By Aimee D. Griffin
Washington Informer
Reprinted – by Texas Metro News
https://www.washingtoninformer.com/
The final month of 2024 is here. We are counting down the days to close out this year. We have an opportunity to close the year with strength and start the new year with fervor. To end the year strong, I encourage each of us to count our blessings.
I want to ask you to list 2,024 blessings that you received during the year. However, many of you would just stop reading at this point. But please take a few minutes to identify five blessings that you experienced in 2024.
The blessings don’t have to be sea-parting blessings but can be a new job, retained job or promotion. The blessings can be retirement or lateral movement. The blessings can be having family and friends. The blessings can be that we are able to read The Washington Informer. We all have a reason to be thankful. If we focus with a spirit of gratitude, we will be overcome with the reasons. When we focus on the gain and not the gap, we can celebrate the greatness of the day.
Yet the year is not over! Think of three things that can be done that will add to the feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment before the end of the year. It can be the New Year’s resolutions that were dropped such as gaining the habit of exercise and eating right, creating a budget or enrolling in school. We could also start our estate plan with Life & Legacy Counselors!
I encourage each of us to consider three “tolerations” to remedy. There are things that each of us tolerate that create annoyances in our world. It can be something as simple as a stapler that jams all the time or a room in the home that doesn’t have adequate lighting. I encourage you to take the steps to throw out the irritating stapler and get another lamp from a thrift store, if necessary. Take the steps to identify the things that we stop seeing and just continue to tolerate. Tolerance depletes energy that can be spent elsewhere. Because tolerance is perceived to be so minimal, we overlook it. However, there is a blessing in the space when the toleration is removed.
As we move toward the new year with excitement, we have an opportunity to shape the vision and the goals for our lives. Our New Year’s resolutions are about our vision for the future. It can be something as straightforward as prioritizing rest and peace for the next year because the vision for our future is joyful living. It can be that we are climbing Mount Kilimanjaro because we want to challenge our bodies. It can be something like building or growing our business. We have the capacity to shape our lives and our legacies to fulfill the dreams and vision we seek.
However, it doesn’t happen by default. It happens by strategic planning and taking actions to achieve the plan. It requires dreaming. So often we focus on today or yesterday without allowing ourselves to dream for tomorrow. I challenge each one of us to stop and dream dreams. Dream big, hairy audacious dreams. Let our dreams of today shape our tomorrow.
As an estate planning attorney, I am privileged to work with individuals and families who are committed to shaping their dreams for the people they love. Dreaming and acting today will shape the tomorrows of the people that we love.
