It is that time of year when your inbox is full of emails encouraging you to

•  plan for your best year yet
•  set a big hairy goal
•  dream big
•  make your New Year resolutions stick and
•  tips for what to do if they don’t.

This is when the rebel in me comes out. I feel I am being coerced down a particular path. Like being forced to take foul-tasting medicine.

Don’t get me wrong. It is perfectly natural to want to look and review and refresh one’s outlook at the start of a new year.

A new year holds so much possibility. You are about to start a new chapter in your book of life – a blank slate to be filled with whatever you desire and aspire to be, do and have. And right on queue, that built-in renewal prompt kicks in and compels you to make New Year’s Resolutions, dream about the year ahead, set your intentions and goals, or simply fine-tune what you already have.

Here’s how one of my teachers expresses her excitement about the new year: “I love the new year because I get that determined, “gggrrrrr” kind of attitude where I flex my muscles and I vow to be strong, tough and get ‘stuff’ done.”

Yup, I get that. It is how I feel. I felt like that last year too and made a l-o-n-g list of what I was going to get done. Then when I took a close look at it earlier this week in a tidy-up spree, I was appalled at what did not get done.

This year I am wiser. I am keeping it simple. Less is more.

This year I have also noticed a trend towards a different kind of goal, especially among those in my circles.

Keep your promises to yourself

One of my friends is adamant that this is the year she will no longer let herself down. She intends to keep the promises she makes to herself.

Like many of us, she finds it is easy to keep the promises she makes to others, but when it comes to herself, she finds an excuse – reasons why it is no longer important, convenient or necessary to keep her promise. She says every time she breaks a promise to herself, she reinforces her own lack of self-worth. Every broken promise sends the message that she is not important and does not deserve the respect she accords to others and cannot be trusted.

Ouch.

Hats off to her for noticing, confronting the issue, her honesty and her willingness to change.

Go for feeling good

Another friend says she is not setting any goals this year. This is the year when she will ‘feel her way through’ and fine-tune as she goes. She wants to feel good. So she’ll do more of what makes her feel good. Maybe she’ll learn to juggle some balls, join a singing class or choose to have a cold shower for a week. She has found a list of fun things to do and plans to use it as a pick list and inspiration for things and projects to do during the year to add spice to her life.

Think this one is easy? Think again. Life has a way of throwing curveballs from time to time. It can be tough to stay in the feel-good place when your world turns topsy-turvy and your emotions drag you through the darkest of valleys. This is when you have to dig deep for the courage to stay the course and be with what you’re feeling without shutting it out or off, so you can go through them to a better feeling place.

Courage. Courage is what you need to live your life by the barometer of your feelings. To feel them and be honest about what you are feeling. Allow them and use them as a guide to your next thought and next action, back to the feel-good place.

My friend is smart though. She focuses on what she has, not on what she does not have. She is abundant. She knows that life ebbs and flows, that the seeds of tomorrow’s success and bounty are rooted in today’s apparent lack and failure. She’ll crack this one.

Hats off to her for the courage and trust she demonstrates in living her life by the rhythm of a drum only she hears.

Appreciation

I feel very blessed as I write this. Blessed that I have such wonderful people in my life. Blessed that they are such great teachers and set such store by what really matters to them. No striving for more things, more experiences or more success as the world sees it; merely a willingness to be more honest with themselves and live their lives accordingly. Thank you.

Over to you

What are YOUR intentions for the new year? What will you do DIFFERENTLY? What will you change to GROW and EVOLVE into the next best version of yourself?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe left us this wisdom: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

What are you waiting for?

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