The New Year - Wisdom to Start the Year

New Years 2025

Wisdom to Start the Year

How do we live differently this year? I mean, with intentionality. With some sense of purpose and meaning that’s way beyond just living out our lives in order to meet some set of obligations that we’ve confused with real living? How we live with some deep sense of satisfaction and personal enrichment? How do we do it all differently?

Well, at the beginning of this New Year I want to share some simple, foundational thoughts with you. Some thoughts that we don’t think about because our lives don’t create any space for us to think about them. Or we’re afraid to think about them because they might challenge us to something better and we might not be able to achieve that. Or whatever it might be. And we end up the poorer for it.

So here’s some thoughts for you. And if you walk away from this podcast with only one of these on your mind as you head out into the coming New Year, this time will have all been worth it.

Let’s start with this:

“We are created for more than we’ve given ourselves permission to be.”

That’s you. Whatever lays ahead of you today, tomorrow, next month, or in the coming year, you bring to those things more than you’ve given yourself permission to bring to them. You are more than the challenges that lay in front of you. You have unchecked resources, untapped abilities, yet undiscovered capabilities that are waiting on you. This New Year, give yourself permission to be your fullest self.

Consider this:

“It is the doubt of success that insures the fulfillment of that doubt.”

Doubt is the cancer of great things. Our doubt takes the ‘achievable’ and pushes it so far out of our reach that we come to see the possible as the impossible. We become deluded that our greatest dreams, our fondest hopes, the things that thrill us will do nothing more tease us. We can play with the idea of them, but the reality of them is doomed to stay a reality because we doubt our ability to achieve them. Begin getting rid of your doubt.

Here's another thought:

“You were not made to tend to the grave of your mistakes because God removed the coffin and backfilled the hole.”

You are not defined by your mistakes, no matter how many of them you might have made along the way. No matter how bad they were. No matter how painful the repercussions of whatever they were. You are not defined by your mistakes. Mistakes are a sign that you tried. You might have tried in a way that didn’t work, or in a way that you shouldn’t have tried. But you tried. The key is to try differently. Try in a better way. A more thoughtful way. Try again, and when you do your tenacity, your commitment, your fortitude…that stuff doesn’t define you either, but it does reveal the qualities that you have within you.

And finally, remember this:

“Dead-ends are never the ‘end of the road.’ They are only the end of ‘this’ road.”

You may be facing the end of this year and the beginning of the next one feeling like your life has been a bunch of dead-end roads. Some roads do end. Some end harshly and abruptly. Some end unfairly and brutally. But a dead-end is never an end. Never let yourself believe that an end is an end. Somewhere there’s a ‘next’ road. A new path. It might be wide and easy, or it might be thin and tough. But it’s there.

This New Year, find those roads. Walk them. Don’t run from them, or sit by them, or let your doubt cause you to turn away. Believe in yourself. Don’t let your mistakes tell you that you’re not worth it. This coming year might be easy. It might be hard. It might be somewhere in-between. But I’m committed to walking those roads. And I hope that you are too.

As we walk those roads, tune into LifeTalk on most podcast platforms as well as YouTube.

Here’s wishing you a truly great New Year.

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