Make This Your Best Year Yet

2016 was a year marked by seemingly overwhelming death.  It was more prevalent in my life  through social associations.  And I, along with the rest of the world, was shocked by the frequent and unexpected loss of life of those well known.

If you are reading this, wherever you are in your corner of the world on this first day of a brand new year, we share a universal commonality.  We are blessed to be here.  If nothing else, 2016 taught us that life is precious.  No matter what struggles you faced in 2016, you made it through to see 2017.  That is an abundance for which to be grateful.  Your year-end review may not have looked exactly like you hoped, but you’re here to begin again and anew.  Some people were not so fortunate.

And because you are here, you owe it to yourself to live your best life.  Living your best life, as coined by Queen Oprah, is not something you achieve overnight.  It requires a desire to live better by doing better.  And to do better, we must be willing to get down on our knees and wrestle through the muck and mire of our lives.  We have to look ourselves in the mirror and admit what is not working.  Those things are fairly easy to spot.  Why?  Because usually, we have had a hand in engineering the shit-show that now exists.  The harder part is figuring out what we are willing to do about it.  But as I’ve learned so many times and in so many ways in my own life, until you get sick and tired of being sick and tired, or until you have had enough of people handing you your ass that they have kicked around like a soccer ball, 2017 will mirror 2016, and the year before that, and the year before that.  Nearly four years ago, I decided that I needed to change my life in order to save my life.  Since then, I have been doing the necessary work on and for me.  And it continues.  If you’ve been doing the same, that is fantastic–keep going.  And if people are not acknowledging your progress, do not worry about that.  You are doing this work for you.  Applaud your damn self and pump your own fist.  Trust me, it feels just as good.

But if you are still struggling, as I still am in certain areas of my own life, continue the good fight.  As long as you have breath in your body and soundness of mind, there is always the hope of achieving the life you want.  You may need to leave certain people behind, or move those in the foreground to the background.  Remember, everyone is not equipped to travel the roads upon which you are embarking.  There may new educational or professional goals to be set.  There may be weight to be shed physically, emotionally, or both.  There may be the amassing of colossal  courage to leap first and look later.  Or there may be the painful letting go of long held dreams that have not been realized.  No matter what ‘it’ is for you, if you are honest with yourself and ready to do the necessary work to move closer to the life you have always envisioned, you will find yourself waiting when you eventually get there. 

Thank you for your continued readership, and I wish you your best year yet!

Terri 🙂

Photo credit: DafneCholet via Foter.com / CC BY