Happy New Year!  New beginnings, new possibilities, new horizons to seek are all awaiting us in 2013.  This is the time of year when people make resolutions, plan to break bad habits and form good ones, and reconnect with friends and family.  My wish for everyone on the planet is this:  May 2013 be the year that brings you all the love, prosperity and abundance you desire.

But we didn’t get here all at once.  It was a long journey through all of 2012; the joys and sorrows of the past year are part of us, and it is up to us to take in those lessons, the bitter and the sweet, learn from them and move on.  Take your pain, bless it, thank it for its teachings, and let it go.  Take your joys, embrace them, tell yourself that prosperity/love/abundance is your true destiny and desire, and manifest that for the coming year.  You can do it!

Every journey starts with a single step.  Today is the first step of your new life.  Seize it!

To help you on your road, I want to introduce you to two animals that make incredible journeys in a single year.  Let them inspire you, that you too can accomplish much and travel far in 365 days.

The Humpback Whale

Humpback whales make the longest migration of any mammal on the planet; 5,160 miles traveling from the frigid waters surround Antarctica to the balmy Caribbean.  Think you’ve had a long year?  Try swimming from the pole to the equator and back again. Humpback whales are found in all the oceans, and they regularly migrate from cold Arctic or Antarctic feeding grounds to warm equatorial waters to bear their young.

Humpback whales are baleen whales.  All cetaceans, the animal group that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises, are divided into two groups, baleen whales and toothed whales.  Baleen whales strain very small fish and other organisms from the water using thick, fibrous plates called baleen.  These baleen plates hang from their upper jaws like curtains, and the skin and muscles of their lower jaws expand tremendously to take in huge quantities of water and food.  The water is pushed out with the tongue and the little critters in the water are trapped by the baleen and eaten.

It’s not just their travels that make the humpback unique, look at those long front flippers.  Oh yeah, and they are flippers NOT fins, here’s the difference; flippers have bones and fins do not.  No other whale has elongated, wing-like pectoral flippers, making the humpback whale instantly recognizable.

What really makes me love the humpback?  They sing.  Just like my own Hubby making up songs to delight me, humpback males sing long, complex, beautifully haunting melodies to entice the ladies.  Here’s the really amazing part, all whales sing the same song.  It changes year to year, but every whale makes the same changes in a year.  It’s still a mystery how they communicate the changes to each other.

I figure if all the humpbacks in an ocean can manage to get their act together each year and all decide on the new song, I should be able to step it up and make the goal of being better at networking and growing as a writer.

The Arctic Tern

This tiny, 4-ounce bird makes the longest migration of any animal on the planet.  They have the humpback beat by a whole hemisphere.  Arctic terns migrate from Greenland to Antarctica, traveling 44, 000 miles one way.  These birds have a life span of up to 30 years, and scientists estimate in that time they travel 1.5 million miles.  Let me give you a little perspective on that number; in its lifetime, an Arctic tern will travel the equivalent of to the moon and back three times.  I will never again complain about my commute.

On the upside, they never see winter.  Their travels take them from northern summer to southern summer.  How far would you travel to always have long, warm summer days?

Arctic terns mate for life.  Talk about commitment:  “Honey, it’s time to pack up the kids and head to Antarctica.”  It must be true love.

How far would you go for what you love?  From one pole to another?

We are all on this life journey together.  Many small steps taken one at a time can carry you incredible distances.  What commitments do you need to make for your journey?  What is your first step?  How far will you go?