Happy New Year!

Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?

I’m not one to make New Year’s resolutions, as historically I don’t stick with them. Instead, I tend to change my unhealthy patterns over a period, making small changes as I travel though life. Larger changes are harder to apply so I break them down into smaller adjustments. That’s how I have dealt with every challenge to my physical and mental health – slowly.

But this year is different. This year the I have made a change in career, a switch to focus on the other side of my life, such as healthy lifestyle, coaching, writing, blogging and speaking at venues. As I have said before, this is a big decision for me and not one I have made without anxiety.

This week Dreamy and I have taken ourselves away from normality to spend time with a close friend. I figured this was a good way of breaking from my old mindset. Perhaps this is not a new year’s resolution, but it is a new start for me.

As I sit here, and think back, I can see that the last 13 years have been a time of focusing on my accounting career. It has been a time of personal achievement, and also a time of loss of heart. In the last 10 years I have completed an MBA, changed my diet, lost a lot of weight, had three surgeries to remove the excess skin, studied to become a health coach and written and published a book. I have also enjoyed some challenging walks – around Uluru, King’s Canyon, Mt Kosciusko and New Zealand.

There was an incident which triggered this loss of heart, rejection from a significant church person whom I considered a friend. This created a great deal of angst for me. I questioned my faith and deepest motives. It was too hard to face, I shut down my heart and I pushed it all aside, throwing myself into the career in which I had been trained. Despite the difficult beginnings, the last 13 years have been a time of increased self-confidence, of proving to myself that I am capable, I can lose weight, hold down a good job, study successfully, be fit and healthy, change what I eat, be intelligent.

During this time, there was something stirring within which I pushed aside as well, until now. It has simmered gently in the background as I went about life, and it has coloured my decisions in a good way. It was also a time to learn how to love again, and this is what Dreamy has been to me.

Love does that. It has a way of finding some good even in tragedy and of helping us through the pain of it all. For many this year has been one of tragedy and heart break, of lost loved ones, loss of freedoms and choices. But I hope it is also one of profound change for good, just as it has been in my life.

As we start a new year together, let’s not forget love, for love brings the colour back into our dry, black and white lives. There is always love.

Happy New Year!

In love, Jenny

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