Celebrate This New Year!

Happy New Year! Celebrate that you made it through another year of the Pandemic. Celebrate that you are doing well mentally. I wish all of you the best going into 2022. I hope and pray all of you receive the love, joy, happiness, fortitude, knowledge, motivation, and strength you need to make it through a new year. It’s a new year to create new adventures. It’s a new year to set new goals. It’s a new year to mend friendships or find new ones.

It’s all on you.

This is the special part of a new year. It really is about YOU. YOU decide how to move forward in your life. YOU decide if you want things to be different than last year. YOU decide if you want to play someone’s puppet or be your own master. There is no rule book that says you have to continue as you have done before if what you have been doing isn’t working. If what you have been doing for the past 10 years isn’t work then it’s time for a new plan. YOU have TIME! The slate has been cleaned and you have TIME. You have a WHOLE NEW YEAR to do better.

The biggest lesson I learned in 2021 is that you can’t change people. I knew this already, but I really learned it for real in 2021. I learned that if someone really wants to stop drinking alcohol because of the way it makes them feel then it’s on them. I can’t make anyone do anything they don’t want to do. I just can’t. You can’t either.

None of us can make someone do something they aren’t ready to do. I have to love some people from afar because I can’t watch them hurt themselves or hurt others with their disruptive behavior. I can pray for their healing, but I don’t have to stick around to watch everything.

I learned the power of self-discipline. I admire people who have self-discipline when it comes to eating healthy, exercising their bodies, and taking care of their mental health. I admire people that know when to work hard but also know when to give themselves a break. I understand now when it’s time to take a vacation.

I learned better ways of communicating frustration, wants, and anxiety. I am always a work in progress. I have told several people lately that you can always learn from someone (even if it is how to NOT do something).

My prayer for this new year is to become more organized. Unfortunately, I used to think my life wasn’t fun unless it was a bit chaotic. This is no longer how I feel. I like fun/busy chaotic, but I don’t like unorganized/no-rhyme-or-reason chaotic.

I created a new vision board for 2022. The only item I will reveal on my vision board: I will travel to at least one place I have never been. The excitement is already building when I think about traveling. Vision Boards are so much fun. I take a lot of time making mine. I buy stickers and cut out pages from magazines (like the old days) to place on my vision board. If you have time in your schedule – create a vision board. It is so nice to have a visual of your goals. I have planners and those work well too.

My other prayer is for society. I hope as a society (especially in my native US), people will start to become more tolerant of diversity. I say this because I think historically the US was not as tolerant of those who they thought didn’t look “American”. In the US, people of European descent were the only ones thought of as being the “real Americans”. Well, now the US demographic is changing. There are more people who are even identifying as being from more than one ethnic group.

We are so divided. We have never figured out what being an “American” is supposed to mean. The issue with assimilation was the hypocrisy attached to it. People of European descent could claim American on Monday, but on Wednesday if asked, would tell you all about their Scottish ancestor that set foot on US soil 200 years ago. Many people who were not of European descent did not have that privilege. People don’t see that as a privilege but it is.

It takes a certain type of privilege to both debate someone on how “American” they really are because they are not of European descent, while also bragging about the ancestry of your ancestor who was clearly an immigrant as well.

The reality is that everyone on US soil had an ancestor that came from somewhere else at some point. Some came earlier than others but everyone had an ancestor that came from somewhere else. Indigenous people also originally traveled from somewhere else and eventually settled in what we now call North America. The United States is literally – the land of immigrants. We would all be better if we stopped this ridiculous “us” vs “them” mentality. If we are all Americans…then we are all Americans.

We just need better leaders throughout the country. I pray that we learn compassion as a country. I pray everyone learns the power of patience and grace in 2022.