New Year and New Hope

I have a collection of different quotes for the New Year. They are very interesting to study and to consider:

Edward Payson Powell says: “The Old Year has gone. Let the dead past bury its own dead. The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time. All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!

• Edith Lovejoy Pierce says: “We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.”

• John Burroughs says: “One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.”

• Famous media star Oprah Winfrey says: “Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right.”

• Benjamin Franklin says: “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each New Year find you a better man.”

• G. K. Chesternut says: “The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.”

• Hal Borland says: “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”

• And of course the irreverent TV personality and genius of a comedian, Jay Leno says: “New Year’s Eve, where auld acquaintance be forgot. Unless, of course, those tests come back positive.”

I also like what Ellen Goodman has said about the New Year. She stated: “We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives... not looking for flaws, but for potential.”

There are so many different thoughts on The New Year. Somehow it seems like there is a homing signal within all of us that compels us to start anew.

“This year I will give up smoking.”

“I promise I will go to the gym. I already have bought my new set of exercise gear and I am ready to go.”

“I will save money this year and refrain from spending too much on the things I don’t really need.”

Do these statements sound familiar? Of course they do. They are some of the most popular “New Year’s Resolutions” people make at the start of the year.

One year later though…

The person still smokes.

The exercise gears are hidden in the closet.

The credit card bills and debts still continue to pile up.

They are merely “statements,” hence they do not work. They neither have any action plans, nor any back-up plan. There are no deadlines as well.

For some they do work. They convert “statements” into “actions” and stick to it until healthy practices become healthy habits.

I would like to rename them as “New Year’s Daily Resolves” instead, rather than calling them “New Year’s Resolutions.” Each day becomes a firm determination to stick to the healthy programs in order to make it a daily habit.

Make each day a golden opportunity to explore opportunities by tapping into one’s God-given gifts and potential.

Hamilton Wright Mabie says it beautifully, “New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.”

New Year is a symbol of an ending of a year and the ushering of a new one, that’s why we celebrate it, but still it is just like any other day.

Make those daily healthy habits a daily resolve to get better. You accomplish so much more by just enjoying the occasion knowing that you are adding more healthy things to your repertoire of life than setting resolutions that you may not achieve at all.

Focus on the work and the potential and make the New Year a better one.

A Blessed New Year to one and all!

(Start the New Year right with Francis Kong. Sign up to update and upgrade your leadership and life skills with his highly acclaimed “Level Up Leadership” workshop seminar Jan. 13-14 at Makati Shangri-La Hotel. For further inquiries contact Inspire at 09158055910 or call 632-6310912 or 6310660 for details.)