New Year, New Beginnings: Inspiring Quotes For Your Parenting And Personal Journey

 

The New Year is here; a time for another fresh start, marking a time of transformation and anticipation of what is to come. So as we greet 2024, why not make a great start of it as you leave one year behind and look forward to the next? In this episode, Dr. Tim Jordan compiles some inspiring quotes to help you start the new year with a shift in perspective. Join us as we explore wisdom from various sources, offering insights that can fuel your personal and parenting growth journey. Let these quotes serve as guiding lights, encouraging resilience, self-discovery, and a renewed sense of purpose for yourself and your children. Whether you’re navigating challenges or setting exciting goals, this episode is packed with wisdom to inspire and uplift you throughout the upcoming year. Tune in to kick off 2024 with a dose of inspiration to ring in the new year ahead!

Use these inspiring quotes and stories to set intentions for your parenting and personal life for the upcoming year.

• Jordan’s previous podcast on the spiral of beliefs
• Jordan’s previous podcast, Empowering Young Girls: How To Guide Your Daughter To A Fulfilling Life
• Jordan’s previous podcast interview with Angela Santomero, author of the new book, Life Clues: Unlocking the lessons to an exceptional life

Quotes to start the new year, shift your perspective:

• If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave. – Mo Williams
• Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror. – Byrd Baggett
• Turn your face to the sun & the shadows fall behind you. – Māori
• And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about. – Haruki Murakami
• Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. – Kahlil Gibran
• Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.
• If you are going through hell, keep going! – Winston Churchill

Take charge of your self-talk and your life:

• Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable. – Theodore Vail
• Tell the negative committee that meets inside your head to sit down and shut up. – Ann Bradford
• Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start. – Nido Qubein
• The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but the thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation which is always neutral. It is as it is. – Eckhart Tolle
• You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served. – Nina Simone
• You don’t drown by falling into the water; you drown by staying there. – Edwin Louis Cole
• If you want to change what’s going on around you, change what’s going on within you. – Billy Cox
• To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it. – Confucius
• No one needs to be a victim of their own biography. – Kelly
• The way you tell your story to yourself matters. – Amy Cuddy
• To be truly happy and productive, you have to tune out the crowd and listen to the voices that we hear in solitude. – Emerson

Create quiet, alone times for reflection, soul searching, and accessing intuition:

• Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you. – Anne Lamott
• Your cell phone has already replaced your watch, camera, calendar, and alarm clock. Please don’t let it replace your friends and family.
• Down time to daydream: When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer- say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night when I cannot sleep- it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. – Mozart
• Slow down to connect more deeply: There’s no WIFI in the forest. But I promise you will find a better connection.

Get out of your children’s way:

• Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find? – Samuel Johnson
• The things you are passionate about are not random; they are your calling. – Fabienne Fredrickson
• Travelers, there is no path; paths are made by walking. – Antonio Machado
• Value nonconformists: I was told I was dangerous and I asked why, and their response was: “Because you don’t need anyone.” I smiled.
• Listen to the clues. The next time you feel real joy, stop and think. Pay attention. Because joy is the universes way of knocking on your mind’s door. Hello in there. Is anyone home? Can I leave a message? Good! The message is that you are happy, and that means that you are in touch with your purpose. – Steve Chandler
• Be in the moments this year and savor each one: The rainbow is more beautiful that the pot at the end of it, because the rainbow is now. The pot comes later and never turns out to be quite what you expect. – Hugh Prather

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Listen to the podcast here

 

New Year, New Beginnings: Inspiring Quotes For Your Parenting And Personal Journey

Shift Your Perspective

Happy New Year 2024. Having said that, my wife is going to be mad at me because these shows are supposed to be evergreen and to be played anytime so you don’t know what the date is or the month or the year. The New Year’s approaching so I thought I would do an episode that has to do with preparing yourself mentally and emotionally for the New Year. Let’s get started. Most of those shows are going to be stories and quotes. Let me start with a couple of them to help you shift your perspective as you leave one year behind and look forward to the one coming up.

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.” That’s a quote by Mo Willems. Byrd Baggett said, “Look at life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.” How often do we stay stuck in the past? Being stuck in the past sometimes causes us to not be able to look or step forward. It causes sometimes us to feel paralyzed and stuck because we’re spending so much energy and angst about what’s happened in the past.

