Yesterday I wrote about the fresh start of spring. We get a lot of “fresh starts” in life, don’t we? New year, new season, new day . . . . the question is, do we make the most of our frequent fresh starts? Moving to a new location, or taking a new job, or getting a new pet, may all infuse new, exciting, hopeful energy into our lives, but as the saying goes, “wherever you go, there you are.” Without being deliberately conscious about the changes that we want to have with our “new starts”, and without being honest with ourselves about the things that we have to do differently, in order to go towards the direction of what we do want, we constantly get a reiteration of “same old, same old”, in just slightly different forms.
Thomas Jefferson (see quote above) and our forefathers had a vision for a country the likes the world had never seen before. This is what the site of The White House (whitehouse.gov) has to say about the Constitutional Convention:
“A chief aim of the Constitution as drafted by the Convention was to create a government with enough power to act on a national level, but without so much power that fundamental rights would be at risk. One way that this was accomplished was to separate the power of government into three branches, and then to include checks and balances on those powers to assure that no one branch of government gained supremacy. This concern arose largely out of the experience that the delegates had with the King of England and his powerful Parliament. The powers of each branch are enumerated in the Constitution, with powers not assigned to them reserved to the States.”
Our forefathers took what they did not like about what they experienced from the governments that they came from (too much power for one entity), and they used this to create a new way of governing (spreading and dividing power), “in order to form a more perfect union” (from the U.S.’s Constitution’s preamble). To be clear, I am not using this blog to create a political debate as to the beginning, and the current state of “our more perfect union.” If you are wanting a political debate, you have come to the wrong blog. I am simply using this example, and Jefferson’s quote to show the more practical, useful ways any of us can create our own true fresh start, in any area of our own individual lives.
If you want to make changes in your own life, first examine what bothers you in your current life. Explore each area. Your health, your relationships, your finances, your job, how you spend your leisure time, where you live, etc. are all categories to explore and to register your own satisfaction. If you find yourself feeling upset in one or more of these categories, think about what it is that you don’t like, but then (and this is key) pivot what you don’t like, into what you do want instead. We are all good at getting ourselves stuck, complaining about the things which we don’t like in our lives. Many of us have held onto the same complaints for years and years. However, what we forget, when we do this fruitless complaining, is that no change comes from this. If anything, the same old/same old gets even more amplified from the attention and the energy which we are giving to it. What we resist, persists. Resistance and frustration create a lot of energy and focus and give even more “life” to what we don’t like, and to what we don’t want in our lives. We all can complain ad nauseum, and in great detail about what the problems are in our lives, but we often forget to take the next step, which is to pivot these complaints into what do we want instead. If we don’t like how much we weigh, then what it is that we do want, is to be thinner and healthier. What are small steps which we can do differently, to move us towards what we do want? If we don’t like how are relationships feel in our lives, what are steps we can take to make our relationships healthy for us? We decided that we do want healthier relationships, so what does “healthier relationships” look like for us? Better communication? Moving on from toxic relationships? Reaching out to meet more people who share our interests? You get the picture.
Be honest with yourself where you really want your fresh starts in your life. Perhaps you really love your complaints, and you are attached to them, and the “victim status” in the areas which these problems give that status/mentality to you. That’s okay. If you are radically honest with yourself in this way, at least you realize that what you are complaining about actually gives you a payoff that you like, and that you want to keep in your life. What you are complaining about, you may actually be attached to, and therefore you like it, in your own weird way. Again, that’s okay. At least you know the truth about yourself, and your favorite gripes. But there are likely other areas in your life, where you really want to get that fresh start energy going, and make it into something new, and different, and better in your life. Figure out what it is that you don’t like, and what you don’t want, and turn that into a statement of what you do like and what you do want, instead. Then, write down small steps you can take, that can head you into the direction that you do want to head to, going forward. Be brave. Be consistent. Be focused on what you do want. “If you want something you never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.