Some New Advice for a New Year

Today I spent hours and hours...and hours...and a few more hours looking for something rather important.  Just when I definitively decided to let it go and stop looking...I randomly opened a drawer and found it.  Mind you, I had already opened this drawer, at least once if not twice.  It was there all along.  I just wasn't seeing it.

And that leads me to this...some new advice for a new year.

Each day gives us an opportunity to start over, each hour, each minute...each moment, really.  But having regular markers of time passing we can point to with some level of gravitas helps, I think, to allow us to reflect, refocus and perhaps see what we might have been missing. 



*You already have everything you need.

*Stop looking for validation from external sources, it's up to you to validate yourself.  It's as simple as giving yourself permission to be happy.

*Happiness is a choice.  No matter how hard life gets, as long as you can breathe, think, feel, move and do...you can move in a new direction and make a new series of choices that lead to new opportunities and surroundings which can and will serve your happiness.

*As long as we hold on to the past, we remain unable to fully embrace the present. 

*Always choose joy.

*Life is perspective.  You get precisely that upon which you focus.  Occasionally chaos happens, yet even the worst things that happen to us have something to offer.  Empathy.  Strength.  Compassion.  Forgiveness.  Tenacity.  Unconditional love.

*You already have everything you need.

*The answers lie within.  The truth is simple.  The only answer is love.  Give love freely.  Love yourself freely.  Accept love freely.  Wash, rinse, repeat.

*Everything is possible, especially the impossible.

*Maintain a healthy amount of wonder.  Even the mundane holds magic, with a little perspective.

*Be hope full, wonder full and joy full.  Gather it up and let it spill over so others can have some too!

*When casting your movie, avoid drama queens, villains and asshats.  Instead, cast a bountiful bevy of hope full, wonder full and joy full people.  If an asshat slips through the casting process, hand them a pink slip immediately. 

*You are seventeen different kinds of awesome, at least.

*If you believe it with every fiber of your being, it will manifest.  It's all there, just waiting for you to give it permission to unfold.

*Let your childhood go.  Very few of us were loved, understood, accepted, cherished or nurtured enough.  You run the show now.  You can love, understand, accept, cherish and nurture yourself enough to make up for whatever you lacked then. No, really, you see, because you already have everything you need.

*Don't ever be afraid to change your mind, walk away, start over or choose a different direction.  Always move in the direction that serves joy...that of yourself and that of others.

*If you tell  yourself that life sucks, work has to be hell, there isn't any hope, you'll never be happy, you got the short stick...you will be correct.  But the only person you can blame for choosing to believe this, is yourself.  If you tell yourself that life rocks, work can be awesome, there is abundant hope, you can choose to be happy and you got the long stick, the brass ring, the golden ticket, the grand prize...you will be correct.  You are the ring master of your own circus.

*You already have everything you need.

Now lace up those steel toed boots and get your sassy ass in gear, sweet cheeks!  It's a New Year!  What the hell are you waiting for?

(Might I suggest my new e-book The Fine Art of Shameless Self Promotion...if you've not read it yet, you really should.  It's just the kick in the ass you might be looking for to kick start your new year!)

Love
Madge