2025: The year of the mantra "think again".

Perspective will not control what happens, but instead what happens next.

I was all set to write my end of the year article but chose to not do that. Here is why.

As some of you know, 2024 was a challenging year. One of the highest order.

On May 28, 2024 I broke my neck and back in a hit-and-run accident which also left me with nearly a dozen other broken bones and a TBI (traumatic brain injury) landing me in a Level 1 Trauma center.

Owning a small consulting practice, if I can’t work, I don’t get paid or can even loose projects. All of which happened due to the incident.

My mother-in-law was diagnosed with a terminal, degenerative neurological disease called PSP. Apparently there are fewer with 50,000 people who contract it so not a lot of resources are put into it, which is meaningless to the patient and families who are along for the unwanted and unpleasant ride.

In October, my wife contracted an unknown virus that attacked her lungs. Her blood oxygen level dipped to 68 causing hypoxemia, which landed her in the ICU for nearly a week. We fought to keep her off a ventilator, a battle we narrowly won. The next battle was to get her well enough to go home without an oxygen tank, which we feared might stay with her. My wife is tough and determined. Her efforts and persistence won her this battle as well. Small victories can add up.

Post Christmas, we retreated to the woods of Vermont to recover.

However, 2024 wasn’t done quite yet. On New Year’s even morning, while cooking breakfast for my family, I had an unexpected short but severe dizzy spell, a less frequent but still present symptom of the hit and run’s TBI. In the midst of that episode, I knocked the frying pan awash with sizzling hot bacon grease off the stove. Covering my right leg. Wearing shorts and no shoes, this caused a bit of an issue as the skin sizzled off, leaving a line of third degree burns down my right shin and top of my ankle.

There is more to the year but you get the point. Bacon grease day was the morning I had set aside to write. Well, I didn’t. Instead, after loading up with burn cream, vaseline, proper wound covering and lots of Advil, I went for a walk, knowing the real pain would set in later. I had a window.

Here is what I discovered on that walk, which I choose to share with you now.

It would have been very easy for me to allow each of these incidents, as well as their cumulative total trigger anger, frustration and bitterness in a year that was a seemingly endless series of calamities. This is the default reaction we often have to some hardship.

Maybe you have not had a litany of calamities but instead find yourself in a slow boil of frustrating and difficult situations. Perhaps there doesn’t seem to ever be enough money. Maybe work is a persistent challenge. Maybe you are looking at your life and wondering what the hell happened. How did you end up stuck? Without any momentum. Perhaps you look around to see if you can find joy in who you are and your life and you are sad to discover the inventory you take is lacking.

The world can sometimes seem indifferent or perhaps even cruel. Adopting a victim mindset to issues big and small is an easy path to slide onto. I have been there. It doesn’t end well. Others may choose to take a path of self-centered-ness or selfishness to insulate and protect themselves. I have been there too. This tactic doesn’t work. Both slowly but consistently devolve who you are and manifest in both physical and psychological decay.

I don’t know why I chose to go on this walk. I was just compelled to. My heart said JUST DO IT. Everyone in the house was a bit confused. What I really hurt or not? People with third degree burns don’t do that sort of thing. For a moment I hesitated then something said, ‘Think Again.’ I almost posted the picture to illustrate it. Instead, you will have to take my word for it. Where we are located in Vermont is relatively remote so a five minute walk leaves you devoid of any human sounds or right angles.

So I laced up my hiking boots and went.

What I am going to share comes in two parts. This is what I learned on that walk and like everything else in 2024, the walk had something profound to teach me. If I was willing to listen.

ONE.

After about 30 minutes of climbing up the trail into the clouds, something prompted me to stop. With that last step I felt like I had arrived. This is the best way I can describe it. ‘Arriving’.

Elana Brower talked about Arriving through meditation. You can check that out here.

The whirlwind of thoughts of 2024 quickly faded, but not of my own accord. They had been there in full force five steps ago but with the arrival, they had vanished. The pain in my leg disappeared instantly as well as if something had turned the pain dial down from 8 to 1. Looking around, wondering what had happened, I was unsettled to recognize that I knew exactly where I was, although I had never physically been there.

