Check Your Baggage

It’s not always easy to start the New Year on a positive note. Sometimes the problems from the past make the transition to a new season of opportunity and change very difficult. Often we carry the burden of having to fix one thing before we can begin another. That is we can’t leave the job we hate until we find one that we would like or we can’t buy the new car until someone buys the old one. We can’t get the promotion until we get some more education or training and we can’t make a bonus until we recoup the losses from before.

There is a great deal of linear thinking at this time of year – something typically has to be finished before we can get on to the next pursuit. We seek closure before we can plan anything new because we often assume that we need to lay the track first before we can begin a new journey. Well, that’s only true if you plan on getting there by train. What if you plan on leap-frogging to the next incarnation of your one true self? It begins with a declaration: I am the greatest _________ (fill in the blank). Don’t worry that you haven’t done it or haven’t the time or money or training or anything to get there. The only thing you have to worry about now is that when you state that I am the greatest whatever is to believe that you really are. Without that you’re dead before you start.

So now that you’ve filled in the blank, let’s construct the path to your achieving the greatness within. Firstly, congratulations, because you have already begun by simply identifying your goal. I know it seems too simple but many of us are not clear on what we want. Once you fixate on the new you, things will shift to accommodate your new beginning. On the subject of beginnings I must turn to a master writer, John O’Donohue:

When the heart is ready for a fresh beginning, unforeseen things can emerge. And in a sense, this is exactly what a beginning does. It is an opening for surprises. Surrounding the intention and the act of beginning, there are always exciting possibilities… Beginnings are new horizons that want to be seen; they are not regressions or repetitions. Somehow they win clearance and become fiercely free of the grip of the past. What is the new horizon in you that wants to be seen?

John O’Donohue, Bless the Space Between Us

To appreciate and underscore the power of a new beginning, one must be ready to leave the old behind. It is extremely difficult to be positive about finances or jobs or relationships if you are holding onto past conditioning or somehow trying to rationalize that the past can be fixed. It can’t be fixed. It can’t change. Only you can change. Only you can know what it is that calls to your heart. Only you can visualize your destiny and only you can know its importance.

With that said, the burden is on you to decide on whether you spend your time worrying about what if’s or could have been. It’s up to you to check the baggage now and it is a very personal and often profound moment in our lives – that moment when we admit that whatever happened before will not hold us back from what will happen next or even now. You cannot become a success you can only be one. You cannot be the greatest whatever; you are already that which you seek. It’s in you now and it has been planted there for sometime – waiting for you to awaken the power of your own personal magic to create the joy you deserve and are destined for.