2022: Don’t get lost in the shadow of your own greatness. Make this year ‘The One’

“Do I want 2022 to be the year when my latent confidence won through and success was my inevitable outcome? Could 2022 be 'The One'?"

Lost in the shadow of your own greatness? It can happen. The darkness cast by looming shadows of bad memories - dark thoughts of things not going quite to plan can be like an all enveloping canopy casting a huge shadow that keeps out the light. That canopy of shadows may offer some protection from the storms of life but it’ll also strip you of your confidence if you let it - 'cause there ain’t no sunshine when it's gone - and success looks and feels like the bright warm light of the sun.

Think about it. All our lives we’ve started out each and every year with ambition and hope. As children there are few shadows - we don’t know we can’t, so just ‘do’ until someone says - don’t. As young adults our skies are still azure blue - we think ourselves invincible, untouchable, and unstoppable - until something immovable gets in our way. Even then we look for ways around it, over it, or through it. Our inner confidence screams that there's always a way, and so it fuels that young ambition - which might be why our younger selves can seem to have achieved so much in such a short time. Then, as adults something changes. Something that isn't good nor helpful to ourselves and the ambitions we serve - we get 'dark'. At some time during 'full adulthood' we tend to stop shrugging off temporary failures and start creating memories that cast dark shadows. We are apt to stop dusting ourselves off from a fall, and we often stop believing in our own potential to be better. We stop being confident about being better, and all too often replace true confidence with bravado, hubris, or self-delusion - and so inevitably, we fail, and the memory of failure looms over us like a dark cloud.

It’s sad, but too many times - it just happens. The year maybe starts off well and then, like a knife in a dark alley we feel wounded when something just doesn't go as well as we had hoped. Happen it might, but it doesn’t have to be remembered as only a dark cloud - and it doesn't have to eat into the time we have left to turn around whatever went wrong. The stinging arrows of painful memories only knit into a tight canopy of adult angst - one that keeps out the sunlight of confidence - when you allow it. Only when you neglect to stop it will you find yourself brooding over failure rather than using that time for good. Only when you let the darkness overshadow you and forget that this canopy of memories is a good thing, as difficult as many of them are, these are memories that always end in survival. They are what got you to where you are today. Some of your greatness up until now might be reflected in those shadows, but your true greatness is more than overcoming past difficulties. Your true greatness combines both the shadows of past challenge and the bright light of success. The brighter you shine, the dimmer those shadows appear. The more time you spend in the light, the less the shadows matter.

Now, before facing this next year, take a look back at each year of your life and count the times you allowed time to outwit your ambition, and ask yourself, “Do I want 2022 to be like that, or shall I make it the year when my latent confidence won through and success was my outcome?” Nothing is inevitable, but, without a prompt to remind you of your inner strength and confidence, that’s all too easy to forget.

Rise up and find the inner light of your own confidence, then use it to make 2022 the year when your greatness saw the light. A year when you allowed the sun to shine on all you do. Make this the year when your greatness far exceeds the shadows of your past. Make this year “The One”.