There’s something very special about the first snow in winter. It puts a fresh white coat on everything and even beautifies the bare trees. When the sun glistens on heaps of fresh snow, we are captivated by the shining brilliance of the landscape.
It’s similar to applying a fresh coat of paint. There’s a different nuance to the furniture and our attention is drawn to aspects of the room or home that we hadn’t noticed much before. We can decide to add trim to the wall, hang new curtains, put up new paintings or photographs. It provides the feeling of greater potential for the dwelling.
In the same way, a new year grants us the opportunity to hope again. We get to start with a clean slate. We can pack away the unwanted reminders of the previous year and put them in permanent storage. The fresh new dawn of the new year confers upon us the power to imagine what we’d like to create for the upcoming calendar year. The possibilities are limitless. Just as a painter paints a landscape, we can paint the masterpiece of our vision for the future.
This is a time when we can call in the adage, “As you think, so you shall become.” Carve out some quiet time to envision what you’d like to manifest, accomplish, create, or release in the new year. A new decade also awaits us. There is a wealth of untraveled paths which we can explore. We can travel to new places, learn a new language, play a musical instrument, or train in a new skill or trade. On a more mundane level, we can modify our dietary habits, set better exercise regimens, schedule time for meditation and self-reflection. We can set our priorities for the coming month/ year/ decade and keep a list of those priorities visible and handy at all times, and make decisions accordingly.
The commencement of this new decade also provides the perfect opportunity to review and reflect on what strategies served you well in the past decade and which could benefit from being modified.
Goals can be set incrementally and measured at pre-specified time periods. Start with simply scheduling appointments for the coming weeks from which you would benefit. Spend an hour or so clearing out that clutter you didn’t quite get to last year. When you’re done, schedule another hour. Start to organize your tax receipts. And take some time to do something, however small, which uplifts your spirits.