A New Day: A New Chance

Your Inner Critic 

6 weeks ago, we entered a new calendar year. Fixing our eyes forward, I’m wanting to share with you some inspiring words of wisdom to continue into 2019 with a different mindset, a different perspective, and perhaps with more grit, creativity, and resiliency.

New Year’s resolutions, goal setting, and good intentions are on almost everyone’s minds. We know that the majority of us will have given up on our resolutions before this first 6 weeks passed. At which time, your inner critic, that voice in your head, starts calling you on the fact that you’ve failed, again.

“It’s a New Day, A New Chance”

In the spirit of keeping it truly short and sweet, I’ll quote my husband. René greets the start of every day, and I do mean every day, along with most people he sees (including me) with: “it’s a new day, a new chance”. He’s done this for so many years, I’ve actually forgotten when he started. The staff in the fitness club where he works out every morning, have heard this so often, greet him with these words. It’s become almost a competition: who gets to say it first.

A Change in Mindset

But what do these words mean? For me, they mean that we don’t have to wait for a ‘new year’ to make changes. Even if we ‘shortchange’ ourselves by giving up early on our New Year’s resolutions, if they are important to us, it means we can start a New Year every day of the year. There is an expression that says “this is the first day of the rest of our lives”. Make each day, that first day. And if you fail today, then wake up tomorrow knowing you have another chance to get things right. In fact, you have 365 chances to get it right.

Don’t beat yourself up, if you don’t make your resolution a reality. Take each day as it comes. Failure is only failure if you don’t attempt again. Giving up is failure. As Cyriel Kortleven says, think about your failures as ‘Nearlings’ – as in ‘I nearly made it’. Not so bad, right?

Thomas A. Edison, known as someone who didn’t give up, apparently responded to a friend’s query regarding the volume of experiments he’d done, that hadn’t delivered any results with: “Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work!”

Stay focused on what you want to achieve. When you lose your focus, regain it. This will mean that you ultimately reach your goal, whatever it may be.