Jeans. T-shirt. boots. hat. necklace.
I love New Years. I really do. I happen to believe in the idea of a fresh start, a clean slate, and I think it’s one of the most hopeful, empowering, and frankly Gospel centered ideas there are. We don’t really need the New Year to come for a chance at a clean slate, but it’s symbolic and it does feel like a good time to start fresh. Which is what I want to talk to you about today.
Several years ago, my family and I experience a series of unfortunate events. (No, I’m not talking about the movie.) We call 2013 the year from Hell, and I don’t put that lightly. We moved for the 3rd time in 2 years, my parents began a painful divorce, we lost our baby girl, Ruby, my husband was gone traveling for work almost constantly, and we had a ton of business setbacks and stress. 2014 provided little relief. Another move, more family stress, a kickstarter to complete with so many supplier issues, me racked with grief and post-partum depression and anxiety, I’d like to forget about 2014 as well. When we got to the end, I was still a mess. I weighed less than I did in high school, because when I have bad anxiety, I can’t swallow. And I’d had crippling anxiety for almost a year. I remember sitting down at the beginning of 2015, just about at this time in fact, and thinking to myself, that things were going to start to get better. I could feel it. And they did. My anxiety levels dropped, I started eating again, we let go of some of our stresses, I decided to take a break from my business so I could enjoy my family again, and also heal.
But the truth is, it took a long time for me to really get better. And now that I’m on the other side of it, that I can really honestly say that I am better than I have been in so many years, maybe ever, I want to share something with you.
I could have been better so much sooner. I didn’t let myself.
I don’t say this to be hard on me, it’s just the truth. I have given myself grace and moved on, but the honest to goodness truth is, I held on to a lot of pain and regret and stress, and it held me back for so much longer than it should have. I lived my life from a place of fear and scarcity. There was always the chance of something else horrible happening. There was never enough time or love, or patience or money, or {enter whatever else} to go around. But it wasn’t really true.
Did my fear of something bad happening stop anything bad from happening? No. It just robbed me of any joy I could have felt while things were fine and normal, or even good. It was a dark shadow over all the good things in my life. It made me ineffective. It stole my grit. And it was the same with the feeling of scarcity I lived with. It made me feel frantic, like I was always running behind, like I didn’t have enough of me to serve and love everyone in my life, to fulfill my obligations, to be better, to hope for more, and believe it was coming.
I don’t know exactly when things started to get sunny again for me. They say time is a great healer, and it happened so subtly that sometime over the last year and a half, my mindset started to shift on it’s own. And when it shifted enough for me to notice, I realized that I had a chance. And then, things really changed. I started doing things that would intentionally change my mindset and that’s when the magic really happened.
I have so much to share about what it was that I did, physically and mentally to take myself to a new place, a place of peace, and joy and abundance, but I will save that for another day. Today I just want to share one simple truth with you.
If you want to change your whole life, you can do it right now, today.
I know this, because I did it the wrong way for a very long time, until suddenly I didn’t, and then, well, I was free. And it was beautiful.
Here’s the truth:
“You can change anything you want to change, and you can do it very fast. It is a falsehood to believe that it takes years and years to change. It takes exactly as long to change as it takes you to say, “I’ll change”—and mean it.” -Jeffrey R. Holland.
So if you are like I was, holding on to hurt or fear or a feeling of scarcity, I want you to look at yourself today and accept the truth. That you can let all of that go. If you want to change your whole life you can do it today. Right now, in this new year, it’s a clean slate. We can be washed clean of the past, we know that we can, through the atonement. It’s as simple as believing Christ, and then getting up and changing how we live, what we think, and how we feel.
I’ll just finish with my favorite quote of all time:
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Come back, because I’ve going to share some of the simple things I did last year that made a huge difference for me.
