The New Year is Time for You to Finally Finish What You Started in the Old Year

In memory of Natalie Cole, one of my favorite female singers. Against all odds, she never gave up. She finished what she started!!

Happy 2016! You made it to a brand New Year! Unfortunately, there were many of our friends and relatives who did not cross over into the New Year. The mere fact that you are reading this blog means that you have another opportunity to focus on your life, as well as your life directions. What does this mean? In the scheme of things, YOU ARE BLESSED!

Once again you have left an old year behind you and embarked upon a new year. And yes, it might be true that you have had difficulties that visited you and your life during 2015. As a result, your life “ain’t been no crystal stair.”* However, if you can view the difficulties you experienced as visitors, instead of residents within your life, even in a new year, you will no longer abate or abandon set goals due to unforeseen obstacles in your life.

No matter what hands you were dealt in 2015, whether good, bad, or indifferent, you have beaten the odds by leaving the old year behind and being granted another opportunity to move forward into a new year. However, just because the previous year didn’t seem to be a stellar year for you, it doesn’t mean that you have to throw in the towel on the goals you set and the dreams you held. Remember, it’s not over until God says it’s over. You can’t and you won’t win if you decide to quit or give up.

Often with a New Year comes the mad dash for many of you to make New Year’s resolutions, including setting new goals and possibly evaluating opportunities for new life directions. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with setting new resolutions/goals, 2016 might finally be the year in which you handle your life, your life goals, and your life directions in a new and different manner. It is time for you to consider the many New Year's resolutions you have set at the beginning of past years, but never accomplished.

Aside from you engaging in the fallacy that each New Year means you must start over with new resolutions/goals, without completing what you started the year and years prior to the current New Year, is that you often focus on the external aspects of your life, instead of your internal self, which will illuminate aspects of your life that truly make you ‘tick.’

These internal aspects of your life are your reality. Your ‘refusal’ to complete your internal journey, which must accompany your New Year’s resolution/goal setting process, is your closet and/or hidden way of avoiding your engagement in self-confrontation. You don’t want to take a realistic look at you. You don’t want to deal with you or make the necessary changes within you, in order for you to become a better you. Much of this avoidance has to do with your internal fears. Your internal confrontation means that you will have to abandon your fears, abandon procrastination, and move past observation, to a high level of participation in achieving your resolutions/goals. Although this is what you stated you wanted to accomplish when you made your New Year’s resolutions and set goals.

In order for you to successfully pick up the scattered and broken pieces of the unfinished goals and dashed dreams of your life without starting over, it is important that you recognize that starting a new year doesn't mean you have to start over.  However, starting the New Year does mean it’s time for you to decide to no longer procrastinate, but to finally motivate yourself, participate in the process, and activate your efforts to complete what you started in the past years, in the New Year!   In other words, it is time for you to finally finish what you started! Continuing your previous resolutions/goals into the New Year is not an indictment of you, and it doesn’t mean that you failed. What it does say about you is that you are NOT a quitter!

This New Year might finally be the time for you to decide to break from your broken traditions and no longer scramble to make New Year’s resolutions/goals based on past habits. This New Year is probably time for you to take stock of the past year, as well as your past five years, to assess and evaluate the goals you set during each of the years. It is also time for you to acknowledge the goals you achieved, as well as those you left on the table or in some other compartments of your life. Ask yourself, ‘why are you rushing to make new goals in the New Year when you didn't complete your goals in the past five years?!’

Starting this New Year, 2016, it is time for you to learn to take life one day at a time. Too often, many of you bite off more than you can chew. Your New Year’s resolutions/goals should be as specific goals. They should be realistic, measurable, and attainable. They should not be lofty, ‘pie-in-the-sky’ resolutions/goals. Your failure to fulfill your New Year’s resolutions in the past has many times been because of the lofty ones you developed. Your resolutions/goals should start out small and in the form of resolutions/goals that you can actually achieve. They should not be pipe dreams.

You must have a master plan, which is clear and succinct. Your resolutions/goals should be written for accomplishing in small chunks and not big hunks (3, 6, 9, 12 months). Prepare for sidesteps and not set backs. It is easier to recover from a side step than it is from a set back. Some of the yearly resolutions/goals you set might need to be extended beyond the year in which you set them; some might need to be amended during the year; and some resolutions/goals might need to be completely eliminated. Be willing to cut your losses. 

