The end of 2011 was a blur for most of us.  Our current American society has managed to cram several holidays in the last 4 months of the year that carry both nostalgic fuzzy feelings as well as hectic stress-inducing circumstances.

While we look ahead at the clean time slate of 2012 today, we’re able to “close the book” on whatever we missed in 2011.  We learned more this past year that the year before that and hopefully we’ll enjoy the new adventures ahead.

Many of us may be currently in a grind. The sort of mundane, mind-draining kind where you begin to resent getting up in the morning and having to face the day once again.  It may seem too easy to say, but we really can change that.  We can decide to walk away and do something different.

This past year I can admit to those reading that I did find myself slipping into ruts from time to time and pushed myself so hard to try to control everything in those backward slides of mood and life happenings.  However, I also learned that when I made the decision consciously to change my reaction and thus attitude to whatever was going on, it made a positive difference.

We may not have control of everything swirling about us, but we do have our will to react how we decide is the way.  So someone cuts you off on the road. You can yell at them, cuss, make a nonverbal gesture or you can simply shrug and wish that poor person well since they must be having quite the day, life or just are downright rude.  I’m not proposing how you should respond to that road rage-inducing occurrence, rather I’m illustrating that you do have the choice–you decide, no one else.

In a world that seem so overrun with situations out of our control and scope of influence, we really are more powerful than we realize. We can either let our life run on automatic and complain about the bumps and wrong turns in our journey here or we can take the manual route and actively engage with the seen and unforeseen adventures that inundate us.

May your loose ends from 2011 be thread into the new strands of 2012.  There is so much more ahead, I wish you and your loved ones good health and happiness in this new year.

R.V.S.B.