“It's the First Day of the Rest of Your Life”

Have you ever tried a New Year’s Resolution? Maybe you’ve committed to trying to break a bad habit or thought pattern? Or, maybe you tried to add some new course of action into your existing life?

How did that go? What were the motivating factors driving you? Did the change stick or was it just a flash in the pan?

I like to think of these as, “today is the first day of the rest of your life,” moments. Committing to creating change often happens after you’ve reached an undeniable inflection point regarding something in your life. It could be needing to work out more, eat healthier, quit smoking/drinking, change your job/industry, or be more social. Typically, your moment of clarity is triggered by some sort of pain that you keep experiencing that has become unbearable. Your present in incongruent with who you truly aspire to be.

Why do we laugh at resolutions? Making a major wholesale change is difficult to start and even harder to sustain after the energy from the original source motivation wears off. Maybe one, two, three, 10 days go by and you fall off your new trajectory. It’s ok - tell yourself today is the first day of the rest of your life. I mean, you don’t even have to wait until tomorrow - start anew right now in this moment.

All it takes is one good action to trigger yourself back onto the path you actually want.