Each year should have you engaged in a process of goal defining and goal refining. If you can’t define your goals, you shouldn’t engage in making them. And as you engage in your yearly physical, financial, and other checkups, you should also engage in monthly goal checkups.

If you don’t attain your resolutions/goals within the year in which you made them, it’s okay for you to carry them over to the next year. Remember, carry over doesn’t mean you are rolling over or folding over. It simply means that for once in your life you are going to finish what you started, even if it takes you a little longer, including another year.

As you engage in attaining the resolutions/goals you set aside for various reasons, including not having the time, the patience, the tenacity, the motivation, or other deal breaking reasons over the past few years, you might want to engage with an accountability partner. This person can help you to remain focused, hopeful, and faithful. Your accountability partner can provide shoulders for you to lean on, as you provide shoulders for him/her to lean on. The accountability should be a reciprocated process.

So what are the steps to you completing your new Year’s resolutions/goals that you did not complete or that you compartmentalized from last year or in previous years?

1.     ADMIT & ASSESS the resolutions/goals that you have left incomplete or abandoned over the past five years…WRITE THEM DOWN.

2.     IDENTIFY & Develop clear & specific WRITTEN RESOLUTIONS/GOALS/PLANS with action words (WHAT do you want to accomplish--define them); Include TIME FRAMES & TIME LINES for accomplishing your resolutions/goals  (WHEN--3, 6, 9, or 12 months); Identify RESOURCES (WHAT/WHOM do you need to accomplish your resolutions/goals)…human, financial, or otherwise; Identify SPECIFIC AVTION STEPS necessary for you to achieve your goals (HOW you are going to get there); List your EXPECTED/ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES (WHAT are your expectations related to your resolutions/goals? WHAT do you want to accomplish?)

3.     Develop CONTINGENCY GOALS/PLAN…a backup plan (WHAT IF something happens along the way to ACCOMPLISHING your original goal plan?)

4.     Identify an ACCOUNTABLITIY PARTNER; someone you can speak with on a weekly basis, for encouragement, focusing on your goals. He/she must have faith, must believe in you & must believe, ‘YES YOU CAN!’

5.     Have a YES I CAN ATTITUDE-You must believe in yourself!

6.     Posses EXPECTED OPTIMISM, believing that the outcomes of your resolutions/goals can only result in a win-win experience

7.     REMAIN FOCUSED on your resolutions/goals. In other words, keep your eyes on the prize 

8.     Engage in monthly resolutions/goals check ups, assessments and evaluations. Are you on track with your written goals & action plan to accomplish your resolutions/goals? Which resolutions/goals do your need to REVISE, REWARD, RELEASE or  RELINQUISH?

9.     Mobilize or revitalize your SPIRITUAL CONNECTIONS. Pray without ceasing and recognize that it’s not all about you, but a higher power & that you can’t accomplish your resolutions/goals by yourself.

10.  Be PATIENT-It takes time to accomplish your resolutions/goals

11.  Keep MOTIVATED & ACTIVATED!

12.  Don’t be afraid to LE GO! Know when to CUT YOUR LOSSES-remember the meaning of insanity. When you have constantly gone down the same path, and received the same negative results, it is now time for you to go in a different direction. You might need to relinquish your resolution/goal.

13.  Don’t be afraid to CONTINUE ON with your unfinished or delayed resolutions/goals

14.  Prepare your children for completing what they started and not having to start over. Serve as a role model for them!

Remember, a New Year means that the calendar has only changed to a new day, in a new year, with the same you! You have to decide how to continue what you were doing yesterday--today, in a new manner, in a NEW YEAR, that will help you to accomplish new results!

*Langston Hughes' “Mother to Son”

©2015; J.Morley Productions; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

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Being Let Down & Being Let Go During the Holidays Doesn’t Mean Giving Up

The holiday season is supposed to be a time of love, merriment, good cheer, good tidings, sharing, giving, and above all compassion. It is one of my most favorite times of the year. The colorful decorations, the bright Christmas lights, the Christmas carolers, the holiday parties, the hustle and bustle of shopping, along with the beautifully wrapped gifts, all help to brighten spirits and lighten moods.

All of the above sounds great, as long as nothing or no one interferes with the sense of utopia!  Does the Grinch really exist? Does he just lurk around to spoil your holiday season with his unexpected and unwanted antics? Unfortunately the Grinch doesn’t just exist during the holiday season; he throws a wrench into your life three hundred and sixty-five day of the year. He playa hates and seeks to   make your life downright miserable.

