Now that 2017 has ended, it’s an excellent time to take inventory of the blessings and breakthroughs you’ve enjoyed, the challenges and difficulties you persevered through, and the manner in which you confronted, resolved, and learned from the many things that happened in your life over the past year. For many of us, this is also an excellent time to reevaluate our paradigms and explore our belief system. Know that doing so can create an incredible inflection point and facilitate a mindfulness shift that can prompt you to dedicate yourself to ending any unhealthy cycles that may have consumed your thoughts, high jacked your emotions, or threatened your sense of purpose and connection to the life you deserve and are able to create in the coming year.
As you prepare yourself for the new possibilities the New Year will bring, it is important to take note of the enormous power inherent in the thoughts you think, the beliefs you hold, and your willingness to stretch beyond where you are and consistently reach for where you are to be. These three points of potential are major keys in exercising the levers that help us get free. For our lives are created from the inside out and whether we realize it or not, each of us has the innate capacity to loosen the chains that bind us and make them work for, rather than against us. The deliberate application of these three approaches can position each of us to be and live empowered.
1. Thought Catalyzes Experience. The thoughts you think are seeds of your creative capacity and the power to think, choose, and make decisions is an incredible tool. With this tool, we can reconfigure our life, repair our families, rebuild our communities, and reconstruct our self-determination. When we make decisions that are in alignment with where we say we want to go, those decisions become the power that drives us forward and propels us toward the destination to which we have set our intention. When making decisions, it is good practice to always begin with the end in mind. How much better to begin with the One who is Alpha and Omega – Beginning and End?
2.It Is Done As You Believe. The accepted notions that make up your belief system can act as chains that keep you stuck or as wings to help you fly. Certainly, you are familiar with the definition of insanity as the act of repeating the same behavior over and over and expecting a different outcome. However, you may not be as familiar with the fact that it is a belief that influences our action, effort, and enterprise, i.e., our behavior. Put another way, if you do not believe that you can accomplish or overcome whatever is before you, you will not have the passion and determination to get it done. Therefore, if you are serious about changing a behavior, start by changing some of what you believe.
3.Outgrow Your Comfort zone. The desire to become the very best version of yourself will require you to take some risks and get outside your comfort zone. As a Bateke proverb states, “We learn to cut down trees by cutting down trees.” Many of us want something different, yet we may not be willing to grow from the place that makes us the most comfortable. We want better health but we won’t exercise and change the way we eat. We want the right relationships but we won’t improve the working relationship we have with ourselves. We want a pay raise but we won’t give a better effort at the job. We want more customers but our business may only be comfortable giving people what they used to need. We often want to stay with the familiar, the place that gives us the greatest amount of certainty. But it is rare that you can be in your place of comfort and in your place of growth and greatness at the same time.
If we are to live our best lives we should take care to hold the highest thoughts, believe that the desires of our heart are attainable, and employ habits of a better tomorrow, today. While you are at it, speak the truest words, develop your character, and embrace your divine destiny. This approach will enable us to circumvent repeating the same behaviors and give birth to a New You in the New Year.
