Hop to it!

A RED ENVELOPE FOR YOU

Welcome to The Year Of The Rabbit. You may know that, based on an ancient system of astronomy and astrology, the 15-day festival that marks the so-called Chinese New Year begins today.

You may also recognize some of the traditions that will be observed over the days ahead to welcome good luck and happiness.

Not surprisingly, many are customs that would fit in any cultural context at the beginning of a New Year. People dress in finery to represent contentment and wealth. Homes are scrubbed clean. Rooms are decorated for the holiday.

Other traditions are unique. The room decorations are paper lanterns and flower blossoms. Walls are adorned with the Chinese characters -- 恭喜发财

-- is one simplified form – roughly equivalent to “Happy New Year” and transliterated in some places as Gung hay fa choy in Cantonese.

Dragon-dance parades snake along streets with clashing cymbals and firecrackers exploding to ward off evil spirits. Children and single, unemployed adults look forward to receiving red envelopes stuffed with cash from elders.

As the “elder” co-creator with my buddy Eric Taylor of the Empowerment Group’s Best Year Ever Program! I feel obliged to commemorate any “New Year” observance and tie it to our message that –

Anytime is the right time to begin Your Best Year Ever!

So, although you may not be a child or unemployed single, here’s --

A Red Envelope for you.

Sorry, no cash. (Awwww!)

But in the spirit of these blog posts and TGIM messages, I believe that “Sharing An Idea” is a time-proven strategy that’s –

More valuable than money. Think of it this way: If I have a dollar and you have a dollar, and we give our dollar to one another, we each still have only a dollar. But --

And it’s a Big BUT: If I give you an idea, and you give me an idea, then we each have two ideas that we can contemplate … be inspired by … work on with our individual talents … and craft into something even greater than the original inspiration.

So let’s get back to this idea of astrology and universal truths.

According to the astrological aspects of the holiday, babies born in a Year of the Rabbit are expected to have the following traits:

They are gracious, good friends, kind, sensitive, soft-spoken, amiable, elegant, reserved, cautious, artistic, thorough, tender, self-assured, shy, astute, compassionate, lucky, and flexible. On the “down” side they are also said to be moody, detached, superficial, self-indulgent, opportunistic, and stubborn.

Were you born in a Year of the Rabbit? You probably don’t know. But you also probably felt that some of the characteristics – especially the positive ones – fit you.

Now for me, almost any astrological stuff is –

Beyond understanding. Yet I do look at my horoscope in the ink-on-paper newspaper. I’ve got the daily Libra popping up on my computer home page.  And I read the transmitted wisdom with the fascinated knowledge that there is guidance to be gleaned in the cryptic messages (although that it is celestial and unwavering universal is highly suspect to me).

I figure, at the least, horoscopes are well-intended advice. I’m certainly open to that. So that leads me, at this auspicious new beginning of the Year of the Rabbit, to this –

Catalyst Collection Takeaway: “We are wiser than we know.” Ralph Waldo Emerson said that in 1841.

How does that relate to today? We all would want the positive characteristics of those born in a Year of the Rabbit as well as last year’s Tiger and the Dog (my Chinese astrology birth year; I looked it up) and the other nine Chinese astrological animal signs. And who wouldn’t want to embody the best parts of Libra, Scorpio, etc., etc.

YEAR-OF-THE-RABBIT ACTION IDEA: If we’re wise enough to know what characteristics are desirable, then we should be wise enough to set our own course in raising our skills in those areas in order that we might become all that we might become.

Our fate is not in the stars. The future is in our own hands. Self-improvement is the precursor to all improvement. Start today. We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work. There’s never been a more auspicious time.

Gung hay fa choy!  Get started on Your Best Year Ever! NOW.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing
8 Depot Square

Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com  

P.S.  Here’s a phrase some young children and teenagers use as a New Year Greeting -- 恭喜发财，红包拿来 – which, I’m told, translates as "Congratulations and be prosperous, now give me a red envelope!”