There's all the craze about the new year and it seems this tradition isn't going out of fashion anytime soon. It’s just another day but then it’s not. Well, you’re not going to magically become a different person all of a sudden but you can view it as a new starting point. A new line has been drawn and you can start to monitor your progress afresh. It’s like you’ve been given the freedom to comfortably put behind you everything that has happened up to this point, and start out on a clean slate.
Many times, we claim we’d do a lot better if we ever got to have a second (or third or fourth or another) chance; well, you’ve got one big one right in front of you. The only thing that’ll stop you from moving forward is you looking back. To be honest, nobody really cares about how many times you’ve fallen on your butt or face. What matters is right now; what are you doing right now? It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve fallen, as long as you’re up at the moment and doing everything needed to stay on your feet, you’re good.
Now that you've got a brand new year ahead of you, how do you plan to approach it? Do you have any goals set yet? Have you identified things you'd like to change in your life? What's your plan? What's the best way to face and tackle the year? These and many more are the questions that occur to me when I think about the new year and I'll try to address some with a few tips I believe should be helpful.
No Rush
No matter how awesome the previous year was, you always have areas you feel you didn’t really do well in and these things tend to serve as your low points. One thing I have come to realize in life is that life is always a mixture of highs and lows, and we can only hope to have more highs than lows at every point in our lives. Some low points in life leave you feeling like you are way behind and have probably wasted a huge chunk of your life. The truth is that you can never get back those lost hours but you can work on the present to enable you have a better story to tell later on.
As you see the new year as a chance to start afresh, you should note that there’s really no point trying to rush things. You can’t make up for time you think you’ve lost by rushing the things you’re currently doing. It doesn’t work that way.
Focus
Instead of worrying or trying to rush things, you’d be better off focusing on that which you’re currently doing. Blocking out all distractions and burying your head deep in what you’ve got to do can yield unbelievable results when you eventually take a step back to assess your progress. In this present age where everything is fast paced and we tend to compare our progress with others, it is way too easy to lose focus and concentration. You can easily get derailed from your path by looking around you but you should know that no one has the exact same life as you and so the path and speed cannot be the same.
Focus helps you keep at what you’re doing regardless of what’s going on around you. This seems to be the most important of all the tips I'll be sharing today. Focus helps you identify what you need to be working on. Focus helps you block out the noise and keep at it. So basically without focus, you can't really achieve much.
Continuity
The New Year is not always about starting afresh. You definitely had good things going for you the previous year, maybe they were even resolutions you made at the start of the year and you were able to keep them. The New Year doesn’t mean you should throw all of that out. Sometimes, the key to living your best life can be found in continuity. The previous year must have come and gone with so much experience added to your arsenal. Now is the time to build on all that experience and take it up a notch.
What's Happening In 2019?
A huge focus on mental health. What if what you always referred to as just "normal mood swings" weren't all that normal after all? You really can't properly tackle and handle something you barely know anything about so a part of the activities for 2019 will be focused on learning as much as possible about mental health and ways to improve it.
Movies! There's a ton of movies to look forward to already and it almost feels like I'll be spending my entire 2019 at the cinemas. This year at the cinemas will be slightly different as I look forward to trying to pen down my thoughts on the stuff I watch. Enough of acting all grown up and always reminding myself that it's all scripted. Time to take the lid off and lose myself in the land of fantasy and make believe!
Food! I believe there should be a lot more eating in 2019. No long talks on this one. It's a no-brainer.
What about love? Yes, love and relationships in general. It's probably time to stop being an ass and try to make stuff work the way they should. 2018 had a lot of lessons in it and this is the time to build on those lessons and grow them into the most amazing times on earth.
Conclusion
Your goal in 2019 should be to live each day better than the last. It doesn't matter how many times you make mistakes or how many times you repeat the same mistakes, you should seek to figure out what went wrong and then work on your shortcomings. You are not allowed to beat yourself up over any issue this time around.
I wish you the best.