Welcome to 2024 and new beginnings! Like many others, I see the new year as an opportunity to start afresh, consider embracing something new and making positive changes. We think of new year resolutions and read the messages about the new year being a blank slate of paper on which to write a new chapter in the story of our lives. The cynic inside many of us may scoff and laugh off these well-worn often cliché affirmations. However, even if cliché, they are still true! The new year is a time where the page on the year ahead is blank, and we all get to write the story for ourselves. True that we can’t control everything that happens in the new year, good and bad, but we can control how we respond to it and shape our story as much as possible to fit what we desire. It truly is a new beginning. At the same time, we don’t have to wait for a new year to have new beginnings. They can start any day at any time. And the power of our personal stories shows us where we’ve started new beginnings before, our successes, triumphs, progress, lessons, and inspiration for us to consider more new beginnings each day.
Right now, I’m in the midst of a new beginning to a healthier version of myself that began on December 15, 2023. I started a new optimal health program with a wonderful coach, support community, and online and print resources to help transform my physical and psychological relationship with food, physical activity, and my overall health. In the three weeks since I started this program, I’ve lost 19 lbs. and began shifting my mindset towards better nutrition and how to properly fuel my body in a healthy manner. I have many miles to go in my journey, and my mantra is progress not perfection because I know that I will stumble and fall sometimes, but that is part of the learning and growing process. I didn’t wait until the new year to start or pick a certain day for this new beginning to take better care of my health. I started on a random Friday in December right before the holidays where the most temptations to cause me to stumble usually occur. Was I perfect during the holidays? I won’t lie to you, absolutely not! I slipped a few times. However, when tempted I reminded myself that I know what those food items taste like, I will taste them again sometime in the future, in moderation, but today they do not align with my goals for myself, and I deserve the love and dedication to my new beginning. I can look back to other personal stories for when I had new beginnings.
One of my earliest memories of a new beginning is from the early 1970’s. My best friend Russell was moving away with his family, and I clearly remember sitting on my front doorstep that day feeling sad that my best friend was gone, and I didn’t have any other kids my age nearby for new friends. It was a sad start to a new beginning, but I wiped away my tears that day and embraced the new beginning with creativity and curiosity. I explored new areas of my neighborhood and also started talking to new kids at school. Before I knew it, I had met a new friend, Brent, who lived within a short bike ride from my home. I knew when he invited me over to his house one day and I saw the KISS rock band poster on his bedroom wall (one of my favorite bands at the time) that we would be new best friends, a new beginning.
Also, around this time in 1977, after 7 years of being an only child, I had another new beginning with the birth of my baby sister. I remember the day we picked up Mama and my new baby sister Renee at the hospital in April 1977. I was sitting in the backseat looking at my Mama in the front seat with this new baby, and I was not too happy that the baby was getting all the attention that was previously mine. It took some time, but once again in the new beginning, I eventually chose curiosity to step into my new role as a big brother. Now, many years later, I am still blessed to be a big brother to such a wonderful sister.
Next, when I turned 17 and was entering my senior year of high school, my parents decided to move us from the county to the nearby city. The move meant that I would have to change to the city school for my senior year. It saddened me because I had gone to school with many of the same kids since elementary school, and I wanted to graduate with my friends in the same school. My parents didn’t have a car to drive me to school, and my car’s engine had just died and needed replaced. I didn’t have the money to immediately fix it, but I wasn’t going to give up on finding a way to continue attending the same school and graduating with my friends. I was already working one part-time job and going to school but that wasn’t enough money. So, I once again tapped into my curiosity and creativity to come up with a plan. I got a second part-time job to help with saving money to fix my car. Then, I took a taxi each morning from my new house in the city to the nearest county bus stop to continue going to my old school. I would then get a taxi from the school to my two different part-time jobs after school. I did this for the majority of the school year and finally saved up enough to fix my car. I also graduated from my old school with the same friends I had known since elementary school. It was a new beginning, moving to the city, but I faced the challenges with creativity and curiosity to write my own story for that senior year.
After high school, as an adult, like many, I’ve faced numerous new beginnings over my life. Leaving my small Georgia hometown to join the Air Force and serve overseas in Europe was the start of many new beginnings. Then, in the six years after I left the Air Force, I experienced four different job layoffs. Each of those situations were new beginnings that started with something difficult, a layoff, that felt like a gut punch. However, through perseverance I was able to write a positive chapter in each new beginning, moving on to better jobs and increased positive personal and professional opportunities and experiences. As an example of a more recent new beginning within the past seven years, I went back to college at the age of 46 to finish my bachelors and immediately follow that up with completing a master’s degree in industrial & organizational psychology by the time I was 52.
Now, within the past four months, I’ve embraced new beginnings by joining Toastmasters to improve my public speaking, started a new optimal health program with an amazing coach and community to transform my health, registered and preparing to begin another graduate program in Leadership & Organizational Development with a concentration in Executive and Professional Coaching.
Finally, and most personally, I began blogging here to share my stories and hopefully inspire others to look at their own stories to find the resilience, curiosity, creativity and other tools and resources to successfully navigate new beginnings and transformation in their personal and professional lives. Each of you have a story or many stories of your own new beginnings and how you successfully navigated them to thrive. And you don’t have to wait until new year to start a new beginning. Each day is an opportunity for a new beginning to write a new chapter in your story. May you find inspiration for your new beginning stories from your prior stories and thrive. For in the end, we are all just stories, so go and write your best story today! Happy New Beginnings
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