It’s a New Year and a Chance at a Fresh Start

“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.”

~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce

The start of 2016 will be noisy. Traditional celebrations extend well beyond the first night parties and live on throughout the day with our Social Media and Internet connections. It’s easy to get trapped in the revelry and forget that a new calendar year brings with it the opening to a new plan, new energy, and an occasion to re-invigorate our outlook toward living.

The chance to evaluate what is important to us and what we have outgrown is an important one when beginning anything. The winter months are a time for reflection and a time to consider carefully what planning and hopes we are creating for important benchmarks, celebrations, anniversaries and risks we want to take in our new year.

Spiritually, the New Year is an exciting time to consider our value. How do we give of ourselves? In what ways do we connect to other people? What is expected of us? What do we want?

Personally, the New Year is an important time to shed old energy that weighs us down. It is a time to forgive, to organize and to refresh our environment and our outlook on our time and how we spend it.

For those of us who are caregivers, it is an opportunity to strengthen our commitment, to fortify our energy and to gain important perspective over our responsibilities and our hopes.

Embrace 2016 and accept all of your emotions and thoughts as important clues to what you have to be grateful for, what you may need to seek to add to your life, and for the love and connection of those in your circles.

Write your book of Opportunity in your own handwriting.

Sandra Lindsey is the CEO of South Shore Elder Services.