Tis the early hours of the first day of the new year 2016 in Brooklyn New York, where the echoes of the people still in the midst of celebration through the streets of Bed-Styvestant can be heard from my fourth floor apartment. I feel the energy of the crowds helping to sustain the excitement. Their dreams, desires and hopes ignited by the stroke of midnight signifying the end of a year and the allure of new beginnings. It fuels their hunger to ensure, this time they get it right, do it better, achieve more, be more, that this year is their year to shine.

I’ve always set new year’s resolutions and am happy to admit that I have rarely achieved everything I have set out to do. In some cases I have shifted the goal for many years before it was completed. In fact, there is one that comes to mind that I deem to be my illusive holy grail, which year upon year is set and not achieved to my expectations. I’m calling it out to you, by hook or by crook, I will align my life priorities to ensure it is achieved this year and whats more I will embrace a commitment to sustain or better myself every year there after.

I often find myself compelled to silence when I start to ponder why it is that I haven’t achieved everything I intended to across a given year. In saying this I accept that I am somewhat ambitious in what I expect of myself and equally resolute in ensuring that I do my utmost to achieve it or as much of it as possible throughout the year. Do my priorities change? Absolutely, they do. Life has a way of trying to enforce its own course which as I find can often collide, smash, pulverize my intentions to meet my goals. So my question to myself is whether this is true or just and excuses to accept less of myself in terms of my goals for any given year?

I’m an incredibly harsh self assessor and relentlessly unforgiving if I fail to be less than who I deem myself to be. It has never been a measure against others. It is always me comparing where I’ve been, where I am at and where I want to be next. Knowing this helped me to answer the question I posed in regards, whether I too lent toward utilizing life circumstances as my excuses for not completing my goals. The answer is no. The only impact ‘life’s unexpected anomalies‘ has held on any of my ambitions, hopes, dreams and desires being achieved have been a delay in achieving it. I never decided it was all too hard, or that I couldn’t do it. I’II prioritize, compromise, whatever is required is adjusted accordingly, but I never give up.

‘If you want it, make it happen.’

The essence of a resolution to me is about taking the time out to talk to myself on a spiritual, physical, mental and heart level to listen. The goals I tend to set are touch points which all thread back into these four states. What I have found across the years is when life inevitably interferes with my plans, if I am required to postpone, reduce, compromise any of my goals, the ones which fall into the physical tend to be the sacrificial offering. This means instead of exercising regularly and building my core strength. I thereby flux in fitness, weight and health. Here’s the kicker, I know it is the one item on the list that needs to be the highest priority because in the absence of being in optimum condition, I enforce a cause and effect on everything else I do. Crazy right?

“I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.”  ― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclair Jugend

When I exercise regularly I eat better, sleep better, feel better and in turn am so much happier, filled with energy and vigor for life. Reality bites, I am only getting older, and I still have a tonne of items on my travel / adventure bucket list that I want to experience in a way that it is a pleasure not a struggle. To me from here on, above all thing’s fitness, healthy sustainable lifestyle is the key. It doesn’t matter what happens, this time, from this year onwards I’m not compromising my goals pertaining to anything that would affect me getting on my desired path to achieving a prime level of fitness and more importantly sustaining it.

‘Nike said it best: Just do it’

If I am feeling the pinch, and time is an issue than my go to from here on is to work less. Even typing the sentence made me smile. What an epiphany it is to realize one of my greatest downfalls in achieving this one golden desire was encompassed by recognizing that I held myself as my lowest priority. I hereby give myself permission to place myself as the highest priority. I deserve to live the life I dream of, and therefore, I shall.

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”  ― Michel de Montaigne

Happy New Year to you and yours. May you be fearless in the pursuit of your dreams, hold the blessing to love the right people with all of your might and never lose sight of your smile.

Blessings – Truth Devour