I’d like to go on a journey through time with you. Let’s travel into the future, roughly one year from now, then capture your reflections on 2020. How will it look? The answer – however you wish. Yes, there is the possibility of unexpected events, even some major obstacles, but the point I’m attempting to make is that your mind creates whatever reality you want.
My goal here is to invert the idea of New Year’s resolutions and instead invite you to focus on end-of-year contemplations about all the success that you will experience. Instead of resolving to lose weight, see yourself slimmer and more fit than you are today when you look back on the year. Instead of vowing to give up a habit you’ve been trying to break, think of how accomplished you’ll feel, having succeeded with that endeavor.
The notion to take this approach hit me the other day, while I was sitting in a favorite chair. My home was especially quiet at that moment. It was the wee hours of the morning. My son was asleep. My wife was out-of-town, visiting relatives in Florida. It felt as if I were resting, physically at the base of the year and in that moment, gratitude enveloped my soul.
I never imagined at the start of 2019, that things would go quite as well as they did. Judi and I left the corporate world to start our own, independent practice and in January we were only a few months into working together at it. There was no guarantee we would succeed, but we had this – our belief, as well as overriding desire to do the very best we could for everyone who stuck with us. Faith and integrity guided us, along with a healthy dose of good old-fashioned creativity. We were determined never to do things the way we did while we were operating as planners inside an insurance company. The result – a more efficient practice than I had the ability to imagine.
All that leads me to this notion, when you and I look-back on the year in December, 2020, the reality can be what we have envisioned today, or something even more marvelous. It can be the product of our dreams, or a lesser version of what we desire. It can be spectacular, or it can be plain. We can soar, or wish we had reached for greatness. Let your 2020 hindsight be something magnificent, something wonderful, something that causes you to say, wow, I knew I could do it and I did it.