Yes, you are once again coming to the close of another year. You are probably reflecting on your accomplishments, with much more focus on your failures. It’s amazing that as humans, we find it much easier to focus on and hold onto the falls, falters, failures, and losses that we experience, rather than celebrating the accomplishments and gains that occur within our lives. I am also sure that you are once again scrambling to make right what has been and what might still be wrong within your life over the past year. You would like to rewrite the script of your life experiences during the past year and in some cases start anew. However, whether you realize it or not, the reality is, you wrote the script for this year’s journey at the beginning of the year with each decision, each choice, and each action you took, which determined the ebbs and flows of the year and will also determine the outcome of this year for you.

The script you wrote for the direction, journey, and outcome of each of your life years is no different from the scripts that you have written for your relationship journeys and outcomes. If the outcome of each of your years is determined by how you start them, the outcome of each of your relationships is also determined by how you start them. So too, does the script you write for rearing your children determine their life direction. How you start directing and disciplining your children determines how they will progress or not progress through life.

If you don’t have boundaries and balance in your relationships, no boundaries and no discipline with your children, along with no boundaries and no direction with each of your life years, your relationships are doomed, your children travel down paths of disrespect, disappointments, lack of direction, and each of your years are fraught with a lack of direction, as well as no learning from your falters, falls, and failures. As a result, you keep repeating the negative actions, not profiting from the lessons, while entering and exiting each year the same.

At some point, it is time for you to recognize that you have more control over your life than you think, You also have much more power than you believe you have, and you are also much smarter than you give yourself credit. With this assurance of your ability to be able to plan and to direct your life, it also means that you have the power and the authority to decide the path, pattern, and direction of each year of your life.

Now, don’t get me wrong; there are many situations, circumstance, and occurrences in your life over which you have no control. There is a master plan for your life, controlled by God from on high. However, because you are made in His image, you have been afforded the ability to serve as one of the copilots of your life, lending credence to the strength and power God has given you. You were created with and endowed with the power to decide your present, your future, and your eventual fate in life. With that being said, you can also plan and guide each year of your life.

The reason why so many people feel like failures and believe that they have not accomplished anything in life by the end of each year, as they frantically strive to once again engage in making the proverbial annual new years resolutions, is because they make decisions on a whim, without assessing their past and current situations, and without planning, with goals and timelines. Often, the reality is that your year will end the way you start it. If you start your year without direction, it will probably end without direction. If you start your year without faith and a belief that you ARE meant to be successful, that you DESERVE to be successful, and that you ARE thus far successful, you will probably wind up being a failure. However, if you start your year speaking positively over yourself, speaking out loud positively about yourself, with a written action plan, including goals and timelines, you will see that each year of your life will end much more successfully.

You must start each year by seeing the glass as half full, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dark things seem in your life and around your life. Instead of seeing your falters, falls, failures, and losses as setbacks, begin to look at them as set asides, as well as setups for your great comebacks! You must take action, be patient and stand against all odds. There will must certainly be bumps and bruises in your life, but you must get up, brush yourself off, stand up, and move on after every bump, every bruise, every battle, every falter, every fall, every failure, and every loss. It’s not so much that you experience each of these disappointments; it’s what you do with the lessons that you are supposed to learn from the disappointments and how you use them to help direct or redirect your life.

If you are not willing to learn and implement your lessons from your life experiences, you are destined to repeat the same mistakes, make the same wrong and negative impacting decisions, and remain a member of the insanity club. As a result, you will continue determining the outcome of each of your years, because you will have started them without thinking of the end in mind, or without considering the outcome of your decisions and choices.

This year is an opportunity for you to take stock and examine this year in retrospect. You can’t undo what’s already been done; there is no reason to keep kicking yourself in your behind, and no reason to keep blaming yourself for wrong choices and bad decisions. It’s time for you to assess the negative and the positive aspects of your life, the negative and positive decisions you have made, the challenges you are facing, as well as your life dreams. You might not be able to go back and fix the mistakes or erase the past, but you can move forward and prepare for your future.

 Here’s your opportunity to prepare for 2019, but you must decide to move on from 2018, with a plan to move forward into 2019 and beyond. As you assess your 2018, set at least five goals for 2019. You are going to set your goals for three, six, nine, and twelve months. You will begin to take life in small chunks, instead of big hunks, as you have done in the past. The assessment process for 2018 should include you taking a panoramic view of the people you have in your life, including your friends. The assessment process entails you recognizing that everyone who has been with you during 2018 is not necessarily prepared to travel with you into 2019 and beyond.

Starting your year off in a positive direction in order to ensure that it ends in a positive direction is recognizing who are the assets and liabilities in your life, human and otherwise. It’s having the strength to remove the liabilities and strengthening your assets. It’s forgiving and letting go of any, everything, and everyone who has negatively impacted you. It is also forgiving you.

You can determine the outcome of each year of your life if you start the year correctly from the onset. Purpose, planning, direction, perseverance, and positioning yourself for success at the beginning of the year will most certainly help you to determine your year’s end, each and every time. Remember that although God is the creator and the author of your life, you are the finisher of your life. Start planning for next year this year. Expect the best and plan to receive the best in your life! You deserve it and you CAN and you WILL have a great year every year! Get started now! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

©2018; J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com