For many of you, the holiday season brings back memories of loss and loneliness. And for many more of you, it is a time of let downs and disappointments by family members, spouses, mates, friends, and coworkers. It is also a time that many of you have been let go…from jobs, from relationships, from business deals, and from other engagements that you thought would exist for an extended period of time.    

Being let down and being let go is a very difficult experience, no matter what time of the year they occur. The impact of these experiences can be GREAT, and in some cases GRAVE! Along with the unexpected let downs and the lack of preparedness associated with being let go comes many unpleasant emotions.

Being let down and let go not only affects you emotionally, but also psychologically, physically, spiritually, socially, and economically. You will probably experience feelings of rejection, isolation, betrayal, confusion, anger, sadness, despair, depression, loneliness, hopelessness, disappointment, stress, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and homicidal thoughts. Although these feelings can occur any time you experience being let down or let go, the holiday season tends to exacerbate these emotions.

Having these emotions is not the major issue; it’s what you do with them that will make the difference. With assistance from family, friends, and mental health professionals, you can learn to manage your emotions and move forward. You must remember; just as the holiday season passes, whatever is taking place in your life will also pass. It is imperative that you do not make long-term decisions over short-term problems.

But then you have to ask yourself, ‘was I wearing blinders or rose-colored glasses and couldn’t see or did I not want to see the let down or the let go coming?’   Too often, when others betray you, reject you, or unfairly dismiss you, the first place you tend to go is to blame yourself. And too often, you try to put your foot in your own behind, blaming yourself for the let down or the let go you experienced.

Ask yourself if you would’ve been prepared for the let down or the let go whenever it took place. Would January, March, May, or any other months have made the acts of rejection and betrayal more palatable for you? The reality is that pain and disappointment are the same, whenever they occur. Because we have been socialized to expect wonderful things and grand acts of kindness to take place during the Christmas holiday season, we find ourselves devastated when the opposite occurs.

Isn’t it amazing that your mate decided to dump you during the holidays? Guess what? He/she probably wanted to dump you all along! The holidays seem to be the right time to do so. It means one less gift for him/her to purchase. And he/she seemed to use the holiday season as the reason to dump you and hide amidst the hustle and bustle of the season. You might be better off being dumped! You get to end your year free and start your new year free.

 The boss who let you go…he/she, like your mate, hid behind the merriness of the season to fire you and tie up loose ends before the New Year arrives. The overall message is, he/she doesn’t want to take you into the New Year, in an effort to cut losses.’ In all actuality, this seeming setback can be a setup for you to move up! Sometimes, doors that need to be open will remain closed, until the doors that need to be closed are closed.

I know it seems heartless and compassionless to have someone to trample on your emotions, impact and sometimes destroy your earning capacity, while many times inhibiting and/or prohibiting your ability to move forward; especially during the holiday season. And it is probably just as heartless and compassionless as you believe! But in some cases, you must evaluate your options. If there is something to be done to cure the let down or the let go you have experienced, as well as the process and outcome of the experience, then fighting back will be an asset rather than a liability. By all means, get up and fight! What do you have to lose?! After all, “Being let down & being let go during the holidays does not mean giving up.”  

As the holiday season comes, it will go. So, too, will your pain, disappointment, disgrace, and other negative emotions associated with the seemingly callous act put forth against you. The reality is, just because you have been let down, knocked down, or let go, it doesn’t mean you have to lie down or stay down. You can get back up! What seems to be a door closing on you and on your future can become an opportunity for many great doors to open for you and in front of you. You can get back up and you can once again look up!

Here are some pointers in helping you to handle being let down or let go, not only during the holiday season, but three hundred and fifty days of the year.

1.     Recognize that in life, there will always be let downs & you will be let go by someone or from something. Don’t put your eggs in one basket. Relationships are not guaranteed, and jobs and other agreements are not guaranteed forever. The holiday season does not bring an exception to the rule!

2.     Recognize that sometimes the decisions made by others have nothing to do with you. The person who lets you down or lets you go sometimes suffer from selfishness, engage in politics, and they have a need for control, face insecurity, inadequacy, and fear. They many times project these negative attributes on to others and seem to enjoy letting others down and letting them go; all in the name of control.

3.     Assess your role in the let down and the let go. What could you have done differently? Did you really have any control over the situation or the outcome in the first place?

4.     Recognize that what you view as a let down could actually be the set up you need in order for you to get up and move up!

