Everywhere I look at the moment there seems to be an advertisement saying ‘start the year off right’ or ‘cleanse that body after the holiday season,’ or perhaps the most interesting, ‘Make this year the new you’.
Every year the message seems to be the same…a new you! What if I like the current me? Or, what if I still like the ‘new me’ I created last year?! Do I have to change myself on January 1 every year? It seems like a lot of hard work and, if I make the changes that are being suggested, it seems like it is going to cost me a lot of money!
I’m not a huge proponent of the whole ‘new person’ concept. I believe in personal growth, in working on ourselves and that people can if they choose, change how they behave and react dramatically. However, our soul is the essence of who we are and trying to become someone new seems sad to me. The message of these advertisements seems to convey to me that somehow I wasn’t good enough last year or I have done something naughty or wrong by indulging over the holidays and that my jeans are a little tight because I wasn’t disciplined enough. To be honest, I think my jeans are a little tight because I filled up on love and human connection over the holidays.
Personally, I find these messages of ‘new you’ exhausting and a little defeating. I absolutely agree that sometimes after the holidays we want to get back into our routine. We may be feeling sluggish and irritable after over-indulging and not a lot of movement. But that doesn’t really call for a total overhaul of who we are does it? And if there are changes that we want to make, maybe having a more gentle and gradual approach to those changes will ensure their longevity.
My new year didn’t start off with guilt over the holiday season. It started off with me writing down a list of goals that I want to achieve for the year. This is something that I began doing about 10 years ago; I sit down and write in my journal what it is that I think that I would like to achieve over the next 12 months.
Until the last few years however, I had never sat down and reflected upon what I had achieved in the 12 months prior. The main reason for this is that I rarely achieved the goals I had set out to and so re-reading those parts of my journal didn’t seem very productive. In fact, they just made me feel like a failure.
But at the time, those were things that I truly believed were my goals and where I wanted my life to go. It is little wonder that none of them happened. I wasn’t in touch with myself and where I was at in my life. Some of my goals were actually goals I heard other people had set.
In recent years, I started writing down goals that were more authentic to me. They came from a place of ‘want’ and ‘feeling’ rather than ‘should.’ At the start of last year I wrote down that by the end of 2015, I wanted to be working full time for my business, fall in love, take my first vacation in 5 years, stay fit, and last but absolutely not least, talk to my God on a regular basis. There were a few other goals I had on the list but they were the main ones.
When I wrote these things down, for the first time in my life, I wrote them without anxiety or judgment about what would happen if I didn’t achieve these goals. I wrote from the heart and from a place of discernment. I had reflected upon what I wanted and where I wanted my life to go and it was therefore easier for my energy to follow my thoughts.
One of the things that happens when we are congruent with and authentic in ourselves and what we want for our lives, is we are not only better able to articulate our desires, but it feels right that we pursue them.
In 2015, this proved true for me and as the year came to a close, I didn’t feel good just because I could tick off my goals, I felt good because my goals were so in line with where I want my life to go that I was living with that wonderful feeling of being on the right path all year, even before I had met my goals.
That is not to say that I haven’t had difficult times or that life has been perfect; it never is. But there is something calming about being authentic and not having that feeling of ‘I know I should be doing this but I’m stuck where I am.’
There were of course, some goals that I have not yet met and that I will carry over into 2016, 2017 and possibly 2025. And there were a couple of goals that I had set that no longer make sense. But I know that my period of discernment before I set out on the track I wanted was paramount in helping me to set goals that were right for my life.
So as you start this new year, don’t make it about being a new you….be the you you are and always have been but spend some time discerning what it is YOU want for your life and where it is that YOU want your life to go. And don’t judge yourself for the goals you have or the goals you miss.
Happy 2016 Everyone!