There’s a Māori quote that says, “Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.” Sometimes as you’re looking forward to the New Year, it helps to let go of some things in the past. The following is one of my favorite quotes. I’ve said before in an episode a while back but I’m going to repeat it. It’s by Haruki Murakami and it goes like this. “Once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through and how you managed to survive but one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.”

If you’ve had some struggles in the past year or your kids have had some struggles in the past year, find this quote. Let them know that there’s a reason why sometimes we struggle and there’s a silver lining. There are lessons to be learned and we grow through those times. Hopefully, at the end of a rough patch or a challenging time, they’ll be able to take some time to get quiet, think about, and reflect on what they learned, “What did I learn about myself and my life? What can I leave behind?”

Here’s a great quote from Kahlil Gibran, “Your pain is a breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” If you’ve been going through some rough times, uncertainty, angst, pain, or distress, oftentimes, that’s a symptom of growth. You’re about to spread your wings. There’s that old story of a grandfather who was going to impart a lesson to his granddaughter. He brought her one day a cocoon. He said, “Let me tell you about this cocoon.”

He said, “There is a little caterpillar in there. He’s sleeping but he’s also growing. There could be a time when you feel sorry for him all enclosed in this little shell. I want you to resist. There’s a reason why that caterpillar is in that cocoon. At some point, that caterpillar inside the cocoon is going to be bumping against the sides like he’s struggling in there. You’re going to feel even more sorry for that caterpillar. I want you to resist helping him. Leave him alone. Let him do his struggle because there’s going to be a surprise at the end of it. No matter what, allow the struggle to go on, and even if you feel so bad, let them do it their way.”

A little granddaughter promised that she would so she put this little cocoon on top of her windowsill. She washed it every day. At first, nothing but then after about a week, she did start to know some movement sometimes. Days have passed and there is more and more movement. The sides of the cocoon would stretch out as that little creature inside was struggling and trying to get out. She did start to feel sorry for that little caterpillar. She resisted helping but one day, she couldn’t help herself. She took a little knife. She did a little slit all along the edge of that cocoon. She opened it up a little bit and stood back.

There was movement and then some more movement. All of a sudden, out from the cocoon popped not a caterpillar but a butterfly. She was so excited. She watched this little butterfly dust off its wings. It looked a little bit dazed. It flapped its wings to fly. He flew about 1 foot but then landed right back down on the table. The butterfly flatters its wings again 1 other foot or 2 and lays right back on the table. On the third flight, the butterfly flapped his wings hard, flew 2 to 3 feet, went off the table, hit the ground, and died.

The moral of the story is that the reason that the caterpillar and then the young butterfly in that cocoon is struggling is to strengthen their wings. When it struggles like that, it pushes fluid down these little veins in the wings to make them stronger so that when it comes out, it has the strength to fly and survive. That quote, “Your pain is a breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding,” holds true for human beings as well.

Sometimes when we’re growing, it doesn’t look so great. Sometimes you watch your kids suffer. It’s so hard not to want to jump in there, save, and rescue. There’s growth that needs to happen. There’s some strengthening that comes with the struggle. There’s another quote, “Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.” That goes along with this first theme of preparing for the New Year.

Your kids sometimes are going to do some struggling and it’s good for them. They need to be able to sometimes meet their challenges and struggle a little bit, try and fail, try and get frustrated, and try until they make it, and then they get that level of competence that comes from, “I kept going. I pushed through. I didn’t give up, and I did it.” That’s a huge building block of self-confidence for all of your children.

Take Charge Of Your Life

Last quote for this first part. This is from Winston Churchill who goes, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Sometimes what kids, adults, and all of us need to do when we’re struggling is to keep going. Go through it. Sometimes we’re feeling lots of emotions. Allow yourself to feel them. I’ve talked about it in some previous episodes. Feel them, embrace them, and let those feelings push through you and pass through you. That leads me to the second theme for this New Year coming up.

Start taking charge of two things, at least. One is your self-talk and the other is taking charge of your life. There’s a good quote from Theodore Vail. It goes like this, “Real difficulties can be overcome. It’s only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” That fits so well for the girls I see in my counseling practice and retreat camp service.

They do a lot of ruminating. They overthink and overanalyze. Almost, and probably always, they ruminate worst case. They’re often in the future, creating these stories in their heads that almost never come true but they seem to and then they get more anxious and upset about a potential story that almost never happens.

There’s a nice quote from Ann Bradford. It says, “Tell the negative committee that meets inside your head to sit down and shut up.” Girls need to learn how to catch themselves when they’re ruminating, switch it off, and switch it into something more positive and encouraging. Nido Qubein has a nice quote. “Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go. They merely determine where you start.” A lot of girls, because of their self-talk, start to limit themselves and their futures.

