Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying—without much success; I’ll admit—to come up with a novel way to start my end-of-year post. After numerous false starts and piles of crumpled sheets of paper filling the wastebasket—yes, I still do handwrite my first draft—I decided to take a well-needed break and bolster my spirits by reading through my quote journal.
And there, to my surprise, was the solution to my writer’s block. On one of the well-worn pages, I’d written the following quote, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” –Seneca.
As the quote reverberated in my mind, I realized that a shift in my thinking was also taking place. Traditionally, I’d always viewed the end of the year as a concrete ending point and the start of a new year as a beginning. The more I thought about the quote, however, the more I realized that how I saw this was based on how I chose to define and describe it, and by extension, I realized that much of the way in which we describe, define, and assign meaning to things in our lives is based solely on our perspective, beliefs about ourselves, and our choices at the time we decide what something means. In essence, the things in our lives only have the meaning and power they do because we impart it to them. It was then that it dawned on me there was a better way for all of us to begin 2017, and it certainly didn’t involve making another set of the same old tired resolutions that we all know will never work.
Every new beginning doesn’t have to start with a complete overhaul of the past—it just has to start with some other beginning’s end. Overcoming the inertia of what has become comfortable for us in 2016 and replacing it with what is less so in 2017 is a great place to start. Knowing where endings have to begin in order for new beginnings to emerge starts when you rethink what you have the capability to do and contest the habits, rationalizations, and meanings that you’ve assigned to things that are keeping you stuck and not seeing the potential in yourself and in others.
I hope that you’re willing to begin to end something so that you found your new beginning in 2017. The beginning that sees you connect to your passions in new ways, build connections with others more deeply, and accept that all is possible—if you know how to connect what you’re capable of with what you pursue.
With perseverance, intention, and commitment, 2017 will be a great new beginning!