Photo by M0les via flickr
The reason we all like New Year’s resolutions so much is that represent hope. The days ahead of us are bursting with potential, just waiting to be squeezed for all they’re worth. Each and every day is pregnant with possibility. For a while at the beginning, we truly believe we can do anything.
Somehow along the way, after we’ve only squeezed a few days for perhaps a third of what they’re worth (and we’re lucky if it’s that much, really), we notice that it’s not as easy as we want it to be, and we do a little less than we should, and all that potential goes to waste.
But there’s always potential, right up until our dying breath. There is always hope.
I think of the lessons I want to teach my daughter, how I want her to always strive to be exactly the person she wants to be. I want her to know every moment of her life that she is capable of anything. I want her to know that she has unlimited potential.
Because each and every one of us has unlimited potential. What’s more, we don’t just have potential: we arepotential. Without getting too quantum physics about it, we are energy, we are thought, we are action. Put those three things together, and what do you have? Why, possibility. Hope. Potential.
We are, all of us, infinite potential.
In the past months, it’s occurred to me that I use my weight as an excuse for not reaching my full potential. I use it as an excuse for not writing that best-seller, or for not making $12k a day, or for not changing out of my pajamas on any given day, or for whatever it is. But the fact is, that potential is still there. After all, I have the potential to change my weight.
I can see a Potential Me. I see her slim and toned, practicing yoga and running marathons, enjoying fruits and vegetables fresh from her garden, living, laughing, learning, teaching. Living in joy. Realizing her potential.
It’s not the new year that’s full of potential–it’s you. It’s me. It’s my daughter. It’s everyone. The question is, how are you going to use it?