A lot of girls, because of their self-talk, start to limit themselves. They start to limit their futures. Click To Tweet

I saw a girl in my counseling practice who has some learning disabilities. She has dyslexia. She has already thought of herself as being stupid because all her friends get their work done a lot quicker. Things are harder for her. She works her butt off and she barely gets seized. That, to her, has meant sometimes she’s not very smart, and even worse if there’s anything worse than that, her future is going to be limited because of that, which is so not true.

That’s one of the things that you can think about if you have kids who are struggling with something, be it with their schoolwork or sports. That doesn’t have to mean anything about who they are and what their future holds for them. Another quote is by Eckhart Tolle, a famous author. He says, “The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but the thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts that you’re thinking. Separate your thoughts from the situation, which is always neutral. It is as it is.” That’s true, isn’t it?

The rumination and the stories in our heads oftentimes are a lot more intense and distressful than whatever it is that you’re experiencing. It’s the same way when we add shame to ourselves. It’s a shame oftentimes that’s more powerful and detrimental to us than what we’re experiencing or what we’ve done. Another good quote is from Nina Simone. She says, “You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love is no longer being served.” I love that quote.

The stories in our heads oftentimes are a lot more intense and distressful than whatever it is that you're experiencing. Click To Tweet

Sometimes as you move forward into the New Year, there are things you have to let go of and that sometimes can include toxic people, people who take from you, people who don’t give much to you, and people who bring you down. That’s so true of girls. I did an episode talking about how sometimes it’s hard for girls to let go of toxic friends. Go back and read that episode for all the details. This is a good time of the year to step back from yourself and take stock of, “Is there anything I need to let go of? Is there anything that might be holding me back that I no longer need?”

There’s another quote from Edwin Louis Cole. It says, “You don’t drown by falling into water. You drown by staying there.” Sometimes it’s not the toxic friend or thoughts in our head that’s the problem. It’s the fact that we stay with those thoughts or with the people. Those thoughts get more and more influential because we don’t let them go.

There’s a quote by Billy Cox. He says, “If you want to change what’s going on around you, change what’s going on within you.” It’s so easy when we’re not happy or we’re distressed. It’s easy to point a finger outside of us and say, “If only they would change. If only my circumstances had changed, then I could be happy and things would be okay.” We don’t take our fingers enough, point toward ourselves, and say, “What can I do about this? What can I shift about me or my approach to it or what I’m making of it?” That’s important.

There’s another quote by Confucius. It says, “To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” I heard a nice story a long time ago. There are these two monks who are walking down the path one day. These are monks who are taking a vow of chastity, which means that they were not supposed to talk to women or touch women, nothing like that. That was a very strict vow in their church. They’re walking down this path. They came down to the bottom of this hill and there was a stream, which normally you could walk across. It might have been ankle high or a little bit higher but because of some spring rains, it’s swollen so it was past your waist.

They saw a woman in a beautiful, long dress standing by the side of this creek almost turned river on their side and looking like, “What am I going to do?” The monks, without saying a word, walked up. He picked her gently up and carried her across so she could stay dry. He set her down. She thanked him and she walked off. The other monk followed suit. He crossed the river and the two of them got over. They’re both on the other side and then they walk in the opposite direction.

They’ve been walking for a couple of hours and they stopped to rest. The one monk stayed behind. He turned to his friend and said, “I can’t believe you did that back there. You talked to that woman and picked her up. You carried her across the river. We took a vow of chastity. I can’t believe you broke your vows.” The monk who had done the service turned to his friend and said, “It’s true that I did carry that woman across the river but you still seem to be carrying her.”

Sometimes it’s the refusal to let go of things that causes this problem. You might want to think about it as this New Year starts, “Is there anything I can let go of?” Sometimes what you need to let go of is your stories about yourself that you’ve been creating in your head. No one needs to be a victim of their biography. Amy Cuddy said one time, “The way you tell your story to yourself matters.” That’s so true.

 

 

I talked to a previous episode about the Spiral of Beliefs, the kinds of thoughts and beliefs that kids make up about themselves based upon adverse childhood experiences. The way you tell your story to yourself is what matters. There’s another quote by Emerson. It says, “To be truly happy and productive, you have to tune off the crowd and listen to the voices that we hear in solitude.”

