Recently I had a birthday, which means many years ago, I entered this game of life and am still trying to figure out how the swirl of thoughts, emotions, and corresponding actions connect to build our lives.  I always thought I would have all the answers by now, but life is a tricky experience. You move past one veil, answering some questions only to find there are five more waiting for you there.  On your birthday, I think it is your obligation to yourself and the experience of life to look at the lessons you struggled with, overcame, mastered, or are still working on over the past year.  By assessing your experiences and taking the lessons, they teach with gratitude. It is possible to make even outwardly negative things favorable for you.  So here is my look back at the last year, a reflection of gratitude. Also though this was not an easy year, easy life is not necessarily a good life.

How has my year been?

I think it is best to reflect on the year in lessons learned, and here are a few of the valuable things I have learned. There have been many challenges, a ton of new information as well.  So with all that a great year, I also managed to make it to the gym every day of the year.

Enjoy every moment because life will change, and those things you love may be gone, and there is no way to bring them back.  We are only really guaranteed this moment, and that is it.  If you share it with someone else, that makes it a memory.  I am grateful for all the moments I have shared with others over the past year.

I am responsible for my level of happiness and enjoyment of life. It isn’t anyone else’s fault if I am not happy with my life, job, or choices.  There are going to be times which are easier to be pleased with than others. It is up to us in our experience to choose to enjoy them or not.  Not everything is pleasant, and there has been plenty of difficulty and pain in my year, but I prefer to focus on the good rather than the bad.  There is always some glimmer of good behind a cloud of sadness.  Seek it.

Deal with your emotions, or they will deal with you. We all have feelings, and they are attached to every thought we produce in our minds.  To ignore them is to ignore a message from your heart. We often get a negative feeling, and we don’t like it, so we move away from it as quickly as possible.  I hope I have learned to move toward it, look at it, and understand it a little bit more.  Sadness, anger, fear, and emotional cousins are not favorable to experience, but they are a natural part of being human and not so scary to handle.

Embrace them, see the thoughts that brought them to you. Usually, it is some residual memory of the experience, and always understanding takes away the fear and allows you to heal. I have recovered a lot this year.  There is minimal teaching provided to us, helping a person learn how to develop emotional health. We are at the mercy of intellect and experience.

Enemies and Friends.  This year I have learned how our thoughts can be our greatest enemies. How we choose to think about ourselves, our abilities and other people control much of our reality.  A change in perspective and the way you feel about things can make your whole life seem different.  The human mind, both complex and pleasant, can only focus on one thought at a time, and you control where that focus lies if you want to.  Where your attention goes, energy flows, and if you are spending time on the negative, you will find more negative. If you spend time on the positive, then you will find more positive.  This focus will determine how you see yourself and control what you can accomplish in life. Your thoughts always and drive you towards a direction you would like your life to take.

Learning is power.  I have increased the things I learn about by merely using my commute time for knowledge rather than just mindlessly listening to music.  Music is excellent, and I love it, but all the thoughts tied to it are from the past. I have started filling that time with podcasts, TED Talks, philosophy, audiobooks, and anything else to teach me something positive. Of course, it has helped me learn and put me in an intensely positive mood entering any day. Which has helped me, and I think it helped others as well.  Learn wherever you can, new ideas, how someone else did what you want to do.  All knowledge makes you better and drives you to new creations and accomplishments.  Learn, grow, be better.  Our growth is never complete, no matter how old we are.

My year was good, like any, I think. There were high highs and low lows. Sometimes I was very good at dealing with things and others. I was a work in progress, and that is OK.  People have loved me, and some have hated me for whatever reason. In the logbook of my life, I think it has been a watershed year and one I will continue to learn.

Am I Satisfied With My Choices?

We make a thousand decisions every day. One of the things I learned about this year is that we make 95% of our choices subconsciously every day, which means our programming is running our life most of the time. If that programming is faulty, you will be continually making the same mistakes, doing the same things which may not be so good for you.  So I have made several small changes I hope will have lasting effects on my success and enjoyment of life.

Time of reflection-  I have tried to add short moments during the day to take inventory of what is happening during the day. One is at lunchtime. I try

to take just five minutes during the day to enjoy the moment. Wherever it is. If the weather is beautiful and I am outside, then to be experience happiness about being alive at that moment, looking at a blue sky, or seeing a bird fly by. These things can affect my thoughts and make me happier and feel a connection to the positive in life.   Another moment I have taken is no matter how busy, hectic, or long a workday has been, I take five minutes at night to sit outside and look up at the night sky and be grateful.  I look at the stars each night for just a few minutes, and it reminds me of all the people I have known who are gone. I often wonder how many others are looking at the same sky and having similar thoughts.  Maybe there are none. I hope that after reading this, there will be just one more.  These moments have brought a little balance and daily gratitude to my experience of life this year. I am delighted with this choice.

Forgiveness- I think it is human nature to look at situations that hurt us, be angry at the people involved, and cast blame in their direction.  I have made a choice not to do this. I am responsible for my emotions and the situations I have put myself in. I forgive anyone who hurt me and ask for their forgiveness for anything I have done.  That is a choice that makes me happy. Life is too short to waste being angry with past events. Especially when the future may be the story you choose to write today.  I wish to focus on the road I am on and what might be ahead because the best days are just around the corner.

In a nutshell, I am pretty happy with the overall choices I made this year because they have placed me here at this moment, and that is a pretty great moment to be experiencing.

I did My Best

I have been nowhere near perfect, but perfect is overrated.  In the seams of mistakes, we learn the lessons that allow us to develop our knowledge, skills, and authentic personalities. I hope I have done my best to treat others well, take the lessons of the past, and apply them positively to my life.  I did my best to be healthier both mentally and physically to be fully present in the current moments I have.  In that way, I can enjoy things like writing this or going to the gym later and then just having time to contemplate, read, learn, or enjoy whatever is happening at that moment.  In the final analysis, faced with positive and negative experiences, I have endeavored to be true to myself and remain on the positive side of things. I have tried my best. It hasn’t always been easy, but that makes it valuable.  My heart is at peace.

In the words of Rob Thomas…….. I am not afraid of getting older. I am one less day from dying young………….