The Energy of a New Year
The energy of a new year is often inspiring and makes us feel ready to set goals and be productive. Many set resolutions for better health, achieving things at work, improving or finding new relationships. But I think we all know what often happens. You set these resolutions and a few weeks or months down the line you beat yourself up because you didn’t make it into the gym every day like you said you would, or you ate that piece of chocolate cake when you told yourself you’d stop eating sweets altogether, yada yada yada.
It’s true that the energy surrounding a new year is productive and a time to take advantage of allowing ourselves a clean slate and a new beginning; but the biggest thing that I’ve taken away from the energy of this new year is that we must appreciate and respect that January still falls right in the middle of Winter. A slower time that invites us to reevaluate, to rest, to release the habits, thoughts, and beliefs that no longer provide us with anything positive.
As Mother Earth shows us every 365 days around the sun, the seasons come and they pass. The constant cycle of life, death, and rebirth shows us that we too, as a part of the earth and the cosmos, travel along the same cycle. Through our patterns, habits, beliefs, and actions we are given the opportunity to observe how we follow the seasons and how this allows us the chance to show up in this world as authentically and best we can.
My biggest encouragement for you is to take time in solitude, in peace, in quiet to allow your mind the chance to go inward. It’s okay to not set resolutions, it’s okay to not have solid, concrete goals. You have plenty of time to be gentle with yourself as you find your answers. Maybe at this time you are being called to sit and reevaluate how the last year was, what positives came from it and what negatives. Be intentional and decide what parts you’d like to take with you into 2022 and what parts you will lovingly release. Thank those experiences, thoughts, or beliefs for how they served you and let go knowing that something even better will fill that space.
And if you do find yourself ready to set some goals or resolutions, be kind to yourself. We all slip up sometimes, the point is that we’re setting an intention to be better, do better, and feel better. Just like every year, 2022 will bring high highs and low lows which is the beautiful part of being human. The light and the dark help us appreciate what each provides and teaches. In the ebb and flow if we learn to trust and surrender, we’ll float peacefully and abundantly with our heads above water growing and moving forwards towards the things we hope and dream for.
Sending you so much love and light always,