Some New Year's Makeover hints for 2016

We are fast approaching the new year, 2016. Twelve months bursting with potential and promise stretching out ahead of us. In the spirit of the New Year's Resolution tradition, I offer some suggestions for some easy tweaks to beautify your world and your lighten your soul.

Weight loss is easily accomplished by dumping all the baggage currently hauled around intended to weigh and judge whether those in need are deserving of help.
By dumping the requirement that people have "earned" compassion, the ability to reach out and help everyone who needs help is achieved. Feeding people because they are hungry, comforting those who are in pain, offering healing to the sick, and a roof to the homeless. Without worrying about anything besides identifying the needs.



Work out more by exercising your right to vote in every election. Strengthen our democracy by making your voice heard on every issue that is important to you. Email your legislators, petition your government and make your representatives accountable to you.
Get your heart rate up by doing things that scare you, that make you feel uncomfortable and that push your boundaries. 




Increase your vocabulary by having conversations with people who are different than you are. People with different interests, different backgrounds, different beliefs. Speak up about your values, and discover how enlightening assuming the best of people's intentions can become. Add the words "why not?" and use them frequently to follow any statement that contains the words "of course we can't"...



Meditate on the awesome smallness of specks of stardust, and the hugeness of the universe. Open yourself to infinite possibility. Wrap yourself in the patchwork quilt of humanity, in all its beautiful variations.



And in the words of the great philosopher Wil Wheaton: Don't be a dick.