5.     Recognize that being let go could be an opportunity for you to be set free.

6.     Don’t be afraid to own your feelings and confront them. Decide to get up out of your bed of despair, desperation, and depression each and every day. Open your blinds/curtains everyday when you arise, even if the sun is not shining on the outside.

7.     Recognize that YOU are in control of YOU! Don’t wallow in your pain. Remember the reason for the season. Remember, just like the holiday season, the let downs and the let go’s of life will also pass!

8.     Engage with PPGP’s…Positive People Going Places. See the holiday season as an opportunity for you to enlarge your territory, meet new people, and to seize a chance to be introduced to new and greater opportunities.

9.     Remember; when the weight of the let down and being let go becomes too heavy for your shoulders and too large for your heart…PUT THEM DOWN! TALK WITH SOMEONE; FOCUS ON THE POSITIVE & NOT THE NEGATIVE. Start looking through your windshield of life, which is much larger than the rear view mirror of your let down or you being let go; even during the holidays

10.  And if you can’t reach within yourself to find the strength to go on and move on, seek the help of a professional. THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR YOU TO MAKE A LONG-TERM DECISION OVER A SHORT-TERM PROBLEM! GET UP & MOVE UP!

©2015; J.Morley Productions, Inc; P.O. Box 1745; Decatur, GA 30031; 770-808-6570; www.doctorjoyce.com

Allowing Truth to Reign Over the Lies & Pain in Your Life

It is interesting how many people would rather hear and accept a lie, rather than hear and accept the truth. Like you, most people don’t wan to hear the truth, let alone face the truth. To some, facing the truth is like undergoing a test. And you have determined in your mind, ‘if found out, life will be over for me.’ However, life can be over for you much sooner with a lie than with the truth. Uncovering the truth can and will uncover new and grand opportunities for you, setting you free to be you!

Yes, I know; sometimes the truth hurts. In the scheme of things, a lie hurts much worse than the truth. And guess what? You will eventually get over the hurt and the pain associated with the truth. However, lies are much more detrimental and devastating than the truth could ever be, and lies tend to live on forever. If you are like me, you have been lied on and lied to. I am sure you can remember the astonishment, the pain, the devastation, as well as the struggle and wasted time it took for the truth to be uncovered, in order to free you from a possible loss, scandal, embarrassment, or other emotional, financial, and economical devastations. Two of my major pet peeves are people who lie to me or lie on me! There is no reason for a lie; so why are you lying when you know the pain associated with lies?!

I know for many of you, life can become a daunting task at times. You seem to spend most of your days struggling with which side of the fence you will stand, whose side you should take in an argument, and whether to take a stand or stance for a cause; if you take a stand at all. Along with the aforementioned, you also probably struggle with whether you should stand for what you KNOW is right, or whether you should continue to sit idly by, accepting the wrongs in life, watching truth fly out the windows of your life, while allowing lies to become the norm, rather than the exception.

When you denounce the truth you allow others to pronounce and to promote who they want you to be and how they want you to be. If you are not able to live in and with the truth, allowing the measure of who you are to be determined by your yardstick, you will exist, based on the truths of others, which becomes your lie. As a matter of fact, your lies are your denial of the truth.

It is even more challenging for you to perpetrate a fraud each and every day, abandoning the real you, while accepting a pseudo you, just so that you can fit, where you really don’t belong anyhow, forcing yourself to live one continuous lie after another! Okay, I know it is difficult and painful to admit your role in the fiction you have created in your life, about your life, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t abandon the lies that have permeated your life and begin to live in truth…FOR REAL!

Lies are cousins to deceit, secrets, betrayal, denial, avoidance, and confusion. When you tell one lie, you must keep telling them in order to cover the lie you told before. And I am sure you have heard of pathological liars. These people tend to tell a lie each time they open their mouths. They lie for the sake of lying and don’t even know they are lying most of the time. Lies reign over truth and their every waking moment is some faction of a lie.

When you lie about your education, you must lie to get the job, and keep lying in order to maintain the job, always looking over your shoulders and behind your back. If you lie about your health status, especially related to STD’s, you will continue to deceive the woman or man who chooses to sleep with you, endangering their health and their life. When you lie about your marital status or sexuality, you increase the risk of the number of people hurt or killed. While truth is your freedom, lies are your emotional, psychological, physical, economical, and spiritual bondage!

