THAT'S LIFE: Three things to focus on in 2017
We made it. Here we are at the beginning of 2017. PHOTO| FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- Consider self-view. Most of us view ourselves as recipients, passive observers and victims. Stuff is always being done to us by other people and we have no choice but to take it all in.
- We just happen to be in the way. To have a great year, we must begin to question such a limiting view, and see ourselves as co-creators of the life we are living.
‘I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be a live is a grand thing.’ Agatha Christie
We made it. Here we are at the beginning of 2017. Chances are you have had some great moments this last year as well as some serious lows. Sometimes the lows are so low, you are glad to be bidding the old year farewell in anticipation for a better year ahead. Perhaps you had a great run last year and are looking with expectation at the New Year and hoping it speaks of better things.
Whatever type of year we had in 2016, here we are at the threshold of another beginning, each feeling a sense of hope. However, 2017 will need a lot more than hope if it is to be a great year. It will take a lot more than the warm fuzzy emotions we experienced at midnight or when we receive New Year greetings. It will require more than hastily spoken vows to “quit drinking or smoking, exercise more or make more money”.
Unfortunately, most of us come to the New Year with a lot of hope and very little in the way of a concrete plan to make our dreams a reality.
The good news though, is that we can change all this by changing three things: our self view, our world view and our people view.
Consider self-view. Most of us view ourselves as recipients, passive observers and victims. Stuff is always being done to us by other people and we have no choice but to take it all in. We just happen to be in the way. To have a great year, we must begin to question such a limiting view, and see ourselves as co-creators of the life we are living.
We are certainly more powerful than we give ourselves credit for. We create everyday, whether we are aware of it or not. We create a delicious meal, a loving text, beautiful painting or great piece of work in our field. The Creator of the Universe gives us a canvas and He allows us to add to it through daily personal choice. We choose whether our painting will be bright and cheerful or dark and moody. Isn’t that grand? We get to choose!
The second view we need to change is our world-view. The fact is that pain and happiness will visit every life. There will be tragedies that we cannot control and sudden windfalls of positivity when everything is going right. These are not things we ordered. They happened to us because we are human. The world is not against us when things are going wrong.
If anything, the world is just spinning away, and when we are laughing with joy, someone else is crying. The world is what it is and the world, which was here long before us, will continue long after we are gone. Adjusting our world view means accepting our common human condition and not allowing ourselves to remain stuck trying to understand “why me”. It means that the world is the world, but there is a Supreme loving being who is for us despite what we are going through at the moment.
The final thing we need to work on is our people view. People are people, and sometimes the stuff they do to us, is not about us, but about them. We must avoid trying to interpret everything that people do, say or don’t do and say. The fact that someone has not responded to your text does not mean they are avoiding you. Well not every time anyway. Perhaps they are very busy or they have not seen it.
Why are these three views important? Well they allow us to manage our emotions and improve our emotional health. They teach us to go after the life we want instead of hoping it will fall into our laps or that we will win the lottery. When our emotions are healthy, we respond in healthy ways to other people and avoid blaming and criticising. We understand that we are all in this together, yet alone, and everyone else needs our empathy and compassion.
When we accept the world as it is, we appreciate our brief sojourn and hopefully ask the eternal question, “Why am I here?’ Then, we can then go about playing our part, understanding that we all have everything we need for our next step. And it will be enough even if it is not much. Happy 2017!
