Thoughts for a New Year
New Year’s Resolutions for me have usually been a negative experience. New goals that are often highly influenced by what other people suggest are important – exercise more, stress less, learn something new. They have always added additional obligations to a new year and are a reminder of all of the goals that I did not achieve in previous years. At their worst, these new ambitions can become opportunities for failure. They also involve either adding time-consuming ‘extras’ to my too-full daily list of things that I think I have to do, or are about achieving something that is such a broad concept that I don’t know where to start.
Yet, the idea of a New Year does suggest hope and newness and possibility, and is a great opportunity to take a fresh look at how to move forward positively. These are some of my thoughts for taking that hope forward without bogging yourself down with extra obligations or opportunities to fail:
Ditch the tick-boxes and bucket-lists and other expectations that we may not (and do not need to) achieve, and can lead to disappointment. Each day brings its own experiences to be appreciated for what they are - not for what we planned them to be or wish they were.
JUST DO IT NOW. Whenever we put something off, we give our minds the time and space to worry about doing it. Our minds raise all sorts of obstacles and “what if” and “maybe I can’t do it well”. Worry is a fruitless activity. One way to avoid worrying is to do potentially difficult or stressful things as soon as we possibly can. So often the doing is much less painful than the worrying and anticipating.
Allow yourself to be enchanted – to see nature’s beauty as a child does. That is, open-eyed, with joy, appreciating novelty and surprise. Flowers, trees, fruit, vegetables, grass, beetles, birds, puppies, kittens, bunnies, all wonderful when we stop and look and listen.
Happy 2023!