Very shortly the ball will drop at Times Square in New York, “Auld Lang Syne” will be sung and we will move to a new calendar year. We will close a chapter on our lives known as 2013. Most will have experienced new learnings, the dawning of new friendships, births, weddings, parties, and travel. Among those events will be the end of friendships, deaths, divorces and lack of renewal. When this year is put to bed you get to sum up your life through the chapter that was 2013, it’s your call.

How will you reflect upon it? Will you look at all of the challenges and magnify the impact they had on you and your family. Will you reflect on the close calls where you almost, might have or nearly had a success? Will you lament over the missed opportunities to improve your bottom line? Do you remain in grief over loved ones that have transitioned?  Will you realistically look at both the challenges and the strength, which has brought you through? It’s your call.

Glass Half Full

We can wire our brains to focus on the positive. It is healthier than focusing on the negative. We create positive pathways in the brain and we are more likely to anticipate positive outcomes in the future when we focus on the positive of the past. It’s your call.

Sometimes it is difficult to focus on the positive, especially when as a child you had few memories of positive things and even less power to create the environment in which you would be reared. In that case while it is not easy, you can choose to see the positive, even as you may have endured those negative situations. It’s your call.

Likewise the adult you, can dwell on the lemonade you made from the lemons of your childhood. Changes in your way of thinking and changes in the outcomes of your future are up to you. You have the power to move forward no matter how sour the lemons. It’s your call.

However it Sometimes Looks Half Empty

I recently had an in-depth conversation with a longtime friend. As she reflected on past situations and I shared some of my childhood challenges, she commented that I had “softened” over the years. Indeed I agree.

Another woman, in our presence who was acquainted with me briefly in that work setting commented that she had been in a training class that I facilitated and remarked, “You did not take no stuff, then…”

Her unsolicited opinion was her perception, what she had seen and experienced. As I mulled over the comments made almost simultaneously by the two women, I thought about who I was inside then, some thirteen years ago when she was a participant in a class.

Undeniably I have softened, glory to God! What “stuff” was I supposed to take? That comment struck me as berating. The woman who freely gave her summation of me seemed to have ruled that I was out of order by not taking stuff???

It’s Your Call

The truth is, you and I are in the process of being perfected. I consciously decide to deliberately love my neighbor as myself as a way of life. I ask God to search me and I act as best I can on the information He gives me. Where I am today is worlds different than I was thirteen years ago when I worked in that setting. Still the same core,  while so much more connected with me, loving myself (and thereby) others all the more. Nevertheless the Deborah she saw was the best me at that time.

I operate in strength. At this moment I choose to see both comments as compliments. Glory to God! I am no longer in that vulnerable moment where I felt attacked, after having just openly shared some of my challenges along with how God’s strength and gifts have brought me through. That is how I call it, in retrospect. It’s your call too.

Take Inventory and Take Action!

It is my call and it’s your call.

We get to decide how we hold those experiences of the past and how we move into the new experiences of the future. What will you do as you review 2013 or as you take in the comments directed towards you by others? It’s your call!

Love,

Deborah

Lighting the path to loving your neighbor as yourself.”