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A fresh start right now
“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” — J.B. Priestley

We are now into the New Year and a lot of us are probably wishing for that “fresh-start feel” we had on Jan. 1 when there was a blank slate before us.

It’s no different than a sports team that opens its season excited about the possibilities ahead only to suffer some misfortune or a losing streak early on.

But here’s the thing: Every day can be a fresh start if you commit to letting it be by letting go of what happened yesterday. So long as you continue to carry yesterday’s defeat (or the previous moment’s defeat) into the present it will quickly turn into your future.

I see it all the time in baseball. A player swings at a bad pitch early in an at-bat and the frustration carries over into the next pitch and suddenly that bad swing turns into a bad at-bat, which then turns into bat at-bats the rest of the game. A pitcher doesn’t execute a pitch the way he wants and gets angry at himself. That takes the focus off his next pitch which he leaves right down the middle and is hit for a home run.

We put so much hype on the beginning of a New Year or a new season/semester/sales month that we think it’s the only time that we can have a clean slate.
Today, realize that you can have a clean slate any time you would like simply by letting go of what has just happened and focusing on what you are doing right at this moment.