“Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali
Another year has passed and as we move out of 2025 and into 2026, many of us start the year by making a New Year’s resolution. It could be anything from quitting smoking to losing weight. We see the new year as our desire to create a new you. As I grow older and the new year comes and goes at what seems like a faster pace, I often wonder if I have made an impact. Over the last six years It has been my desire to want to make a difference in the lives of others. It is not that I didn’t care the first 55 years of my life. It is just that my focus has changed. I see the world and my surroundings differently. What mattered to me before has been replaced by my desire to make a difference. I want to do what Muhammad Ali said, “Make the days count.”
The younger me wanted to strive to be successful and build a life for my family. The roads that I have traveled over the years have brought joy and pain, happiness and sadness, success and failures, and right choices and wrong choices. As I look back on my life, I have come to understand that those paths in my life have led me to this point. Do I have regrets. Yes, I most definitely do. Are there things I wish I could change. “YES.” But as we know there is no time machine that can bring us back to correct our past mistakes. Our only opportunity is to learn from them and move forward.
I have turned my new year’s resolution into a daily goal for myself. I work hard to honor the dignity of myself, the dignity of others, and to something higher which for me is my faith. Through all the triumphs and tragedies, I have been blessed and through those blessings I have begun to learn that I need to reach back and help others reach their potential whatever that may be. Every interaction, every speech and every recognition I receive I used to boost my ego because I wanted to be seen but as I have grown, I have learned that these opportunities help connect me with others with an opportunity to make a difference.
When I held nursing leadership positions, it took me a while to understand what having a title meant. Today when I hear about some of the people I have led and that they have been successful and that they credit some of that to me, I have learned I get more joy from that than my own success. When people speak to me about how wonderful my children are, there is no greater feeling to know that your children are making an impact on this world. I brag about my children more than I ever do about my own accomplishments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson the great American author and philosopher once said, “Successful is the person who has lived well, laughed often and loved much, who has gained the respect of children, who leaves the world better than they found it, who has never lacked appreciation for the earth’s beauty, who never fails to look for the best in others or give the best of themselves.”
My hope is that I do all those things. This is my New Years resolution every year and every day I am blessed to be on this Earth, and I will continue to walk my dignity journey every day.
Happy New Year
Charles Redd RN
Dignity Freedom Fighter
Dignity Freedom Fighter 