A New Year: Making Potential Real

2014 was like a long, painful birth. No quick push and it’s done. This labor lasted 365 days. And now that the pain is subsiding, I’m left with relief and a heart so full of joy, it has to be shared.

This life I hold in my hands, pristine and unscarred, will grow stronger every day. There’s so much to learn and experience.

So much potential.

The word makes my heart race.

I love that word because it “generally refers to a currently unrealized ability.”

Pause, and mull over that definition.

Unrealized ability.

This means you don’t have to rove the world looking for it–whatever “it” might be for you. It means, you–your soul, your mind, your SELF, contains these incredible abilities already. They’ve just not yet been set into motion.

So, I was wrong about something: you cannot become a new person. What you are inside, is the only raw material you have to work with. You can mold it and shape it and smooth out the imperfections. But what you are, what you really are, is there already.

That person who is 10 kg lighter, she’s there. Don’t make a resolution to find her–be her. Every day. Make the food choices she would make. Does she have cake on special occasions? Great. But it’s probably not on her breakfast menu. How does she carry herself? How does she react to temptation, like a plate of fresh-baked gluten-free cookies?

That woman, who squats 15 kg more, runs faster, does pull-ups without stopping–she makes time not excuses. She starts over with a lighter weight and jumps on bumpers because the plyo box still freaks her out. She spends five extra minutes after class trying to get her chin over the bar and repeatedly whips herself in the ass with the jumprope until she gets a double-under. Then she goes home.

The author, writing her novel. She’s there too. Clicking away at the keyboard every day. She makes choices. Five fewer minutes on Facebook. Five more minutes staring at her blank screen. And she writes something–anything. Even if it’s just one stupid, run-on sentence that will most likely be deleted.

What potential exists for you? What goals and dreams are inside, waiting to be realized?

I’m not making resolutions this year. I am just being myself. Being, not doing, as some dear friends of mine like to say.

Living. Loving. Staying aware of every little thing in this crazy life. Letting the good things fill my heart and soul. Letting the bad things drift away like a dying firework.

Thank God 2014 is over.

It made made me stronger.

But you couldn’t pay me to endure it again.

2015 has arrived.

Living.

Breathing.

Beautiful.

Crying out.

Kicking with potential.

Watch in wonder as it develops. Laugh when it does something new. Gasp when it stumbles.