A New Day, A New Start

From the day we are born, we engage with others and begin to make decisions based on our experiences, our preferences for certain things, and our interactions with other people.  Our personality develops and our lives evolve into a collection of experiences resulting in what is commonly known as a life path.  We acknowledge our personal history, learn from it, live in the present and make plans for the future along this path.  As we traverse this path sometimes we may not like a direction it’s headed in, we decide to challenge ourselves, or feel that it’s time to improve upon ourselves in some way.  It is then that we engage in one of the most challenging things to do in life, creating a new start for ourselves.

The developments of modern technology have not matched the science fiction story telling of books and movies, therefore traveling back in time to accomplish a completely new start is impossible to do.  Yet there’s a natural mechanism we encounter every day that allows for us to create a new start.  It’s called a sunrise.  With the dawn of each day we have an opportunity to chart a new life path for ourselves and the possibility of starting something new when we wake up.

There are of course some life circumstances and the reality that we cannot make a drastic change from one end of the spectrum to the other overnight.  The manageable approach however is to make a conscious decision when the sun rises to do something different than our regular norm to create a better life for ourselves.  It’s easy to look for a conditional “if-then” excuse to try something new, or do something different in life, so let the sunrise and the start of a new day be that excuse.  We need to empower ourselves, dig deep into our intrinsic motivation and decide that today is the day that things begin to change for me. 

If eating healthier is a decidedly new start, then when waking up one day the first thought should be today I’m going to go grocery shopping for a healthier meal option, or I will start doing some research on how to create a healthier diet for myself.  Whether it’s quitting smoking, launching a business, learning an instrument, or even creating better more beneficial personal habits, the chance for a new start begins with a solitary decision to make a difference, and taking the first step.  That first step doesn’t have to be drastic, it just has to be a step in the direction of the new path you want to embark on.  From there, more steps can be taken and the momentum can be built upon as you move forward to that new start. 

The caveat here is not to get lost in the seductive misleading idea that change happens immediately and results will be automatic and significant in a short period of time.  That’s all too romantic of an idea and when results don’t happen as quickly as expected, it’s easy for frustration and quitting to lead into a dead end where progress is stifled.  It’s important to remember that good habits usually take about 21 days by conventional knowledge to take hold.  Time, dedication, and perseverance are the best assets to creating a new path.   But we need to remember that just like a huge oak tree comes from a tiny acorn, big changes come from just the first step, no matter how small it might be.

Gifts of the Season

This time of year tends to be a time when many of us are caught up in the intoxicating consumerism that comes with the holidays.  The popular song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ would force you to spend $27,393 on your true love this year if you used the song as a shopping list (Reuters 2013).  Rest assured that I won’t be doing any finger pointing here, because in the past I have been an active participant during the holiday season partaking in traditional spendthrift tendencies. 

With the plethora of buying and gift giving that occurs, sometimes we can get lost in the hustle and bustle to get the latest and greatest gifts to bring the biggest smiles.  There’s a cliché we are all familiar with that says ‘It’s the thought that counts’.  Now this cliché is usually used in instances where people don’t like their gift, or it’s not what they expected, so they use the saying as a scapegoat.  But what would happen if we lead with that as our premise for gifts for family, friends, coworkers, and our employees?  In reflecting about this I began to think about what types of gifts we might see more of, tangible and intangible, and how gift giving could change.  There were two things that came to mind that I’d like to focus on here, and that I hope to give more of during Christmas this year, as well as in the near future.

Having been a supervisor of employees there is always the dilemma of what to give them as gifts, whether it’s for birthdays, milestone achievements but especially around the holidays.  After a conversation with a former colleague about gifting to employees, I saw how time could be a very important gift in the workplace.  This type of gift makes a lot of sense because time is such a precious entity.  Time is so precious that we have placed value on it by the hour when creating wages.  Therefore why not give time as a gift?  Once those minutes in life have gone by they cannot be replaced, which makes them so precious.  The gift of time can manifest in multiple different ways, but I would suggest that time in the form of a day off would be the most beneficial.  As the conversation progressed, it became very clear that vacation time is seen as a free-time where employees were free to do with it as they choose.  The converse of this, would be time with coworkers or with their supervisor in a non-work environment such as a retreat.  This is beneficial for team building, but when it comes to a gift for an employee whose day is typically structured by the organization they work for, a vacation day is that much more of a precious commodity.   

Gifting time is not only something that is important in the workplace, but also in one’s personal life.  Spending time with those that we love and care about is something that is very important to many of us.  However when you spend time with those that are close to you, it is very much appreciated by those you are spending that time with making it special.  Another form of gifting time in one’s personal life can come via volunteering it to a cause that you are interested in.  Following the idea that time is valuable and precious, using your personal time to share a talent, or help a cause, can be a great gift to that cause.

The second gift I thought of, could have tangible elements to it.  The gift of thanks can be given by a handwritten personal note, which in our age of technology can mean so much more.  If technology is necessary, making it personal instead of a standard thank you goes a very long way.  It may also come in the form of a token of appreciation where something is given that has a lot of thought put into it, but may not necessarily be the most expensive item.  This is a place where the cliché mentioned above ‘it’s the thought that counts’ really plays a significant role, because the cliché is used as the motivation to give rather than an excuse to give just anything.

             During this holiday season I hope to share more gifts like those mentioned here.  It may be too late for Christmas Day or other holiday’s that you might have done some shopping for but maybe you will consider some of the thoughts here when doing your own gift giving in the future. 

In Works Cited Section:

Jenkins, Colleen. (December 2013). Cost of “Twelve Days of Christmas” gifts leaps in 2013. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/02/us-usa-christmas-gifts-idUSBRE9B10O320131202.