Happy New Year 2016
There is something a little exciting and little sacred about the start of a new year. It’s a fresh beginning and point for leaping off and setting ‘intentions’ or “resolutions” for the upcoming year. We hold a lot of power in these traditions ….but we tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to change something, or start something new… or let go of some bad habit or focusing on something that needs to be “fixed”.
I enjoyed an article I recently read, by Tiffany Haziza from Vancouver entitled, A new Year, A Fresh Perspective. She talks about not putting pressure on ourselves to start something new or making strict resolutions, but to actually “relish in the goodness that we’ve manifested, and with an open heart. …. It would serve us well to bring the joy created by our achievements into the new year with us, so that we become able to further nurture and grow those things that served us so well before.”
I believe there is a balance between letting go of accumulated congestion, stagnation and unprocessed emotions that have built up (with detoxing and cleansing out) and taking a moment to actually cultivate something new in our lives, or encourage new growth and new ideas. We all need a starting point… and sometimes, when the calendar says… January 1, of a new year… it gives us the encouragement to jump off… to take a chance to try something new… or let go of what we need to personally burn off.
Ms. Haziza encourages us to remember that we are exactly where we are meant to be and doing exactly what we are meant to be doing right now…. Whether perfectly or imperfectly… any improvements are worth celebrating and any moment that reminds us that we are human beings are just as amazing.
She says…. “If you make yourself any promises in honor of the new year, allow it to be this: That you will be as kind to yourself as you are to the strangers that you meet. That you will find as much compassion for yourself in your perfection and imperfection, as you do for your friends and family. And most of all, even as you spread you light and love into the world through your thoughts and gestures, remember to surround yourself in the same white light that you so generously give to others.”
“If we as a society could manage to keep this promise to ourselves, imagine the world we would live in! But it’s not necessary to try to manage the world, because you can only (and only need to ) manage yourself. By allowing yourself to tread into 2016 with an open heart and self-compassion, accepting yourself exactly as you are, you are setting the intention that this will be a year filled with love and light…. Which we all innately deserve. We truly can affect our community in this way, and perpectuate our light in ways that we cannot even fathom."
Happy New Year!
