We don’t really need a date on a calendar to make positive changes in our lives, but in a world full of clocks, the start of a new year does wonders for shifting our collective mindset to new heights. The twelve fresh months ahead are exciting and full of potential, and January 1st seems like the perfect time to leave the past in the past and strut, heads held high, into the future we create.

This year, like any, will be one of reflection and affirmative action, for it’s between the push of blind faith and pull of learned lessons that we’re able to find balance and, from it, shape our lives. Truth and calm lie in the contrast of joy and pain, black and white, the past and the future. We can’t know one without the other.

And although we can move forward without looking back, it’s only in retrospect that we’re able to connect the dots to make sense of all of the little coincidences that added up to get us where we are. Those coincidences – miracles, really – all had to occur in perfect order for you to find yourself wherever you are now. And from here, knowing yourself as you do – all of your strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, joys, sorrows – you are in a place of pure potential. You can do anything you want.

I started meditating in the last months of 2016 and it’s done wonders for revealing truths about myself that were either repressed or lost on me. Each day, I set a new goal or intention for myself and have found that the answers always come, usually in an unexpected way. I’m bemused sometimes at how easily a goal is attained or how quickly a question that has stumped me for some time is provided as soon as I simply let go of the attachment to attaining it.

I’ll talk more about letting go in a future post, because I think it’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in undertaking self-work.

I don’t completely have meditation down yet, but one of the questions I’ve held in my mind is: how can I realize fulfillment of my potential?

The answer came pretty quickly and without resistance. Writing always felt like the best form of creative expression I had to offer, and the pursuit of knowledge with regard to living better has been my primary interest for the past five years. It became the next logical step for me to begin a project that combined both creativity and authentic personal interest, which took the form of this website (with very little of what felt like “work” on my part.) In being here, I believe I’m living out my potential to the best of my ability.

I want to use this website as a platform to bridge the past and the future, to share my experiences and the lessons I’ve learned from them, and to host an open and honest discussion about how to attain and become the things we all think about and strive for — to be happy, loved, and safe. How to live better.

Happiness, love and safety already exist in all of us, and what makes me feel good at the end of the day is making others see in themselves the light they want to see in the rest of the world. I see it in myself and because of that, I see it in all of you.

I feel nothing but gratitude for the experiences that led me here. I’m not sure what the future has in store, but I trust it. I hope in the coming months you find something helpful here, and if you have a particular subject or question about living better that you’d like to see covered, I urge you to contact me. I want this to be a collaborative effort. Like joy and pain or black and white, I don’t exist without my relationship to you. 

I love you all. Here’s to a positive 2017, the best year any of us have had yet.