Boy, I wish I’d written this…

My daughter, Mary and I share a propensity for collecting quotes.  I have a folder on my desktop for that specific purpose.  Mary sent me this quote about three weeks ago.  I wish I’d written it.

You know, words are powerful, and the process of writing — feeling the sentiment and expressing it so that others feel what you were feeling is such a difficult thing to do. Honing those words is an art, just like shaping a piece of pottery or capturing an image on film.  Writing requires that you feel those feelings before you can record them. I walked away from this collection of words thinking, “yes.  Yes.  YES.” I hope it inspires you the way it did me.

 

“This year is not last year. This year is different. Time has its way of growing forward and changing everything in the process. Changing everything, including you. The things you know, the things you want, the things you can do. This year you can do more than just let those changes happen. You can remember all that life’s struggles have taught you about being resilient. That’s a beautiful promise that you can make to yourself, to rebound from anything that has challenged you. To remember, that it’s not what happens to you that matters, but who you become in response. To leave the past in the past. To remind yourself, every day, how full of promise every minute is right now. You must not forget all the ways you are a leader or underestimate the things you can do. It’s so easy to think that your strengths don’t matter, or that you’re not as good as you’d like to be. It’s so easy to focus on the ways that you let yourself down. But this year is it’s own new year. You can choose to believe in yourself, you can look for beauty in everything. You can be mindful of the purpose that you bring to every single thing that matters and the power that comes from that purpose. What’s different now is that you are different. You are wiser in all the ways that time makes us wise. You are braver in all the ways that life compels us to be brave. That’s what’s different about this year. The things experience has taught you, the way you know that opportunity is only there if you look for it, that believing in your own strength makes it real, and that the only way to make the most of your one precious life is to discover what you want and go get it.”

Happy New Year, everyone.