A New Beginning
By Esther Cohen
September heralds new beginnings. The beginning of a new academic year, a new Jewish year. Children return to school after the long summer break; High school graduates start work or leave for university or college. The summer is now behind us with the colder weather, a reminder that a new season has started.
New beginnings offer opportunities as long as we are willing to see them. Being away from our regular surroundings, work routines and sometimes relationships, allow us to have a glimpse at how we really feel and what needs adjusting or changing. The challenge is, that the wisdom in new awareness can quickly fade into the familiar and the pressures of daily living.
It is worth investing reflective time to prepare for a new beginning to embrace its benefits. If you are a deep thinker, note your instinctive initial response and initial thoughts and then stop that overthinking and overanalytical mind from hijacking the new perception. It will only take you down the ‘what if’ lane with the excuse that overthinking keeps you safe. Picture the “STOP” sign and blow out (literally) the need to overthink by focusing on something else.
A new start gives us the opportunity to reconfigure. The New Year introspection and good resolution is a great model that gives us a template of how to reboot ourselves. There are new starts all around us. Quite honestly, I sometimes cannot wait a whole year to reconfigure. There is always a new week, day, hour, and moment for us to make good use of. It is all a matter of mindset.
If your day is not going well, press ‘restart’. Embrace whatever thoughts and circumstances held you back till then and give yourself permission to begin again. It takes practice but it is highly effective.
Remember that,
If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always got!!