My mother used to say, ‘a liar will cheat, a liar will steal, and a liar will kill in order to cover his/her lie.’ As long as you continue to live a life of lies, continue to walk in lies, speak lies, and accept the bondage associated with lies, you are a lie and you are perpetrating a fraud. This fraud begins to dictate the lies you tell about who you are, what you have, where you are, where you came from, what you have accomplished, and where you are going. As a matter of fact, the more you engage in perpetrating a fraud, the more you begin to believe that the lies you have been perpetrating are truths.

If you aren’t living truth, you are living a lie. It is incumbent upon you to decide if you want to continue down a path of untruths and fantasy, or are you willing to take the risk to face actualities, no matter how difficult or how painful. Many times you avoid facing and living in truth because your reality is too painful and you will have to view, see, and accept some things, some situations, and some people in a totally different light in which you have been accustomed. 

As a matter of fact, once the truth is out, it moves in a straight line, eventually fading away, losing its relevancy. On the other hand, lies are spun like a spider’s web. Once you start telling them, you become entangled in them, and you weave others into your web of lies; whether they want to be a part of them or not. Unlike the truth, lies never die; they multiply! They have a domino effect, knocking down everyone and everything in its path.

A lie is a nothing more than a grandiose disguise of the truth of who you are, what you are, what you stand for, where you are, where you have been, and where you are going. A lie makes you invisible, because you have decided to hide from the truth.

Truth is freedom and freedom allows you to be you. Once you seek truth, see truth, accept truth, and begin to live in truth, you are free to make choices based on who you are and not based on who and what others want you to be. Your freedom through truth allows you to be human, to fall, to falter, and to fail. The freedom associated with truth also allows you to get back up without guilt, shame, or embarrassment, boldly pronouncing and announcing your strength, without denouncing who you are.

Although the truth might be painful when you have to face it, a lie is not only painful when you face it, but the impact and effects are greater even after you have faced it. A lie implies that you and others are not worthy. A lie also implies that everyone else is stupid but you, ‘I can say anything and you will believe it,’ and that ‘everyone plays a fool ALL the time.’ When you lie to or on someone, you are basically calling them an ‘ASS.’

Your engagement in perpetuating lies is often evidence of you looking on the outside to fix the inside, not recognizing that the truth you have been avoiding and many times the truth that you have been seeking for so long, exists within you, and not on the outside of you. Your lies are further indication of you running away from something or someone, and on some occasions, you running toward something or someone, desperately trying to find that piece of you that seems lost.

Your lies are also indication of you making attempts to deal with your brokenness. However, in all actuality, the lies in which you seek solace for your brokenness, pain, and lost state of being, often exacerbates the raw emotion for which you are trying to cover and escape. It is at this time that you can begin to weigh the benefits of how much better you will begin to feel, once again begin to breathe, find relief, and move forward in your life by seeking and confronting the truths needed to really heal and end your brokenness. 

The problem with walking in truth and living in truth is you first must take the time to define truth. However, you cannot define truth based on your biases of the truth. The true definition of truth must be based on your life’s reality, as well as the reality around you and in which you exist. Further, when defining truth, it is important to decide whose truth is it? Is it the truth based on your reality, or truth based on someone else’s REALITY?

One thing you must remember, no matter how many lies you tell and no matter what measures you undertake to cover your lies, eventually, the he truth will be uncovered and truth reigns! There is no such thing as ‘a little white lie!’ A lie is a lie, is a lie, no matter who tells it, when it is told, where it is told, or how it is told, and lies should never be minimized.

Don’t dismay; you can and will recover from a lie and from being a liar. In order to recover, you must engage in a process of discovery or rediscovery. You must discover or rediscover who you are. Talk with family members and friends to unveil the truths you have evaded and buried deep within. Get with a mental health professional or life coach in order for you to begin to sort out, gain insight, and understanding as to your reasons for your lying, including who and what you were running away from or running to. You must also be willing to ask for forgiveness from those people you have hurt with your lies. However, the main person you have to forgive is yourself!

Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today…here is your opportunity to remove yourself from the clouds of lies, into the sunshine of TRUTH! It is time for you to abandon a life of lies and the bondage associated with it, as you embrace truth’s freedom, recognizing the gain associated with truth, instead of living in the pain associated with lies.  No matter what happens, truth reigns!! 

©2015; J. Morley Productions, Inc. P.O. Box 1745, Decatur, GA, 30031; www.doctorjoyce.com; 770-808-6570