It’s funny, the hype around the new year. The planning,
preparing, anticipating that comes right before this transition can obviously
be attributed to the opportunity for a fresh start, a blank slate for us to
create our lives in a way that resonates with us. But when you get down to the
nitty gritty, December 31st at midnight is just another time, on
another day, not different from every other day. I’m not writing this from a
place of disregard for the excitement the new year brings, I’m writing from a
place of reflection because I know that I too have been mindlessly motivated by
the date changing, only to remain stagnant after some time passes.
The preoccupation with goal setting and new years
resolutions is one of the most perfect examples of how we as human beings are
so focused on the future that we entirely miss out on the present, we don’t
even see the potential of RIGHT NOW. It’s almost as if from the day after
boxing day until the new year, those days become a write-off, they don’t even
exist because we’re just waiting for the completion of this year to take place,
so we can be who we want to be at the start of 2019. If that is the mentality
we continue to subscribe to, our hopes and plans for each coming year will
never survive past a month or two at maximum, because they are not planted from
a place of passion. Rather they are hoped for from a place of anticipated
pleasure, and a fear of living a life unchanged. Because let’s be honest, the
changes we imagine in our mind are based on our desire to feel specific
feelings, not about any physical changes or material gains. Whether we hope to
buy a new fancy car, or lose 20 pounds, we are fantasizing about how we will
feel once this possibly becomes our reality, and that is our underlying
motivational factor. If we are not conscious of the fact that how we are living
right now is based on our choices, our presence and our commitment to growth,
or lack thereof, we will live off of a short high of anticipation into the new
year, which will slowly die back down into our old habits and ways of being,
because comfort zone are easier to sustain. This is the ultimate truth behind
all the new years resolution weight loss jokes or the statistics that show most
of us give up by part-way through February, because their hopes and dreams
created in their mind were not grounded in an analysis of self, and how we
currently show up in our lives as free agents.
Instead of waiting for an arbitrary date, what we can we do
today, and every single day when we wake up that aligns with how we want to
feel in this world. How can we commit to showing up for the people we love?
What can we promise yourself ourselves we will prioritize in relation to our
self-love? What habits can we start developing in our lives on any given day
that will bring us closer to the life we are seeking? It doesn’t matter if it’s
July 10th, October 20th, or December 31st, we
have the agency to decide that how we are currently showing up in our lives is
not in alignment with our deepest being, and CHOOSE to show up differently.
This opportunity can be scary though- it requires work. The frightening, deep,
conscious work that demands us to look at our lives through an honest lens to
reflect on where we are in our own way. This might manifest in our lives as
clinging to expired relationships that are no longer healthy for us, or maybe
it manifests in other forms of self-sabotage such as addiction or cheating.
Every experience of our entire lives has layered upon the previous ones to
create who we seem to be today and how we view the world, our circumstances and
our opportunities. If we mess up one day, or two days, or 20 days, we can
always choose to begin again tomorrow, because the date does not matter, only our
whole-hearted intention does. This may sound like a fantasy blog, like “oh yeah
that sounds nice but how can I actually show up like that?”. Well, we choose
to, again and again, failure after failure, until it becomes how we show up
automatically. We carve out the time to self-reflect, to journal, to focus on
manifesting what we want to create in our lives and we also focus on being
honest about some of the reasons why what we think we are seeking is not
showing up for us. The law of attraction is not only about imagining what we
want, because almost immediately after we imagine these things we remember that
we do not currently have them. So although we may believe your energy is directed
towards attracting what we desire, the energy we are putting out there comes
from a place of lack-of, fear and that is the opposite of what you are seeking.
Commitment to leveling up takes patience, time and often painful awakenings but
once we see this life for what it is we simply cannot accept complacency
anymore.
So I invite you as we
enter a new year to get really clear and specific about what you want to
create, but from a place of self-reflection and honesty. I invite you to keep
choosing every morning when you wake up to show up how you want to show up,
even after the first few months of 2019 have passed. Like the title says, the
date as arbitrary. Your blank slate begins any moment you decide it does, how
will you create your life?
