Five Steps to Reinventing Your Life
Every year, January brings renewed optimism for a better life and a better you. Many of us create a list of New Year’s resolutions that we are determined to achieve. The ‘fresh start’ January 1st offers is a wonderful gift. But as Buddha wisely said, “Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”
In reality, each day we awake offers a new start, an opportunity to reinvent the way we live, to shed the previous day’s worries and the baggage that we picked up along the way, allowing us begin anew. Every morning, we are offered the chance to make new choices, adopt new attitudes, and react in a positive manner.
Here are the key elements to reinvigorating your life each and every day.
1. Let go.
Often we are held back by previous failures, obligations, feelings, and roadblocks. We can’t change careers because we’re used to what we’re doing, we are too old or too young, or it’s just too difficult to change. We can’t eat right or exercise because we don’t have the time. We can’t spend time with family and friends because we have too many other commitments.
This is all old baggage. Let it go. Set it down and walk away without looking back. A fresh start demands an ’empty suitcase’. It is definitely easier said than done, but each day make an effort to leave the old, unwanted and unneeded ‘stuff’ behind you. Eventually, you won’t pick it back up and maybe one day, you won’t even have baggage to let go of.
Let go of attachments to what you’ve been doing for the past year, or years. Let go of failures. Let go of fears you’ve built up. Let go of reluctance. Let go of your ideas about what your life has to be like, because that’s the way it’s evolved so far. Let go of long-held beliefs and habits.
You have a fresh start. Let go of last year, and start anew.
2. Decide what matters most today.
Each morning, decide: what do YOU want to do today? This excludes your obligations, but focuses on what matters most to you and to your life.
Ask yourself: What are you most passionate about in this very moment? What excites and invigorates you? What would give you the most fulfillment?
Often the answer is in creating something or making something new, helping people, becoming a better person by becoming more tolerant, appreciative, or kind, working on a project that will be something of which you are proud. Whatever your answer, have it clear in your mind at the beginning of the day.
This ‘project’ might be something you work on all year, or it might last just a day. It doesn’t matter. What matters is today — that you’re going to work on this with all your heart, today. What matters tomorrow will be decided upon then.
3. Clear away distractions and focus.
Clear away all outside distractions, especially those of the technological persuasion: Turn off your television and computer, shut down email, Facebook, Twitter, stop reading blogs, news websites and social forums, put away your smartphone, cell phone, or tablet, temporarily ignore work, chores, and errands that demand at your attention. Clear away the clutter that surrounds you (sweep it off to the side or hide it in a junk drawer to deal with later).
Now, find focus. Shoot for 15 or 20 minutes at first, but work up to at least 30-60 minutes at a time. You can take a break and check your email and return to ‘reality’ later. It will still be there. But for these few minutes, focus on the one thing that matters most. Do it for as long as you can, until you come to a place of peace with it. Feel free to take breaks, but always return to your focus. When you’re done, focus on the next thing that matters most, and so on.
4. Find happiness now.
Don’t look at happiness as something that will come when you’ve attained a specific goal, accomplishment or certain amount of wealth or material objects. Happiness isn’t a destination, something that you’ll get later after you’ve achieved all of your goals.
Happiness is right now. Always remember that. When you push it back until later, it’ll never come. When you learn to be happy now, it’ll always be here.
Being grateful for what you have generates and enhances happiness. Look around you and really notice all of the blessings in your life. Appreciate and be thankful for them. Express your thanks, count your blessings. Gratitude turns what you have into enough…and then some.
When you’re doing whatever you’re passionate about, whatever matters most, whatever you decide is worthy of your time and heart and focus … be happy! When you’re doing what you love, and you appreciate that opportunity as well as all those people that contribute to your life, that is truly a gift.
5. Reinvent yourself, every day.
Every day, you are reborn. Reinvent yourself and your life, every day. Do what matters most to you, in that moment, on that day. This reinvention of your life is a choice you get to make every day.
Be passionate, be happy, be grateful in this moment and the one after, and the one after that.
You have a fresh start each and every day, not just on January 1. And that, is the best gift ever.
Happy New Day!
Be grateful for this life and all it has to offer.
Excerpts from Zen Habits.
