I broke into 2017 with the stomach flu.  A symbolic message that the year has nowhere to go but up. It actually reminded me to be grateful because once it had passed, I remembered that when you have your health, you have everything.

While resting up after the illness on New Year’s Day, I was watching Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday and I saw a woman who I hadn’t seen before.  She was songwriter Carole Bayer Sager.  I soon realized that she wrote some of the biggest hits of all time including That’s What Friends Are For, The Prayer (sung by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli), The Spy Who Loved Me (from the Bond movie), A Groovy Kind of Love, and the theme from Arthur (Best That You Can Do… one of the lines is, “If you get caught between the moon and New York City”).  I actually chose two of those songs to be played at my wedding.

She won an Academy Award, a Grammy and a Golden Globe.  But she spent her life thinking she was less than.  She was overweight as a child and her mom was constantly pointing it out.  She was shorter in stature and when one of her husbands told her that her legs were not long enough she never wore a skirt again.  She was tortured.

She said, “Some people compare their insides to somebody else’s outsides.  That never works.”

She looked so successful and yet she was broken.  It reminded me of what Diane von Furstenberg once said, “You know, there’s a thing about the woman across the room.  You see that woman across the room, you think, ‘She’s so poised; she’s so together.’  But she looks at you and you are the woman across the room for her.”

As we greet this new year, let’s remember that we have everything we need.  Be grateful for your healthy body that is your vehicle to get you where you want to go in life.  And don’t compare yourself to others who you deem to have it all.  Because you have it all.  You are the person across the room that others are admiring.  Now go and make some magic happen in 2017.