It’s the end of an excruciating year. Are you looking back and seeing only the awful things? I’d like to challenge you to let go of the awful. Try to let it go: an end of the year exercise. Embrace the positive.
If You Made Mistakes
I’m certain I wasn’t the only one who made mistakes in the past twelve months. Did you make mistakes? Though he’s talking about the year to come, look at what Neil Gaiman says below.
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes…you’re Doing Something.
Neil Gaiman
I challenge you to look at any mistakes you made with a new attitude. You were doing something. So what did you want to achieve? What did you learn from your mistake? Can you take that lesson forward into the new year?
Don’t Look for Flaws
We humans have a quirk. We focus on the negative. According to research reported by Psychology Today, the human brain is hard-wired to look for danger. Once it was a necessary survival skill. But today, we have a choice.
The past year has been one challenge after another. We made it a meme to laugh at. And we doom scrolled.
Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.
Ellen Goodman
This year look back not the flaws, but the moments where things came together. Small wins, moments of peace, a realization—the successes and the good people and events. It might be difficult. We’re not practiced at recalling the good.
Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.
Louise Hay
Let It Go
Yeah, I know. Cheap shot. But the song’s message is important.
Bad things happened. Let it go.
Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.
Brooks Atkinson
That doesn’t mean forget it. And it doesn’t mean pretend we won’t have challenges in the future. The pandemic will not vanish—even if we achieve herd immunity with the vaccines.
What we have to let go of is the negativity. We must remember that we are a community. That we can work together.
Move Forward
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s only when you let go of the past that you can move forward. Letting go allows forgiveness. It allows acknowledgement. And it allows that today is a new day. Let it go: an end of the year exercise isn’t easy. It will not fix all the social and political and medical and financial issues that the new year brings. But it will allow you to move forward. So let it go. Share something positive about your year in the comments below.