Happy New Year and I hope that it will be your best ever. No matter where you happen to be right now, by the end of this year every thing in your life will look very different. Don’t believe me? Just for a moment, look back on this time last year.

Life was so different back then. Look how far you have come. Look at the decisions and choices you have made to get to where you are now. Its actually quite amazing the changes you have been through in 12 months and you’d better believe it, by the end of this year, the changes will be even more profound.

So its time to bless 2010 with love, and look forward to new beginnings in 2011.
Whatever life took away from you last year - let it go. When ever you surrender and just give in to letting go of the past, you give yourself permission to be fully alive in the present moment. What I mean is that every time a memory that does not bring you pleasure from the past year enters your mind, just let it go.

Easier said than done? Well let me tell you about a very wise lady of 87.

I was at my brother’s house for tea on New Years day with lots of mutual friends, other friends and family. We sat down at the end of the afternoon to acknowledge ourselves for who we had been and what we had done in 2010 and declare our intentions for 2011. My sister-in-law’s mother who is very hard of hearing misunderstood the instructions and thought she should be saying what she wished for us all in 2011.

Isn’t it always so great when the ‘wrong’ thing is so right? At 87 years old, deeply intellectual and very well travelled (she had just come back from America where she had completed her latest book on genealogy – family trees) this wise lovely lady said this (and I paraphrase):

“From the perspective of an 87 year old I wish you this. That any negative thoughts you have, or any thoughts that bring you sadness or make you unhappy in any way, get replaced with other happy thoughts. Negative, unhappy thoughts are a complete waste of time and you cannot afford to waste any time because it goes so very quickly. I know this to be true. I am 87, you can trust me. So I want you to be vigilant. Every time an unhappy thought, a wish, a desire about anything you do not have or anything that is lacking or any thought that upsets you enters your head, immediately change it for a happy, loving, optimistic thought. That’s all I have to say”.

The truth is that I know this. You know this. We all know this. And yet we persist in holding on to, at various times, a selection of either painful, sad, guilty, fearful, angry, negative thoughts (add your own to this list) that simply serve to keep us playing a very small game with our own lives.

And it takes an 87 year old, someone who has been there, done that and lived longer than all of us, for it to really hit home to everyone in that sitting room.

So I’ve got it. And I hope you get it. There is absolutely no benefit to your mental health, physical wellbeing or personal joy in holding on to negative thoughts.

Make 2011 the year that you let go and just let love in from everywhere. The first place to start is loving your own life whatever state it happens to be in right now. Most of us are not ill. We are not dying. We may be experiencing the end of one chapter (which automatically makes it the beginning of a new one), and if we let it, life will support us naturally. People, circumstances and all kinds of situations and opportunities will fall into place if you can stop resisting your current reality.

Think good thoughts. Start right now. Why wait till you are 87 to learn the truth that any thoughts that are not optimistic thoughts do not serve you in any way whatsoever.

Begin today, no reason to wait and I’ll bet you that by this time next year you will have changed your whole life.

Loving 2011 Already,

Francine