Don’t we all wish it were so simple? If only, at the end of the year we could just “reset” everything and start over, face a “blank canvas,” this time doing it better, getting it right. But that is not the way life works. Life builds upon life, and we must learn that the mistakes we make, the poor choices, the pain and losses are all important elements of the overall composition of our lives.

As a painter, I know it takes the dark along with the light in a painting to make a genuinely great composition. Through my own experience as well as those of my coaching clients, I have come to understand this is also true of life. A great life includes the entire package. Not only the joy and celebration but also that painful divorce was an important experience; you learned important things about yourself from the experience that you could not have learned without it. The death of a spouse or a child taught you things you could never have known had you not experienced such loss. That illness that took you down was important in learning your inner strength. Pain, loss, illness, mistakes, even disappointments all play important roles in finding who we truly are.

This message appears in both novels that I’ve written. And I’ve developed an entire online course, “Embracing Your Murky and Magical” with this theme. It has been an important insight in my life.

Let this new year, 2024, be a time to embrace, learn from, and build upon the dark times in your past. What did you learn from each experience? How did it refine you? Make you stronger? Humble you? This is how we find our personal power and our authentic selves. This is how we create a great composition from our lives.

Happy New Year and Happy Creating!

Becoming One With, 36×36, Oil and cold Wax, SOLD A Thousand Ways to Kiss the Earth Series