How to Use Your 2016 Lessons to Increase Your 2017 Blessings

Happy New Year!

Okay, let’s be real here! You have made your New Year’s Resolutions year after year, as you did for this New Year, but they seem to be recycled from one year to the next. I am sure that you are wondering why you seem no farther ahead at the start of 2017, than you did at the start of 2016, or the preceding years. But, have you ever taken the time to just stop in the midst of your years, at least every three months and ask yourself a few questions? What are you trying to resolve and/or accomplish during the year, that you did not resolve and/or accomplish during the previous yeas? What kept you from resolving and/or accomplishing what you set out to resolve and/or accomplish in previous years? Do these year after year promises involve a romantic or plutonic situation, employment, a move, finances, negative habits of procrastination, or any other negative habits that you have been trying to break for quite sometime? As a matter of fact, where are you trying to go and how do you plan to get there in 2017, that is different from where you were trying to go and where you where trying to get to in 2016 and other years?

Yes, I’ve given you quite a few questions for you to not only ask yourself, but to answer for yourself. Your past lack of accomplishments regarding your previous New Year’s resolutions probably occurred for many reasons. One of the major reasons for your lack of accomplishments in attaining the milestones that you set for yourself year after year, as each year winds down, has been because you have constantly overlooked your current position in life, moving on your own trajectory, and not the trajectory which has been established for you by a higher power. You have ignored the red flags that signaled for you to stop, closed your eyes and your mind to the yellow flags of caution, waived white flags of surrender when you should have continued moving forward on your journey, and your life’s realities were based on the life perspectives of others.

Somehow, each year you focused more on your failures, your setbacks, and what they took out of you or from you, rather than the messages to you and for you, as well as what you could get and take away from each year. And believe me, there were many messages and much for you to take away from each and every experience, each and every year.

Each year of your life has included let downs, setbacks, set asides, setups, pick-ups, and opportunities for you to get up, straighten up, and look up. However, too often, you have ignored the information afforded you through your life experiences, life circumstances, and life situations. With each of your life experiences, each life circumstance, and each life situation, whether good or bad, positive or negative, there is and has been a message. And with each message, there is and has been a lesson. But, if you didn’t look, if you didn’t listen to or hear the message, you most likely missed the lesson.  Hence, you learned absolutely little or nothing, and you wonder why you seem to be stuck in the same hole, with the same people, making he same amount of money, living in the same house, going in the same direction, on the same path to nowhere!

Lessons are for you to learn and grow, in order for you to successfully conquer your now situation (today) in preparation for your later position (tomorrow). Lessons are designed to help you to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. In other words, lessons are gifts granted to you through God, so that you will surrender your membership in the insanity club. The people you deal with, the circumstances you face, and the situations you find yourself in might bring about some tough messages, but it is God who helps you to learn the lessons so that your next time won’t be a recycled time of the same experiences, while you expect different results.

But, if you have not learned from your letdowns, setbacks, and set asides, you will not see and be prepared for the setup being put in place for your great come back! What you thought would take you out and do you in in 2016 and previous years only strengthened you to stand tall and walk in your destiny in 2017. Instead of looking at what you didn’t accomplish in 2016 and past years as defeats, you can consider them a retreat, a part of the master plan to catapult you to the heights you are destined to achieve.

It is not so much that you have fallen, faltered, or failed; it’s what you learned about your fall, your falter, and your failure. It is also how you get back up or if you get back up. It’s imperative that in 2017, you finally recognize that for every lesson, there is a silver lining for a blessing for you. As it is what you do with the falls, falters, and failures of life that determine how and when your life gets on track or back on track, it is the same with the lessons shown to you each year. What you do with them has a profound impact on your current and future life directions.

You can make as many New Year’s Resolutions as you desire. Your resolutions are basically promises that you have made to yourself. However, promises without plans, directions, and steps to reach them are empty. It is time for you to make your resolutions or self-promises based on plans related to the lessons you have gathered and learned each previous year.

Your 2017 can and will be a much better year if you are willing to revisit the journey you took during 2016, in order to gather the lessons you learned, as well as the meaning of each lesson. Once you have documented your learned lessons, as well as the meanings for you, it is imperative that you devise a plan for you to let your 2016 lessons become and increase your 2017 blessings!    

The New Year is a time for you to:

·      Take the time to understand who you are

·      Finally accept who you are

·      Keep a daily journal, chronicling the lessons presented to you and before you…large and small

·      Accept where you’ve been (failures, frailties, successes)

·      Identify the lessons provided to and for you in 2016, that will move you forward in 2017; assess the assets & liabilities, using them accordingly

·      Recognize the difference between WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU & WHAT HAPPENED FOR YOU—Focus on WHAT HAPPENED FOR YOU!

·      Decide where you are going based on the lessons learned

·      Decide where you want to be based on the lessons learned

·      Decide to forgive yourself

·      Decide to love you unconditionally (including your falls, falters & failures)

·      Charge or recharge your spiritual connection or reconnect

·      Search & define the meaning of your life & the meaning for your life, for today and in the future

·      Decide to identify & walk in your destiny

·      Recognize that 2016 was but another chapter in your life; take what you need from it, glance at it every now & then, but move out of it & move into your 2017 chapter of life, with open eyes

·      Swallow your pride & recognize that everyone CANNOT & SHOULD NOT go with you into your 2017 next chapter of your life. Sort the people who are assets from those who are liabilities

·      Remember, the measure of who you are & where you are going, has to be determined by YOU & your own yardstick…not someone else’s yardstick

·      Develop new ideas

·      Develop new life directions (goals, with timelines & action steps)

·      Develop a NEW attitude—A WINNING ATTITUDE, moved by inner love, inner success, self-respect, and self-direction

·      Always remember to PRAY!

·      Don’t sweat the small stuff!

·      USE YOUR 2016 LESSONS TO INCREASE YOUR 2017 BLESSINGS!

©2016 J. Morley Productions, Inc.; P.O. Box 1745, Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com