I remember I heard the story about these frogs who were having a contest to see who could climb this tall tower. All the other frogs and their little tribe came out to watch and cheer each other on. There was some kind of a sounding gong and then the frog started to climb the tower but it was slippery and the frogs were not making much progress. The people in the crowd started to laugh at them. They started getting discouraged.

They’re saying, “There’s no way you guys can climb to the top. It’s too tall. You’re just a frog. Frogs aren’t that good at climbing up like that. You’re never going to make it.” There’s all that kind of discouragement coming. The frogs slid down, stopped, and gave up but one little frog kept going. The crowd kept saying things to that frog about, “I know you’re doing well but there’s no way you get to the top. You’re going to get tired. It’s too tall. There’s no way.” Eventually, that frog got to the top.

Finally, the frogs start to cheer. When the frog came down, all of them huddled around like, “What allowed you to do this? All the other frogs gave up but you persevered. What’s different about you?” What they discovered was the frog was deaf. Sometimes, as you move forward to the Next Year, if you want to move forward in your life, you have to tune out the crowd around you that may be discouraging you and trying to limit you. You also need to tune out and tune down the thoughts and the voices in your head.

Create Quiet, Alone Times

That leads to my last theme for this show, which is as you’re starting 2024, you might want to consider having regular quiet time in solitude or alone time for reflection, soul-searching, time to work through issues for yourself, and also to access your intuition and urges, and what your heart is saying for you. There’s a quote from Anne Lamott who said, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” Isn’t that great? It’s like computers. It also includes us.

Are you willing to start unplugging technology regularly to give yourself a break from all of that? I did an episode about some high school girls. They’re talking about social media and how they’ve experienced times in their lives when they’ve all had been to our summer camps like one-week camps and weekend retreats where there are no phones and electronics. They talked about how freeing and relaxing it was. There’s so much less stress on them. We always encourage our campers to start incorporating that experience into their everyday lives where you start taking breaks to have that quiet time, a time of solitude.

I read a quote somewhere. I couldn’t find who the author was but it goes like this. “Your cell phone has already replaced your watch, camera, calendar, and alarm clock. Please don’t let it replace your friends and family.” Isn’t that true? You have the ability, especially if you’re more conscious about your time and more mindful about how you spend your time. The guests in that episode I did were talking about their phones. They had an average of 5 to 9 hours a day on their devices. That’s a lot of time that you could have been spending doing some things that can be more fruitful.

I also think that part of that downtime that you can start to commit to yourself to can also be about doing nothing, having some time to just think and daydream. There’s a quote from Mozart who said, “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer, say I’m traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night I can’t sleep, it’s on those occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.” There’s a lot of research that would back up Mozart’s claim. Our level of creativity, imagination, and those things flourish when we’re bored.

We slow down and we’re not inundated with all kinds of information and stimulation. One of the girls I was talking to was saying that she spent 8 or 9 hours a day on her phone, devices, and social media. She didn’t get herself a cell phone halfway through eighth grade. She said the times she uses her devices the most as a high school senior is when she’s bored. She said, “I don’t have anything to do so I’ll just turn to my device.” They turn to TikTok.

I said, “What did you use to do with that time before eighth grade when you didn’t have all that?” She stopped and smiled. She said, “I used to spend a lot of time in my imagination. I would envision myself jumping on clouds,” and all these fun, interesting things that she would spend her time on. It is that creativity that would start jumping through her mind at those times. I encouraged her to go back to those times. Take out a pad and paper. Take out some paint and colors. Take out a sketchbook and start to let your mind wander without the devices. It’s important that you slow down so you can start connecting more deeply with the ones you love.

Get Out Of Your Children’s Way

There’s a quote I found. It might have been John Muir. I can’t remember but it goes like this, “There’s no Wi-Fi in the forest but I promise you that you’ll never find a better connection.” My wife and I were in John Muir Woods walking around and hiking. We spent two days in those redwood forests. It’s so quiet and peaceful. There’s no place like that that I’ve ever been where everything slows down. You can create that in your lives if you make it important. I said before that it’s one last thing but I forgot I have one more. One couple of quotes involves getting out of your children’s way.

I told this to people sometimes when they asked me. My wife and I have three adult kids. They ask, “What are some of the things that you feel were the most valuable as far as your parenting techniques and skills?” I say, “One of the things we did well was we tried to stay out of their way.” It means that a lot of them have their own lives, thoughts, feelings, and paths.

