The Power of "Thank You"

I had a nice long talk with a friend today. She's going through a lot this week...the way I think of it is she's experiencing many emotional deaths this week. Its all wrapped up in the anniversary of one death, and the birth of a new one. At the end of our talk, I made the suggestion to her to write a "Thank You" letter to each of her deaths...a tribute, if you will, to what her struggles taught her. The thought brought tears to her eyes and she told me that thought had actually occurred to her already. Send her your blessings please, she is in need of strength and encouragement right now.

But after I left her this afternoon, our conversation spun in my head and got me to start thinking about new beginnings. Here's what I came up with: whether with habits, relationships, or closets...in order to welcome something new, you must say goodbye to something old.  What better way to say goodbye to the old than to say 'thank you'? Because I will bet you my right shoe that you learned a great deal from the old. Hell, I'll throw in the left shoe that you're moving forward to something better BECAUSE of what you learned from the old.

Who are we if we ever abandon new beginnings? Worse yet, what if we never learn from what we leave behind? The toughest part of my conversation with my friend, what I want her to know with her whole body & soul, is that the past is exactly that...The Past. Gone. The Old. Thank it for the good it taught you and abandon the bull sh** that it tried to make you believe was true. Because your New Beginning is YOUR STORY. You hold the pen...write your next chapter on your terms and noone elses.

What did you struggle with today? Last year? Since childhood? What did it teach you, good and bad? How will you learn from it and write your New Beginning? Trust me here - when I say New Beginning, this could be changing careers or moving to a new state...to eating 1 vegetable a day because you eat absolutely none right now! There is no such thing as too small or too big! But it's your chapter...what will you write? You always have a choice. I pray you not only continue to write your own chapters, but that you write yourself an epic novel with many, many, many chapters...and at the end say, "Thank You".