A New Beginning: Faith, Setting Priorities, Happiness Project and the Morning Miracle's Life Savers

What will it take to start all over?

When do we say it's enough?
Why is it difficult to break a bad habit?
How do you say "yes" to a dream?

One of the benefits of the New Year is that it gives us permission to start a new chapter. But starting isn't really that easy. The New Year provided a plethora of information that focusing on what to do first can be overwhelming which eventually turns excitement into fear or indifference.

We've heard it plenty of times.

 SETTING PRIORITIES

What do we need to do to go from Point A to Point B of our lives?

The answer?  Make a list, and then prioritize.

There are a lot of things on my list: family, health, faith, personal and career development. 2014 ended with a lot of challenges and opportunities that merely writing what I want to accomplish this year gives me anxiety -- but I believe that's a normal initial reaction.

Once we get passed analyzing our list, the next step is to pick one goal and remember that sometimes we have to say No to say Yes and visualize not only the end result, but the steps we need to take to get to the finish line.

CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD

One of the books I enjoy reading is the  "Conversations with God".

The author, Neale Donald Walsh, pointed out that "all human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions - fear or love...Every human thought, and every human action is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. They are simply different versions - different twists on the same theme."

Last year brought an avalanche of emotions: tears and laughter. And just like any human beings, the tears clouded any laughter.

Yet again, I questioned God. I questioned myself and the decisions I made. I spent half of the year trying to find an answer -- but I wasn't listening. I was merely asking questions and not really open to hearing any answers. My heart was broken that I needed to slowly let it heal on its own terms.

Towards the end of last year, a few of my friends challenged me to face my fears. I was told that my fears attract negativity and that facing my fears will open doors.

Not an easy task because after 50 years, I've come to accept that there are some things that I just don't mind NOT doing. 

So I asked myself, "Do I really need to subject my fragile self to torture, pain and embarrassment?"

Do I really have to? Do I even want to?

There are things I am enjoying now because I found ways to "work around" my fears. You see, I have a fear of speaking. It's probably because of the constant teasing about my accent and my complicated relationship with the English language -- or language itself.

However, I focus on what I love to do and what I want to be that although I didn't consciously face my fears head-on, the love of giving back to others trumped my fear of communication.

Needless to say, I have a list of things I'm afraid of. I guess I have to prioritize and figure out which one to tackle this year and I'll keep you posted.

MIRACLE MORNING 

Now, this is interesting.  

It was like a combination of serendipity and synchronicity.

Last weekend,  my husband sent me a link to a podcast by Jamie Tardy: "Eventual Millionaire: One Tactic that Will Revolutionize Every Part of your Life with Hal Elrod."

That morning before I listened to the podcast, I reminded myself to jump start my day.

After being sick for 2 weeks, I decided it's time to say, "It's time!"

So I was like "Wow!" when I heard the podcast talked about the benefits of waking up early. Benjamin Franklin did say "The early bird catches the worm".

Hal Elrod wrote the book, The Miracle Morning: The Not-So-Obvious Secret Guaranteed to Transform Your Life (Before 8AM) . What's interesting is that these obvious pointers that he put together are reminders we've heard in the past. However, what I like about what he did was he gave us the acronyms that we can remember: Life SAVERS!

Every morning he suggested that we do the following:

S - Silence. Another word for meditation.  This is a tough one especially when your mind has a lot of things it thinks you need to accomplish. But the beauty of meditation - it doesn't require much. Just your undivided attention. Do you know there are free mediation apps? I like starting my silent me-time with the 3 Minute Daily Retreat and Daily Yoga Meditation for Beginners.

 A - Affirmation.  Won't our day be splendid if we wake up telling ourselves how wonderful today is and that there is no limit to what we can do?  I started my kids with this morning ritual  "Speaking our goals to existence. "

 V - Visualization. This is what I got wrong before. I was only visualizing the end result, the prize, that I thought that's how I manifest things to happen. What I learned was that we also have to visualize the process - and in doing so, we commit to do the extra ordinary effort in making our goals possible. We do what needs to be done, no matter what.

 E - Exercise. I love what exercise do to my mind, body and soul. I gained delicious 6 pounds during the holidays which only meant starting today (well, actually yesterday) I am back to training with P90x3.

 R  - Read. With social media and the bad habit of skimming, reading every word in a sentence, in a paragraph can be difficult. Re-training our minds to focus and to fully read have multitude of benefits for our brain.

S - Scribe. Another word for journal. I've been complaining about being forgetful, so my son,  gave me the The Happiness Project One-Sentence Journal for Mothers . So far, I love using it. All I needed was 1-2 sentences to remind me of my best moments for that day. 

So do you want to try any of these reminders?

Habits are sensitive matter, so let me know which one you think you'll try.

Let's be role models for our children. There are so much violence, so much sadness - maybe if we can all learn how to love, forgive, be gentle and be understanding to others, maybe -- just maybe - the news can turn positive and happy for a change.

Let's learn how to love more and worry less.
Let's be thankful.
Let's be silly.
Let's be gentle to others and kind to ourselves.
Let's try to live a happy, simple life.

AND if some things don't work out for today, don't fret because there's always tomorrow.

Keep smiling.

Being silly with my children, that's my priority.