New Year, New YOU!

This time last week I was chatting on the telephone with my beautiful sister, Susan, when I said, “Sis, you owned 2014. I mean, you set your mind to a handful of things, followed through and got results. You should be really proud of yourself.” Today and every day, she is my inspiration. And, she’s living proof that if you set your mind to something and follow up with action and consistency, even the seemingly impossible is possible.

So often in life, I want to do something. I think about doing something. I dream about doing something. Sometimes, I even make a plan about doing something. And, yet, I do nothing. The New Year comes around, and I look over all the things I wanted to do that, well, I didn’t do. I let out a good, long sigh and feel the feeling of total defeat wash over me like a Texas Flash Flood. But, was I really defeated? I mean, you have to try at something to feel success or defeat. It takes effort for both, right?

It’s like eating a cookie. It’s easy and pleasing in that moment until you’re getting ready to go out on the town and can’t button your pants because that cookie or maybe the two or three that followed dialed up the muffin meter, thus, causing those pants to be just a little bit too tight. What feels good in the moment, might not be as wonderful a week or year down the line. Often times, skipping a small thing in order to achieve a big thing is where the payoff really is.

I think what I’m getting at here is “sacrifice.” Holding out and working toward the big things takes just that. It’s not eating five cookies when you could have one and get into that favorite pair of jeans for your night out. It’s not buying a little something here and a little something there instead of saving to buy that one big thing. It’s putting in your best all day every day to reach that “something” that will be worth it in the end.

I’m putting my money on all of you, friends of JL PARISH, to turn those hopes and dreams into realities. IT IS POSSIBLE. We feel defeat when we don’t try, but, in our hearts we know that it doesn’t always take superhuman strength and talent to get there. It just takes discipline.

So, today, write it in your heart that this year is THE year that some of those recurring hopes and goals and resolutions become realities. We’ll look back this time next year and give ourselves the same shoutout that I gave my sister, Susan, “you set your mind to a handful of things, followed through and got results.”

Stay Divine,

JL PARISH