The flat meadow which sits at 1,800 feet of elevation, bordered by pines with a rushing stream boarding it. In the meadow were a number of other trees I recognized and a very distinct, several hundred year old border marker at its edge.

Where I had arrived was the physical intersection of the energetic place that had introduced itself to me during deep meditation shortly before my accident. I had seen all of the details of this place in meditation as clearly as I now saw them physically. I’ve written about this place a few times. Yet, here it was, now, surrounding me. It emanating with the deep frequency of truth and strength that I could not ignore or deny.

For a moment, my thoughts attempted to reverse what my heart knew. “This isn’t logical. You are making this all up. You want to see what you want to see. The odds of this place being what you are telling yourself it is isn’t possible or real…”

What came next I felt rather than heard. It was a reminder of sorts.

The closest way I can describe it in words is ‘Think Again.’ The feeling was all around me, as if nature was attempting to impart some crucial wisdom.

You see, our world is simply the result of what we perceive and how we respond to that perception. We ignore most of what is open to us as we walk around each day blind in the little box we have constructed for ourselves.

‘Think Again’ allows us to shut our yammering minds off and allow our hearts to speak. Think Again.

TWO.

What got me through a very rough year was an almost automatic or intuitive understanding of the simple concept ‘Think Again.’ Each challenge, each difficult or in some cases, nearly impossible obstacle of last year could easily have drug me down. Taken me to a darker place…again. I have been there before and don’t want to do go back. Think Again and simply choose the other path. The other path uncovered by Thinking Again is as real as the one that presents itself to you initially.

The irony is the first path, the most obvious one and the one most of us choose to take will rarely serves us well.

Think Again is not easy. Until it is. And one day, it just magically happens and once you unlock this door and step through it, everything changes.

Think again. We are all connected and therefore we are the sum total of both ourselves and of each other. We either absorb negativity or we radiate it, both of which drag us down energetically. We collectively amplify what we emanate and share.

Think Again.

If you are on a momentary high for some good thing that’s occurred, Think Again. The high comes from something outside that is transitory. Use this positive event or a success to elevate your energy and then work to sustain it. Don’t focus on the item or the experience, focus on where it can help you go next.

Take a look at the below chart which represents energetic layers we all encounter. Where are you right now? If you are honest and let your heart speak, you’ll be able to pinpoint the location on this chart. How do you move up? Simply Think Again. Consider this chart is your roadmap. Message me if you want it as a worksheet.

What you are registering isn’t exactly what it seems. So Think Again. The day which lies ahead that you are absolutely convinced will suck. Think Again, or it will. The pain or suffering you are enduring which triggers anger, resentment or thoughts if victimhood, Think Again. The slight you endured from some rude person. Think Again. Think Again and your perspective will shift for the better and once this happens, so goes your reality.

I am not saying to look for the bright side or silver lining in everything. That’s trite and that is not how it works. Nothing is exactly what you perceive it to be, so Think Again. Look Again. Feel Again. Everything is faceted. There is another perspective or view of everything.

2025 can easily be a year in which we experience a sea change if we raise our individual and collective frequencies. We do this by Thinking Again using our hearts.

Now, some out there will roll their eyes and say this is all new age bullshit. Yeah that used to be me too.

What is, is what is, simple as that. Guard yourself, showing too much emotion is a weakness. Take what’s yours. Do your best and let the chips fall where they may. I don’t do woo-woo. And of course….it is what it is.

Ok. I understand. However, I will counter that all great expansions in human history have come from Thinking Again. We cannot grow, cannot expand our understanding nor our circumstances until we Think Again.

Here is my 2025 Mantra. I am lucky (I am). I am grateful (I am). I attract what I emit (I do). I let go of what isn’t mine to hold onto (I am). I commit to always Think Again (I will). I choose to look for the second path.

Thanks for listening to me on this one. I hope there is something good here for you to use. Please share in the comments your 2025 mantra if you so choose.