shoes so I can’t know how they think or believe.
My third, and final, resolution for the coming year is to do absolutely everything possible that I can do to bring about a successful outcome to the several projects to which I have already committed myself. It is time to put my good time and energy into them because I believe in them. While some of them are only days old, some are projects that I have been thinking about or working on for years. Now is the time to get working on them with all of the heart and the passion that I have for each of them.
I am not promised tomorrow. Each day is a special gift. Why would I think that only special days like birthdays and holidays are the only ones that I can really enjoy and celebrate? I want to keep the happiness and excitement and motivation that I felt on my birthday alive every day of the year. I know that if I do, I will create for myself the most awesome life that anyone could ever begin to imagine. And when I think about it, I find that it really is a very simple thing to do if I just keep focused on all of the positives, keep a smile on my face, treat others the way that I would like to be treated and be grateful for all that I have. Now that is a life worth living, if you ask me!
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Barbara Jacoby is an award winning blogger that has contributed her writings to multiple online publications that have touched readers worldwide.