On New Year’s Eve, me and the fam were sitting around watching a movie while we waited to ring in the New Year. (Hey, what is up with Dick Clark? Zombie?!) When all of the sudden a mouse jumped up on the couch and ran over my husband’s shoulder! A mouse in the house! I screamed like a girl and pulled my feet up. The dog was running around and mooing. (He doesn’t bark, he moos. Really.) Pandemonium and chaos ensued.
The four cats we have just sat there staring around the room. “What? Are we supposed to do something here? Doodley do….”
The men jumped into action, moving all the furniture hoping to catch the little beastie. I know he has been living under the stove since I found mouse “evidence” in my cooking gear. (Eeewww!)
Finally after much mayhem, me screaming, the dog mooing and the kids whooping, the poor creature took refuge under the Christmas tree where he shivered like a little furry present. My husband caught him gently and we put him in the Tupperware container for a minute till we could figure out what to do with him.
Seemed a shame to put him outside on a freezing cold night, but I really couldn’t have him contaminating my cookware.
So we decided on the garage. And my hubby, who is a tender hearted, vegetarian, animal lover made a little house for him out of a cardboard box and an old dishtowel so he wouldn’t be cold. And with pomp and ceremony the mouse found a new house in the garage!
That was the big New Year’s excitement at my house!
“2010!” My ten year old daughter said. “Only two more years till the end of the world!” She seemed quite chipper about it but we had a nice little discussion about how probably the world wasn’t going to end after all and she should start saving for college just in case.
There is a website called “A Brief History of the Apocalypse” that documents all the many times people have thought the world was going to end and it didn’t. Talk about an anticlimax. It’s a pretty funny read, and very reassuring. A good reminder to all of us not to do anything wacky and embarrassing just because we think the world is going to end, since those people look pretty silly emerging out of their caves and bomb shelters to find everything has moved along just fine without them. The world is still here and surely will be for quite some time to come.
There are two fun things about New Years- predictions and resolutions, so we are going to look at both.
There is something about the New Year’s Day that inspires us to take stock of the past and also look into our futures. Every year around this time, I look over the past year and think about my accomplishments, the goals that I set and the ones that I achieved. There is a natural energy in the air of starting over, turning a new leaf and making resolutions.
Now I am all about setting goals, being rather achievement oriented, but I don’t really like the traditional New Year’s resolutions. Every year I resolve the same things and seem to never achieve it. I am still eating way too much sugar. Can’t seem to budge that 10 lbs I would like to lose, can’t make myself floss between meals, work out every day and balance my checkbook.
Would I even like the person I would be if I could?
Inside me there are two distinct and conflicting people. One of them is the purist/priest. This part of me loves discipline and can really live like a monk. She would have a cell like room with nothing in it (hates clutter) and eat nothing but brown rice and steamed veggies everyday. She meditates, reads scholarly books and has abs of steel.
Eye roll! Head smack! Face palm!
See? The other part of me hates her! Her opposite is the sensualists, a hedonist and just wants to feel good and have fun. It’s fun having a body! I like to eat, to drink and have massages. That part of me wants to have coffee and pumpkin pie for breakfast. Everyday. With whipped cream.
I can really chalk up most of my problems from being too much of either extreme. Life is too dry and boring if I am just in my inner purist. And life has WAY too much gravy on it if my sensualist is driving. Somewhere in the middle is the happy medium.
So my New Year’s resolution is to find that balance and to quit being mean to myself when I don’t!
So often the traditional resolutions are a big set up for the Inner Critic to take charge and give us a lovely chance to beat ourselves up for all our imperfections. Eventually we fall off the wagon and the inner beating continues. Not very productive!
What if our “imperfections” are actually perfect for us? What if they make life juicy and are manifestations of our soul? What if your News Year’s resolution was to love yourself exactly as you are right now?
Louise Hay says that the only way to change your weight is to use the affirmation, “I Love and accept myself exactly as I am.” I believe it!
Here is my take on a newer, kinder form of resolution and what I am working on this year myself.
- Accept yourself as you are exactly in this moment. This doesn’t mean you should stay in denial about a situation, you need to deeply acknowledge it, see the truth and then accept it with love.
- Talk to yourself in a loving way, and set healthy goals, not inner critic driven ones. Maybe you want a healthier body. Maybe you need to get in shape financially, or improve your relationships. How can you do this as an act of love for yourself, rather then coming from am “I am not good enough” place.
- Set small, reasonable goals and reward yourself when you achieve them. I noticed that most of the time I don’t achieve my goals because I set them too big and then I have a tendency not to acknowledge what I DID accomplish. Having the BIG MAMA goal in mind is great, but chunking it down into smaller pieces leaves me feeling more successful.
- Give yourself enough time off the leash to enjoy life. Splurging occasionally is so much fun! Regular “cheat” days on the diet are very motivating. I am a big fan of the mental health day too.
- Cultivate forgiveness and compassion for yourself and everyone else too! We all learn from making mistakes! In fact sometimes I think it’s the ONLY way we learn. So make your mistakes, get the learning in and get back on the horse! I was reminded of this the other day when watching a toddler learning how to walk. Little dude fell down every other step, but he didn’t stop getting up and trying. (He had a very padded hiney, which I am sure helped!) Can you imagine a toddler decided not to try walking because they might make a mistake and not get it right?
Looking Back and Looking Forward
As I look back over 2009, the word that comes to mind is “collapse.” People got laid off, divorced, and systems broke down, big and small. A lot of broken things really did collapse but it was all stuff that really needed to go. Letting go is wonderful and freeing for some people and for others it’s scary and hard, but in all cases, it was necessary. The old needs to go to make room for the new. What did you let of this year?
I really do feel good about this year, and this decade. I feel like the energy is shifting from breaking down old structures to creating opportunity. I feel like 2010 and this whole new decade will hold; possibility, opportunity and a chance to build what we really want onto the ashes of the past. Perhaps it’s a phoenix year and the phoenix decade. What can we raise up out of the ashes of the old? What would you like to create this year for yourself? Where is the opportunity for you?
When we have CHANGE there is always opportunity. We can’t hold onto what was, but we can be flexible and see where there are now new spaces, new inventions, creations and thinking.
Here are some of my whacky predictions.
- The Pats win the first playoff game at home but lose the second road game. Doh!
- Innovation and entrepreneurship will be huge in the coming years. Expect new inventions and huge leaps in technology and science.
- Science will continue to close the gap between theology, metaphysics and hard science. Scientists will continue to “prove” scientifically what metaphysicians have known all along.
- The economy will begin to recover as people move away from big corporate jobs and start their own small businesses.
- The world governments will come out of the closet about aliens. (Hey, my inner conspiracy theorist says so!)
Ok that one was just goofy! Happy New Years!
