The ability to begin again is such a gift.
On this New Year of 2021, as the world continues to rotate around the sun, we often reflect on the changes we would like to make in our lives. However, the opportunity to begin again is a daily reprieve that we have each morning.
When we embark on new adventures in life, whether it be a new partner, a new home, a new job, or a commitment to make a change, we often enter it excited in the anticipation of the unknown. We build up our expectations and then we eagerly start the process. The newness of what we are embarking on is soon to fade away and we are left with whatever choice we have made. If we don’t tend to our relationships, take care of our home, aspire to do our best at work, or have the ambition to make changes for ourselves and to reach our goals, we won’t grow. Why would we think about this only once a year?
This is often what happens as we make our new year resolutions when that magical date of January 1st comes around. We resolve to make all the changes but why just one time every 12 months? If you took the idea of the Holiday season, being that of excitement, gratitude, and new beginnings, and started every day reflecting on just that, how would your life be different?
What if we lived every day as if we were a child on Christmas Eve? So excited for the opportunity to be alive for another 24 hours. What is essential, and also incredibly transforming, is realizing that we have the ability to begin again every single day. That power resides within us. We need to stop judging ourselves and blaming ourselves for what we see as failures in our lives. We can continue to learn and love and move forward by beginning again.
This is an important concept for life in general. It is also key in the practice of meditation and yoga, which is a way of being in the world. Living a life in recovery and living yoga, so to speak, are not things that you do for an hour a day or things that you accomplish as an assignment. They are ways of living your life and they require practice. Anything that requires practice is difficult and has challenges but when we can start over, whenever we chose, and literally “begin again” at any moment, each and every day, we are gifted the promises of doing our best. While studying yoga in India, it was brought to my attention that perhaps it’s not our mission in life to reach enlightenment, but rather, that we reach enlightenment all the time. We come full circle in our lives not once, but continually throughout our journey here on earth.
Don’t lose the beginner’s mind throughout today and every day moving forward. Stay curious and stay present because there are always new opportunities right in front of you. Find time to be quiet with yourself and reflect, for that is when the answers will come. This year, take time for yourself and make each day the first day of the rest of your life.