It 
has been sometime between blog posting, it’s not that I haven’t wanted to sit down and post, I have. In fact several times I have sat down to do just that, write a blog and post it. Yet when I sat own it seemed I had nothing to say. So I would sit there for a few moments and stare at the monitor than exit the program and get up and walk away. I must not have had any real ideas, because if I did I would have posted them.
Well with Christmas Day behind us and the New Year looming ahead of us, we as a people, are in a transition phase. It funny really how this one week between almost feels like a lost week of sorts. As for me, I am off of work this week, as I was last week. My decorations are still up my house is clean and I have a new book to read, Being George Washington: The Indispensable Man, as You’ve Never Seen Him, by Glenn Beck along with several free books I download to my iPad. So I am sure this week will be filled with reading and old movies. This weekend I will take down the Decorations and ring in the New Year by sitting at home enjoying my last days of vacation.
This lost week, as I called it in the above paragraph, is just that. Stories of the Year in Review are everywhere, yet the year is not even over yet, it’s as if this week is outside of time, that there are only 51 weeks in a year, and one week of transition into the new year. We hear people saying things like, “I’ll start my diet next week, after the New Year” or “In the New Year we will clean out our closets” As if this week does not exist. I am guilty of this myself. I need to get back to working out, yet I keep putting it off, until the New Year, I need to quit smoking, yet again I tell myself, in the New Year.
Why Wait?
Why do we put it off, why do we wait that extra 7 days? Because we really don’t want to do what ever it is we are putting off, we use the “holiday” as an excuse. Than after the “holiday” we will find other excuses. So I have decided that I am going to work out today, I am going to start it back up, before the New Year, I am going to use this Lost Week to find the courage and strength to improve myself, to reach for the goals I have set for myself each and every New Year:
- Get into shade
- Quit Smoking
- Lose Weight
- Make time for Friends
The list is larger but I am finding that if I make to many goals, I achieve none, so I will stick to that. With each day that passes it will get harder and harder to achieve the goals, so the Lost Week is only going to make it harder come the New Year. So I have decided to find that week, and make it productive.
They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, that may be true, but to me it seems to only work on bad habits. I was working out 3 times per-week for 4 months, yet I was able to break that habit with no problem. I have stopped smoking for 2 months at a time, yet I seem to be able to start-up again with no problem.
Life changes are hard to make, hard to commit to and even harder to keep. We are creatures of habit, and it seems our habits are life long. I have never talked to an ex-smoker who does not miss smoking. Like any other life changing event, it takes time and dedication to achieve. As a life coach I understand the issues that come with life changes. I have gone through many in my life, from the death of my parents to wanting to quit smoking. Each event has its own rhyme and reasons, its own ebb and flow. Yet each even shares some very basic characteristics. Each event involves some sort of personal resolve.
With the death of a parent, or any loved one, our lives are forever altered, we never “get over it” it never “gets better” it just gets “Different”. We change is some way, we become something different. For some the change is profound, for others it is subdued, but a change does take place. The same can be said for people who quit smoking, they never “get over smoking” and it never “gets easer” it just gets “different”. And like the death of a parent or loved one, the change is different for each of us, but a change does take place.
It seems to me that it is how we choose to deal with it, how we choose to approach it. With the death of my Dad, I learned a life lesson, simple yet very profound, “Life is too short”. That was it, but to me it was life changing. My dad died to young, and he left a family, including my mother, and I am sure he had unfinished business to attend to. Yet in his death I learned that valuable life lesson, Life is to short. I also saw who were his true friends and the impact his life had on others. Yes I mourned his death, yes I felt and still feel a hole in my heart, but I also learned. The death of my mother taught me how to die. And in teaching me how to die, she taught me how to live. Her faith was strong and her love was even stronger. She never lost sight of her family or her sense of humor and she never took her eyes off the love of the Cross. As with my dad, my mom died far to young, but as with my dad, in her death she continued to teach me, to protect and nurture me.
My experience with the death of my parents has changed me, altered my life, hopefully for the better. Yet not all people can claim positive experiences from death, many people allow death to change there lives not for the better, but for the worst. They dwell upon it, relive each and every moment… Creating an environment of death, one devoid of life, shutting life out. I can not answer why some people do this, why they would choose this (yes I believe everything we do comes down to being a choice).
What does all this have to do with the Lost Week, lots…
This week between Christmas and New Years, this lost week that we seem to use as just an excuse not to achieve our goals is a perfect time to make a choice, how are we going to deal with ______(fill in the blank)____, what am I going to do, how and I going to react, what in my life is going to change for the better… I made decisions when my parents died, I decided I would use their deaths as a lesson, a time to learn, a time to take their love and life and use it as a gift from them to me, to better my life. Well I can look at my goals in the same way, I can look at working out as a lesson, a gift of love, from myself to me, I can look at quitting smoking as a life lesson, “don’t follow the cool kids” or “Be yourself”…
Life is all about choices, we just need to learn to make smarter ones…
God Bless
Paul
An American Point of View 