New Years: Second Installment

A week ago today, everyone was excited. The New Year was hours away. Many were busy contemplating the ride that 2015 had been and planning on kicking ass in 2016.

The countdown begins, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Happy New Year, your life magically become open to all the possibilities, you believed you could change and that this year your resolution was going to work. Nothing was going to stop you, after all 2016 is going to be your year.

A week later around 25% of all resolutions have already been lost, forgotten or dropped by the side of the road. Whatever it is off the wagon, on the wagon, whatever you want to call it, it happened. By the end of January one third of all resolutions will be broken. Just eight percent of resolutions will make it to the New Year. The odds are not in your favor.

Once you break the resolution, it becomes an excuse. The first time you give up on it, it sucks, it hurts and you feel bad. Every time you break your resolution after that first time, it becomes easier and easier to do. The excuses build and the evidence builds, all the past mistakes come and drown you and make giving up so much easier. If I have already given up once, what is one more time, two more times and why even bother counting, I have already failed.

We focus on the next year, and it becomes easier and easier to push off decisions that could change our life. Next year I will make it happen, next year I will stick with it. At the same time, the fear of starting builds. All the times we have failed. We become afraid to move. We are paralyzed and we fail.

Your life does not begin with a New Year, it begins with a new mindset. Your life is not measured by your years it is measured in the moments. Every second is a new opportunity. This is not some fluffy make you feel good crap, it is the truth but it will only happen if you choose to believe it. That resolution that you gave up and that you lost, start it again today, who the hell cares when it ends? Get back up, get in the game and learn. Stop putting of your new life until next year.

Your life, new opportunities and freedom do not occur in a new year, or even over night, they occur the minute you decide to start thinking differently, be positive and believe in yourself.

Ditch the New Year's Resolution

I was sitting down having coffee with a friend who I admire a great deal and they mentioned to me that they would like to be more assertive in 2016.  I first was happy for them but then it hit me, why the fuck do we wait for a specific day to get started, especially when it comes to being assertive? Why not start right now?

We wait for New Year’s Day as if our life will somehow magically improve and we will be ready. We may think not we are ready, but we are. Everything we want to achieve we can start now, not just today but right now. If you are reading this you can get started. If you have no goals or resolutions, what a better place to get started then to come up with one that actually means something to you.

Why do we put off making our lives better just because of a stupid tradition that no one questions or even thinks about? We want a clean path to success that is unquestioned, direct and easy. Life does not work that way.

There has never been overnight success. When we hear about overnight success it is not the work that occurred overnight, it is the awareness of the work that happens overnight. The success happens because that person worked their ass off. They did not wait for a certain time to make it happen; they kept working until it did happen. What makes New Year’s Day so special? A new year, how about a new life.

Stop thinking you need to have everything figured out. If you talk to anyone who tells you that they that they have their whole life planned, show them compassion. They are lying to you, they are not as self-confident as they would like you to believe. If they tell you that you need to have everything figured out, kindly thank them and remember that you do not. You need to have a direction, goals and aspirations but you do not need to know it all because no one does.

If you get started now, you will be even closer to reaching your goal. If you wait, you put yourself in this constant struggle of trying to figure out if this is the right move for you. “What if I fail?”, “What if I was meant to do something else?” “What if I give up?” I could go on and on and on about all the stupid reasons we decide to not pursue what we want. The point you need to remember is that, you are ready.

I have tried to publish blog post consistently for over a year and I failed numerous times, I still have not made it. Every time that I failed I could have given up, sometimes I did but I always went back to it. When we fail we take this as a sign that we should give up, it is the exact opposite, it is a sign to keep going. You are going to fail and that is okay. It does not matter when you start or what you are doing you will fail. If you do not fail, you are not doing something that is scary or challenging enough to truly grow.

If you are okay with waiting, you do not want it bad enough. If you are okay with letting it all be a dream, you do not want it bad enough. Your fear of failure is still blocking your judgement because no matter how good of a plan you have, your success will not go as planned. Fear is going to be there but it cannot take control. When you take that leap and decide to pursue everything that you have ever wanted, fear does not go away it gets magnified; you have to be okay with that and get ready to kick fear’s ass. We cannot wait around to get what we want, we must go after it. We need to be obsessed about it, relentless and ruthless towards it.