Today is first shot to get 2018 right, hopefully with 364 more to follow

Hope springs eternal, but be careful what you wish for.

Welcome to 2018. Today, many of your metro-east peers will wake up and commit to exercising more, or to lose weight, or to eat healthy. Most of those great and noble plans will be derailed before Martin Luther King Day, many forgotten by the Epiphany, and a few will even be abandoned before you finish reading this engaging column.

Right now 2018 is a blank canvas, a clean sheet and a fresh start. If 2017 was a good year for you, you want to keep that momentum going. If 2017 was a year you’d like to forget, you’re ready turn the page and get on with 2018.

Too many of us wake up feeling helpless about the day or year ahead, and feeling they have zero control over their present or their future. But if you can be objective about your past, know there are things you could have done differently and that different choices would have brought different results.

You woke up today, Jan. 1, 2018, and you are who you are and where you are as a direct result of your lifetime of decisions so far. The best news is that you can still change your tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan. 2. Yes, tomorrow is pretty much still up to you.

No, you won’t be able to change the weather. You won’t be able to change the traffic. You won’t be able to directly influence the outcome of a bowl game or the stock market. But you will have a direct effect on who you are and what you do. When you look back to Jan. 2 on Jan. 3, you will feel good about your actions or not depending on those decisions.

Will 2018 be better for you than 2017? Today is your first shot to get 2018 right. But, God willing, you’ll get 364 more shots.

This story was originally published December 31, 2017 at 4:30 PM with the headline "Today is first shot to get 2018 right, hopefully with 364 more to follow."