New Beginnings

As 2010 President of the Benton, Bryant Realtors Association, I write an article entitled President's Message bi-monthly for the Daily Record newspaper.  It goes out not only to our local board, but to different people and businesses, many of them having to do with real estate, around the state of Arkansas.

A friend suggested that I post them to my blog, so here goes. 

 New Beginnings

As the New Year begins, and we look forward, we often time look back and reflect on the previous year and our personal lives.  How could things have been better?  What could we have done differently?  What can we do to make things better in the New Year ahead? 

 God blesses us with a chance to start over at the beginning of each New Year, underscored like some giant Techno-color sunrise which we normally take for granted each day.  "Things will be better this year!"  We say, as we make New Year's resolutions, desperately wanting to do things differently.  Countless flock to join gyms to get fit.  Most all of us in real estate set goals to make more sales in the next year.  For some it's getting a new car, or to go on that dream vacation.  Maybe it's a major change in your life, or a new home for yourself. Whatever the reason, we know that things could be done differently now that we have a chance at a new beginning. 

I learned years ago that most New Year's resolutions, no matter how fervently desired, are seldom kept and quickly forgotten.  Like the excitement felt after hearing a great motivational speaker, our fervor can smolder and then quickly fizzle out once we are inserted back into the real world, back into the daily grind of our mundane routines.

The old Chinese proverb of "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear" is simple, but true.  And it pertains to making changes in our lives as well.  We cannot make significant changes based upon the clock changing from 11:59 to 12 o'clock.  Real change comes from within, when certain conditions within our lives are no longer acceptable to us.  Then the change comes.  Then the "teacher appears".

For me personally, simplicity is key to making a change.  My New Year's resolution, if you can call it that, is simply this:  To be grateful.  And we do have much to be grateful for.  We not only survived a year of the "great recession" as they're calling it, but thrived even as scores of Realtors in other parts of the country left the real estate profession due to terrible market conditions, many even losing their own homes.  I am grateful to our immediate past president of the Benton Bryant Board of Realtors, for such hard work and a good example for me to follow.  I am grateful for my family.  I am grateful for friends, customers and clients.  I am grateful for God's blessings.  And for new beginnings.