Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Ring Out the Old

My favorite song for the new year is “Ding Ding, Ding Dong” by George Harrison. The first line is the old saying, “Ring out the old, ring in the new.” New year’s day points mainly toward the future, but as part of that transition, it’s worth taking a moment to look back at the old year in order to leave behind some of the things that don’t belong in the new year.

On such a busy day, you can’t take much time for that, so here are three quick things you can do to start to separate yourself from some of the less favorable aspects of the old year:

  1. Pick out one article of clothing you wore in the old year that you would never want to wear again, and throw it away.
  2. Think of some of the bad advice you got and ignored in the old year, and feel thankful for having disregarded it.
  3. If you’ve been keeping a long list of things to do, and it hasn’t changed much in the last month of two, cross off half the things on the list, to represent the idea of making room for the new adventures of the new year.

Happy new year!