Start Something in the New Year

To kickstart the year, I’m encouraging others to start something during January’s National Rising Star Month.

In All the Right Reasons: 12 Timeless Principles for Living a Life in Harmony, I share lessons describing how taking risks and starting a worthy habit can elevate a person to success in personal and professional efforts.

Accepting the challenge to start something—new or old—is invigorating and a bit scary because it gets us out of our comfort zone and focused on new discoveries. Starting a habit earnestly helps us discover inner strength and brings untold rewards.

January is an ideal time to start something new because it is National Rising Star Month, which encourages all individuals to step up and share their talents.

From my experience, everyone has talents to share, even those who feel hopeless or invisible. When they reveal those, the benefits are immeasurable.

Start Something to Unlock 5 Key Rewards

Beyond energizing one’s days with purpose, starting a new habit brings five key rewards:

1. Increased self-confidence
2. Beneficial physical changes
3. Positive thought patterns
4. An improved ability to handle stress
5. A firmer resolve to live according to one’s core values

When I’m true to my values, my life is in harmony and an inner balance strengthens me to face challenges. When I’m inconsistent with what I know is right for me, I’m living a life in dissonance, and nothing good happens.

In one inspiring story in my book, I introduce readers to Rwandan Immaculee Ilibagiza. I call it the Cardboard Keyboard principle. After Rwanda’s genocide in 1994, Hutu fighters hunted Ilibagiza, who fled for protection. Even with soldiers outside her window taunting and calling her name, Ilibagiza stayed positive, was rescued, traveled to Rwanda’s capital, and applied for a United Nations job for weeks with no luck.

Telling herself she could master English, which would improve employment opportunities, Immaculee drew a computer keyboard on a cardboard scrap and spent hours learning how to type. With determination to learn English, countless attempts to get that job, and positive self-talk, she was eventually hired.

That level of persistence and positive self-talk has the power to carry us to higher ground and plow through any obstacle. Immaculee never told herself she couldn’t do it, even though everything she had to learn was difficult.

To inspire others to start something now, risk can produce great rewards. The only strategy guaranteed to fail is to not take risks. Taking a risk—a leap of faith—is an essential part of progress.