The Key to Hope for the New Year

New beginnings can be both exciting and intimidating. Whether it is a new job, the start of a new year or living in a new city, there are unknowns associated with a “fresh start”. There is potential for both blessing and hardship, for growth, for challenges and rewards. Often the way one feels about the start of something new is largely impacted by how they feel about what preceded.
 
If your focus at the close of 2025 was on how you grew and the good things that took place, you are more likely to be looking forward with anticipation to this new year. If instead, your attention is drawn to the disappointments or failings of the completed year, it is more likely that you will enter the new year with discouragement and anxiety.
 
I find it helpful to acknowledge both the challenges that caused pain and those that felt rewarding. Strength can be drawn from both as well as wisdom and reliance. If there are regrets associated with ending a year or things that remain unresolved, it is good to acknowledge these places as well. Recognition of the difficulties of last year as well as the places of joy, is critical to entering the new year with hope.
 
Hope is not based on perfect circumstances!  Hope builds from pain into promise. Hope is the determined pursuit of growth and positive change. Hope often finds its beginning in hardship, disappointment, loss and sorrow. Hope is not a denial of the difficulty, but rather the decision to move from difficulty into a more rewarding place.
 
A key to hope for the coming year is to wrestle through what you believe about endings and beginnings.
 

Do the difficulties or failings of last year predict the coming year?

 

What you truly believe about this question is a huge determinate in whether you face the new year with hope. If you view those things that remain unresolved, painful or discouraging at the close of the year as the foundation for the coming year’s growth, you are drawn by hope into the potential the new year offers.
When considering those difficulties or unresolved areas, you can ask yourself:
-            How might these areas change in the coming year?
-            How will I grow?
-            What good can come from continuing to persevere in this area?
 
Here are a few powerful truth declarations to make over this new year:
·       It is not too late to see the fulfillment of those things left undone last year.
·       The hardships of last year do not determine the forecast for this year.
·       I am building on last year and believing for growth, resolution and reward.
 
Hope moves us into the future with anticipation of good coming our way. Hope empowers us to persevere and to invest our effort. Hope builds on places of lack and discouragement with the determined pursuit of improvement.
 

Are you worth your own investment?

 

To hope is to invest in yourself and your future. The key to hope for 2026 is to consider your perspective on 2025 and decide if you are giving up or if you are building.  When you decide to have hope, you view the difficulties of last year as the foundation for growth and potential for this year.
 
This is hope!