new year's evolution
So we survived the holidays. Can I just start by saying, waking up sober never gets old. This is my third holiday season waking up hangover free and sweet heavens, I am never sorry for that. Put this girl under the tree, she is 100% present. Shout out to Welch’s Sparkling Rose, holy yum!
My brothers are here, one with his family from Singapore one with his family from Florida. We are on the same continent in the same state for the first time in six years and it’s so powerful. My heart is damn near exploding and I’m not sure how I’m going to return to solid ground again when they leave. For a woman who searches for her place in the world it has been a swirling vortex having everyone here and I have ended most nights full of emotion and wonder and also questioning even harder where I am in this world, where I belong and how I got to this point.
It’s funny how the turning of the calendar page brings up so very much. Time is seemingly so linear and it takes on a whole new meaning when you feel like you’re coming to the end of something, like you are running out of it. I suppose that is why the practice of being present becomes so much more relevant, and why you would feel that participating fully in every moment would not cause such a steep emotional decline toward “New Year.” It begs to question, what does New Year mean to you?
To so many it’s a chance to get together one more time during the holidays and celebrate what has passed in the previous year. It’s a time to think about the accomplishments and success and fun of the year. Maybe a time to dream about all there is to come and put a tight lid on what happened previously, either way every single year there it looms right after Christmas. And inevitably the New Year’s Resolution, the opportunity to turn everything around that you had let slide.
Last year I made a lot of changes. None of them were resolutions. Some of them came fast and furious and others came slowly, blooming from little seedlings of feelings into full blown lifestyle changes. I took alcohol out of my life, I went back to being vegetarian, I refocused on listening to how my body feels in exercise. I recommitted hard to my running and ran a personal record in a half marathon at 42 years old!
Truthfully, I have never been a big fan of New Year’s it gives me some anxiety putting so much pressure on one night, making all these promises to myself with the change of a calendar page. Over the years I have approached it in various ways and have incorporated tactics I have seen others take and slowly it’s evolved. What seems to work best for me is to go with what I am feeling. To let what the new year is to become form into just that, based on a couple of simple questions.
*How do I want to feel?
*What do I want to look back and remember?
*Where do I see myself?
*What does it take to be there?
*Where do I want to change?
In a nutshell I have taken on three tactics in lieu of the “new years resolution.” First I like to write down everything freeform on a piece of paper that did not serve me in the previous year. Choices I was not proud of, goals I let go of too soon, fears I let creep in. This obviously can also be written in a bullet point or letter form. Anything that needs to be forgiven, let go or left in 2018. Then I’ll burn it; in the sink, in the fireplace, in the firepit. Last year I burned in on the beach on a cold windy day (not an easy task) and buried the ashes in the sand. However your heart symbolically feels it can release what is done, that nothing can be done about.
Next I will choose a word of the year. In my travels I have read about and taken into myself the idea of a Word of the Year. A concept that can be used to focus on and ground myself throughout the year when things get a little itchy. The first time I did this was after a Wanderlust festival when it came to my attention that I spent a lot of time in yoga forcing myself into asanas (positions) I was not quite ready for. I thought damn, I am doing this on the mat AND in life, so I chose “surrender.” I even glued it to my mat. Throughout the year it became my go to word whenever I felt forcing, lost, ungrounded. I wrote about it, read about and tried to embody and learn about what it meant. My friend Tammi Salas and Sondra Primeaux of Unruffled Podcast fame (check them out if you haven’t, recovery through creativity divas!) have blogged about and spoken of and even hashtagged #WOTY (word of the year). What a beautiful way to bring focus and energy and learning around an idea without the pressure to conform to an activity. This year my word will be, “devotion.” Some other ideas I threw around were surrender (again, because duh), magic, intention, flow…Look up some of your own words, sit with them, roll them around in your mind. Decide for you, make it yours.
Finally I love the idea of a bucket list. I write it out in the back of my journal. A bucket list is so much more fun than a resolution list. And if you don’t get to it, you tack it on to next year. Here are a few things from my bucket list this year:
*run a half marathon in a big city
*run my first full marathon
*start yoga teacher training
*go on an adventurous and relaxing vacation to a fab location with my man
*take the kiddos somewhere they’ve never been
*express myself artistically
Record it on your phone and save it. However you want to do it , make it intentional and fun and sacred. A whole new year ahead that you have never lived before. How will you set the tone for 2019? Because really this life is about evolution not resolution and about flow not force and it’s meant to be an adventure. Feel free to leave your comments or email me about your ideas. Have fun with this! Happy New Year. I see you.
Alina
