Each Day Is A New Beginning

Choose greatness today!

Each day is a new beginning — an opportunity to begin fresh. We have a chance every morning, to choose to become the best version of ourselves — the Me we’ve always wanted to be. But instead, we hit the snooze button. We’d rather lay there a little bit longer, extending our current state.

I’m not a New Year’s Resolution type, never have been. But I’m all about improvement — so if that gets you going. Have at it!

But here’s the thing, it’s not just a choice you make once — we must continue to choose greatness every day. In every moment of every day!

This’ll be published on Sunday, January 4th. 🤔 How many of us have already fallen off the wagon? Have those well-intentioned resolutions already lost their spell, and become yet another thing left undone? Every one of us wants to do better, live better, and think better. Most of us even know what we need to do in order to accomplish these goals — we just can’t seem to stick with it.

In his Discourses, Epictetus asks us, “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?”

Back in March I published, The King of Procrastination, and I started the essay by saying, “I excel in procrastination. Like, I bet I can hang with the best of you! I can come up with endless reasons not to do anything that might be considered productive.”

Now I will say, I have progressed since publishing that essay early last year. In both, my productivity and my writing. But there’s still a whole lotta room for improvement.

• I don’t skip my yoga practice as often.

• I’ve been getting up after the first alarm. Well not always getting up, but waking and being intentional about how those first moments are spent. If I do stay in bed, it’s because I decided to soak up those precious early minutes of the day with my Sweetheart.

But I still have a tendency to postpone the things that I don’t enjoy, or that doesn’t show immediate results…

The thing is, us lowly peasants aren’t the only ones who deal with the challenge of procrastination. In his journal, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, repeatedly chastised and coached himself on this. Saying-

“You don’t love yourself enough, or you’d love your nature and what it demands of you.” And, “You could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow.” -Marcus Aurelius

We all do it — we push our goals back, like they’ll accomplish themselves if we’ll just stay out of the way. But they don’t, and then we look back at the end of the day, week, month, or year, and the task still sitting there waiting to be done. Or maybe it’s even grown, and gotten bigger because of our non-action, causing us to get discouraged and give up all together.

Well, my man Seneca has a solution. He said that if you went to bed thinking that you had lived your whole life, the morning would feel like a bonus. He says, “Begin at once to live, and treat each separate day as a separate life.”

So each night when you take inventory of your day, if you’re not happy with what you accomplished — decide then, that tomorrow you will begin again. And when you wake, start the day anew.

We all know the old adage: The best time to start was yesterday, the second-best time is today. Be it the end of a year or a day, we always have the opportunity to start fresh. We just have to choose it. And we get a new opportunity every morning to do so — let’s take advantage of it.

Marcus goes on to tell himself, “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” And then, “Get busy with life’s purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue — if you care for yourself at all, and do it while you can.”

Are you having a hard time getting started? If needed, get radical and change something-

• Get up a half hour earlier.

• Select a different alarm — something you’ll find uplifting. (here’s mine)

• Put a reminder on your bed or bathroom mirror — heck, on your phone!

  

  This is currently living on my dresser mirror.

One thing is for sure, if I can do it, you can too. Small steps — you don’t have to get there all at once. So just because you aren’t where you want to be today, doesn’t mean that it’s not obtainable. And maybe it’s not fully obtainable, but we’ll never know if we don’t give it a real go!

Are you still holding firm on your New Year’s Resolutions? If so, fantastic! I applaud you. But your work isn’t over — remember that you must choose this path tomorrow morning too. If you’re not, and you’re kicking yourself right now because you’ve already fumbled, let that life go. Tonight, decide that tomorrow begins a new day — a new you, and begin again.

Each day is a new beginning — an opportunity to begin fresh. We have a chance every morning, to choose to become the best version of ourselves — the Me we’ve always wanted to be. Let’s choose greatness!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it and clicking that ❤ button, and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Oh and if you’re an email reader, just hit reply—I want to hear from you too! Did you make any New Year’s Resolutions? If so, how’s that going so far?

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