Here’s a quote by Samuel Johnson, “Allow children to be happy in their way, for what better way will they find?” That’s true. Fabienne Fredrickson said, “The things you’re passionate about are not random. They are your calling.” The things your children are passionate about are not random. Those are your children’s calling. We forget that sometimes. I was giving a talk one time to a small group. It was probably about twenty adults and they all knew each other.

We were talking about motivation and having your kids call their passions. One mom started talking about how her daughter was so unmotivated. She is so lazy. She’s not into anything. She’s said something and I’ll never forget it. She said, “She’s so lazy that if they ever invent a remote control for the TV set or the computer that you can manipulate by just blinking your eyes, she’d be the first person in line to buy it. That’s how lazy my daughter is.”

Everybody laughed except for one other parent. A mom stopped her and said, “That’s not true. I know your daughter. She babysat sad for me and my two kids. She’s so good with the kids. My kids always want her to babysit. I’ve seen some of these people live on the same street. When she walks out of the house, all of a sudden, ten kids are surrounding her. She’s so good with kids.”

The mom said, “She’s good with kids and she told me she wants to be a teacher, maybe a preschool teacher. I said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to pay for you to go to college and get a degree in Preschool Education or become a great school teacher because you can’t afford anything. You can’t build a life with that kind of a salary.” That bothers me, that kind of thinking from parents. I hear a lot from kids in my counseling practice about parents who discouraged them from careers in art, drawing, dance, music, or even education. It’s always about money. In 2024, maybe one of the things you can commit to is start listening to your kids and valuing their passions.

Start listening to your kids and valuing their passions. Click To Tweet

There’s a quote by Antonio Machado who said, “Travelers, there are no paths. Paths are made by walking.” We need to respect our kids, especially if they’re different than ours. I see a lot of girls who get discouraged because their parents won’t accept who they are and they have a different vision for themselves and their future than their parents have. It’s very discouraging for them. A lot of times, they love their parents. They don’t want to disappoint their parents but they also have this drive to do their thing. They get caught up and confused by all that.

There’s a quote I read somewhere about a nonconformist who says this, and this is a young person, “I was told I was dangerous. I asked, ‘Why am I dangerous?’ The adult’s response was, ‘It’s because you don’t need anybody,’ and then I smiled.” Some of you have kids who might be nonconformists and are very independent-minded. They might be free thinkers and independent. I see some of these girls think they should have been born in the ’60s. They had that spirit about them.

I want some value to that so our kids can be who they are and who they’re meant to be. Sometimes the best thing we can do for our kids is to get out of their way and let them find their path. Let them pursue their interests, passions, and the things that fulfill them. Let go of the money stuff because those things tend to take care of themselves. I’m encouraging you to be careful about that in 2024.

Here’s a nice quote from Stephen Chandler. He says, “Listen to the clues. The next time you feel real joy, stop and think. Pay attention because joy is a universe’s way of knocking on your mind’s door.” Is anybody home? Can I leave a message? Good. The message is that you’re happy and that means you’re in touch with your purpose. When you see your kids doing things that make them the most happy, when they’re the most engaged, fulfilled, and passionate, that’s telling them a lot about who they are and who they might become. Notice it. Value it. Mirror back to them so they internalize that. It’s important.

Last thought. I want you to be in the moment and savor each moment. Sometimes that means slowing down and putting devices away, including parents. Turn those phones off, not having them at the dinner table or not watching videos in the car. Put your phone away in the car. There’s a nice quote by Hugh Prather that goes like, “The rainbow is more beautiful than the pot at the end of it because the rainbow is now. The pot comes later and almost never turns out to be quite what you expect.”

Be in the moment. Have some quiet time. If you’re in the moment, you’ll be much more likely to savor those moments. Be more present. Be closer to people and thus have a much happier, fulfilling year. Take charge of your life and your negative self-talk. Create those quiet times for solitude, reflection, and soul searching, and accessing your urges and intuition.

If any of these quotes resonated with you, copy them, post them, and put them on some note cards around your room to remind you of what you want for yourself. I appreciate all the people who read this show. I look forward to talking with you and giving you some more information in the year to come. Thanks so much for stopping by. I’ll see you back here in the next episode.

 

Important Links

• Spiral of Beliefs – Past Episode
• Empowering Young Girls: How To Guide Your Daughter To A Fulfilling Life – Past Episode
• Blue’s Clues Creator Angela Santomero Discusses How To Follow Life’s Clues To Find Happiness – Past Episode