Monday Morning Motivator-WHAT TO BRING, WHAT TO LEAVE BEHIND…

WHAT TO BRING, WHAT TO LEAVE BEHIND…

The question of what to bring with us into the New Year - into the future, into the next great segment of our lives - and what to leave behind is not a frivolous one. Nor are the answers necessarily obvious or even easy. We’ve just wrapped up a ten day sojourn at our old farm house in Connecticut and as I packed up to go back to NYC, I realized how much stuff I’d brought with me. I mean, I’m talking three hanger bags of clothes. “Are you kidding?” my husband, Jim, asked when we packed up the car. “You’re never going to wear all this stuff!” “Well, you never know,” I said. “Things come up.” That’s code for “I don’t want to think about it now so I’ll just bring everything.”  That creates what I call “the debris of indecisions” - a kind of paralysis that comes over you when you look into a closet - or peek through the door to the future.. And as usual, it’s the piles of mental and emotional stuff; the old “habits" that do the worst damage. So here’s my shot at what you - we - might take and what we might leave behind. I call them “from/to’s” and I ask the people I work with to make their own lists each year. So you make yours, okay?

- From: Talking To: Listening.

- From: Already knowing To: Discovering. 

- From: “Let me tell you..” To: “Let’s have a conversation.”

- From: “So, what do you do?” To: “What lights you up?”    

- From: That’s just the way it is. To: There’s no way it is; together, we can change the outcome, maybe the world..

- From: Being right about how wrong it is To: Letting it go... and buying into a larger commitment.

- From: I can’t find the answer To: The answer will find me.

- From: I have to prove who I am as an individual To: I will demonstrate who I am as part of a team.

- From: I just don’t have the resources I need To: The resources are already there; I will discover them.

- From: The Universe has already made its mind up about me To: The Universe only knows what I show it today...

- From: How bad could it get?! To: How good could I make it? (My favorite...)

And next time you pack to go somewhere, take your life in your hands and just “decide," okay? Maybe what you leave behind says more about you than what you bring with you...

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