This morning I got to thinking about, what makes New Year’s so special? It’s was a statement that brought forth a flood of questions spinning my mind with inquiry. I asked myself, why do we celebrate it or lament over it or try to cleanse ourselves from it? Why do we pursue last minute applications to try and push through another intended life because of it? Why do we seek outside ourselves to place our focus on some grand gesture and some overestimated declaration of a better life than before? Why do we choose to look over a whole year gone by as a potential enemy rather than ally? Why do we try to wash away the “sins of the father” and then claim sudden resolutions at the end of the wire? Why don’t we ever proclaim the very tenacity that got us this far? Then at an end of a year, all of our efforts and progress go completely unnoticed.
I fell intrigued by the word, ally and its relationship with everyday life. So, I looked it up and the definition was: to combine or unite a resource or commodity with (another) for mutual benefit. It is to merge, join or fuse. Isn’t that what we do with our life anyway? We merge with our life and our life becomes a source of energy and each day, presents a new opportunity to reinstate new action. Then I thought, don’t we kind of do that anyway, reinstate new actions…? Sometimes, even without knowing that we are. It became clear to me that everyday life is a resource and the most valuable commodity in the world, is time. So, perhaps, what makes New Year’s so special is the celebration of time and resource or more specifically, the celebration in how we utilized our precious time and inner life resources.
Time is precious, rather than resolving a whole year into what you want to change or fix moving forward, choose to celebrate the full value of who you are now! Look over your year and acknowledge the time spent in cultivating yourself to better utilize your inner resources with more wisdom but without measurement or comparison. This simple shift sets you up for motivation by inspiration rather than a false startup. By taking the time to practice giving your energy and gratitude to your courage, your strength, to your abilities in those things that you overcame and made happen, you’ve already begun a New Year in alignment with who you are and what you want. So, whether it’s having the courage to walk away from a dissatisfying relationship, asserting your strength to continue on your healing path, or busting through barriers, little by little until you saw some fruit on the table, take the time to self-realize so you can continue to self-actualize. Put that in your bank of awareness and make it your vision going forward. Then sit back and relax as you witness how fast you blaze your path ahead!
Discovery Exercise: Create a Victory Log!
Take the time to review your year and write down your victories! You can include what you learned, what you applied and how you triumphed! Be mindful not to measure or judge progress, there will always be more to work on. Remember, success can be fleeting if we don’t take the time to celebrate it so start today.
*As an added bonus- get yourself a container, box, bowl or vase and over this New Year write down on a separate piece of paper every milestone, small or great and place it in your container- When New Years Eve comes around next year, let that container be your Victory reminder, your gift, and your Motivation by Inspiration!
Happy New Year!
Love,
Jennifer
Inner Beauty Notes, Motivation by Inspiration, 2018