What are you made of?

Not literally but figuratively. What has the sum total of your life's experiences to date, prepared you for?
Whether or not you believe we all start off as a blank slate, or that we somehow build upon a predetermined set of programming, what has the journey of your life prepared you to best do? What have you learned along the way? If that's too complex of a question than what is the last year done to prepare you to do next? What options have you created?
What are some of the most valuable lessons that you've learned along the journey of just the last 365 days?
In a world increasingly more focused on skill sets and abilities; what new abilities and skill sets you acquired over the last year? What skills have you fine-tuned? Perhaps the more important question would be: What are the elements of yourself that remain consistent throughout the changes of last year, the last decade, your life? Somewhere in this consistency you may find a truth about yourself. Some may call this truth your personality, your character, or your center. Many might argue that it is from this place, this place of consistency, the place that doesn't change, that might give the greatest insight into what is most important to you.
Perhaps this center, this place that matters most, is in the lab where you create the emotion rich environment that is your life - the box that contains your fears, loves, joys, and all things that you recognize as meaningful. And what if this box, made out of the elements of your center, or your metal; was actually what you looked into when you looked out into the world? Now, I would be the first to admit that this is a very rough metaphor, but you have to admit that it does illustrate nicely how complicated personal changed might be perceived to be.
What if a more effective way to approach personal change, was not found in the re-arranging of the components of your box; but actually found in changing the metal of your box itself. Perhaps the phrase “think outside the box", draws its power from the fact that only from outside of the box can you observe the box, and change it.
This act of changing the metal of who you are might be much less complicated than it may seem at first. It doesn't take mystic powers of and Alchemist trying to change lead into gold, as much as it takes a simple change of personal philosophy. See, philosophy, the meaning we give things, is the cosmic force that binds matter (things that matter) in our lives, and become our metal. The good news is, we don't have to create all of the philosophy ourselves. We could take this some philosophies from others that make sense given their intention, direction and successes in life. We can combine the metal, so to speak, of others; and meld them into a metal of our own. In the box made of this alloy, we can re-arrange the events in our life, and create a pretty powerful day.

Changing your philosophy, changes who you are; and only with the eyes of who you are will you ever see this world.