Just a few days ago, I was explaining to my first graders why the sun doesn’t move, why the Earth does, and that the sun is actually a star. Most of them looked at me with eyes as big as golf balls, while some were still confused and scratching their heads. Then, of course, just for kicks, I asked them how long they think it takes the Earth to go all the way around the sun. One of them shouted “one thousand years” and there were some giggles, including my own. I took my black marker and wrote “1 year” on the board.
There’s three hundred and sixty-five days in a year. Four seasons a year. Fifty-two weeks a year. Who you are at day one compared to day three hundred and sixty-five can be as different as day and night. Day one and day three hundred and sixty-five look like completely different worlds for me: some of the people, the expectations, the goals, some of the responsibilities, et cetera. It’s not at all a bad thing that things have changed either.
I’ve said it before in one of my posts (and if I didn’t, I’m saying it now) that this year I truly learned and understand now what motivation does to a person, and the power of one’s mind. There are a plethora of different situations that affect a person so very deeply: financial hardship, heartbreak, losing things or people, moving, and many others. They help bind together the fabric of our being, for better or for worse. Up until now, I never actually applied the whole idea that “what you think is what you become”. And I gotta say that so far, it does wonders. This is something I live by now.
I’m not saying that overnight if you continually think to yourself “I’m going to be a millionaire” that you’re going to wake up to a text notification about some mysterious deposit into your bank account for six digits. But it’s the idea that if you want something bad enough, you drill it into your life–the habits, the mindset, the tools needed to get there–until eventually, it becomes second nature and you’ve accomplished what you want to, and chase the next big thing.
Maybe I can blame teaching for this, but this year has shaped me into someone unafraid to make a fool of myself. I’ve done crazy things in front of my students, made mistakes, taken criticism and nasty comments, and received compliments too. Not everyone is going to love me, and I’m finally okay with that. But if anything, it has brought the right people into my life because I don’t go chasing people anymore. I’m not afraid to cut out the negatives either, the things that bring me down.
When the time comes next year and I think about the last three hundred or so days of my life, I hope I feel the same sense of determination and joy knowing where I was in January is not the same place as where I am in December. The next year is all that we make it, all the little actions that we take. So take out those old diary entries, bucket lists, whatever you have buried in your closets. I hope that this is the year that you, too, chase those far away dreams you think about when you lay down at night. Become the person you want to be, shape the world to that of your dreams. The possibilities stop where your imagination does.
