Ugh! Yeah! Or Whatever. It is a New Year.
We all have emotions or even hang-ups about different holidays. It seems that New Year’s Day is overlooked. When you look at your email inbox, however, you will see that there are a lot of ways you “should” feel. I am curious, which mug and glasses are you?
It seems to funny to pick a mug, but I was thinking of my coffee at the time of writing this. I love coffee. Mugs can be really personal. So can how you have your coffee made, for that matter. Here are the ways I see a person looking at the New Year.
Guilt-this mug weighs us down. On the flip side, it may be filled with an amazing, but expensive latte with whipped cream and lovely syrup designs on top! You are the person who knows you should make a goal or resolution for the new year, but in all honesty you really do not want to. Or you know you would just have it weigh you down a month in. We look at all of those “challenges” in our inbox and think, “yeah, I totally need to do a finance challenge” or “definitely need to do an organization challenge” and then we know life will catch up to us at least by the third week of January and we will bail on the challenge. So we look at the New Year with a “shoulda, coulda but just can’t” kind of attitude and feel badly about it.
New start-this mug is the Pollyanna of mugs. Somehow, one day on the calendar makes the previous 365 days go away along with all of the disappointments. This mug is filled to the brim with a delectable drink while excitedly filling out a new yearly calendar and looking at a whole year’s worth of aspirations. You are the person who is thrilled to look at a new vision in your business and how that will fit into this upcoming year. You have been anxiously awaiting the end of this past year because it just felt heavy with loose ends and decisions or goals you would rather kick to the curb. The start of the New Year gives you an excuse to erase the board and start completely new. You feel invigorated by the thought of a new start.
Just a Day-this mug, in a way, is the most realistic of the three. This mug is probably filled with hot water and lemon, the bills are still due and lemon is great for the digestive tract. You are the person that realizes that a new year is simply a day in the year. It is still the middle of the school year, the middle of winter, a beginning of a month, like 12 other months, nothing is different except the number on the calendar. You had to get up yesterday to your reality and you have the same reality tomorrow. A New Year did not change who or what you face, at all. Maybe you will find time to celebrate, after all, a reason to have a celebration is good, you know, like Cinco de Mayo, but there is no reason to change your whole perspective on life.
Regardless of what we feel about a a new day in a new year and how we react to that (mugs) many of us still have emotions about what we should do at the end of the year. It is a culmination of sorts. Do we reflect and be grateful on the year past, do we look at how we have grown or could grow in the future and get busy or do we look at our impact in the past and present and look towards the upcoming year as one with a better outcome?
Reflection: aviator glasses, so you can have a reflection and look in to the past. When you head into the New Year, you are not looking at goals, challenges, resolutions, etc. You are looking at this past year. What happened? Did it live up to your expectations? Did you accomplish what you had hoped? Are you happy with the way things have gone in your life? In your family? In your world? The person who looks carefully at the New Year with a vision of reflection is honoring the year gone by and assessing where they fit in it.
Eagerness: glasses with eye’s wide open so that this person can be ready for anything that happens in the present. The people who have plans laid out and goals to start are living in the “now.” There is an eagerness to get started. There is no melancholy over the year gone by, it is gone. There is only what can be done in this new year? How fast can I get started? I have my list of what I want to accomplish ready!
Hope: Heart glasses to represent emotion and looking towards the future. If you are a person full of hope in the New Year, you are also the “middle of the road.” You look at what has preceded this year and hope that more can be done in the upcoming one. You choose two or three main areas of your life that you want to see a change in and hope you can make some adjustments. Hope looks toward the future with positivity.
What I find interesting is when you mix the mugs and the glasses. You can get seemingly opposites joining. For example, a person who is “Just a Day” but chooses “Hope” as their eyeglasses. Which mug and glasses are you? I am probably the most annoying of them all:
New Start and Eagerness!
Bring on the New Year!