Happy New Years! Welcome 2015.
I love New Years. I appreciate the blank slate that we get at the beginnings of a new year. I enjoy the opportunity to reflect on the past year and to let it go kindly with love. Or to push it out the door with your foot in it’s backside, like an unwelcome party guest- depending on the kind of year that you have had.
2014 definitely has my footprint on its hindquarters, I am sad to say. It was a roller coaster ride for me with lots of highs and lows. At the end of it all, I feel softened, perhaps a little battered and bruised but gentled and more heart opened. Tempered. Like river rocks, tossed around by the white water and made softer, and smoother for it.
Yep, it was that kind of year.
We all have an instinct for new beginnings and fresh starts at this time of the year, this is basis for our New Years resolutions. Gym memberships spike. People quit bad habits or at least want to work off the excesses of the holidays and come more into balance, which is a good thing.
But I am leery of the punishing sort of resolutions, the ones with a lot of “shoulds” in them. It can be a time when the inner critic runs rampant and might decide that you need a total life make over.
Or a complete personality trade in. (I hear you can get a 2014 certified pre-owned personality at bargain prices, complete with financing. Zero percent down!)
Maybe you think it’s time to chuck your whole everything and be a whole new you.
Please, my dears, don’t do that to yourselves. Don’t give into the temptation to blame and shame yourself. Don’t reject yourself or sign up for an unnecessary upgrade. Don’t should on yourself.
This year I have only one resolution and that is to fully accept myself as I am right now. Today. Without changing anything. Radical self-acceptance is the first step for my 2015. My resolution is to fully accept myself exactly as I am and to LOVE my flaws and imperfections.
I am never going to lose that extra 10bls. (When I did, I didn’t like it…) I accept and love that extra little squishy part of me.
I am never going to be a total neat freak. My house is clean once a day and that is all I want to do. I can clean. Or I can do other things that are much more interesting to me. Like hang out with my kids, go for a walk with my dog or write. I actually love that about me.
I am never going to be a bad-ass, super organized, do everything super woman kind of chick. (Although I admire that greatly in other people…)
I am just only ever going to be me. Sort of soft and squishy. Loving and valuing people and my relationships more then material things. Enjoying life the way that I do, in my slightly hedonistic way. I am only ever to love in an unguarded way, to be open hearted and gentle, even if it means that I get hurt. Which I do quite frequently.
The more I lean into myself and accept the parts of me that I have tried desperately to change over the years, the happier I feel.
What is so fascinating about this process, is that the more ME I let myself be, the more I live from my soul and not from my critic. I feel more in my soul then ever before. We all have an “ego ideal,” an image in our minds of who we think we SHOULD be. Mine looks a little bit like a Barbie doll, or a Disney Princess -those images are ingrained into me since childhood as the epitome of womanhood. (Yuck…)
How much time, money and energy have I wasted trying to morph myself into an impossible pattern?
There are two separate and distinct urges we have to CHANGE and GROW. One of these is the punishing changes that our inner critic wants. It pushes us to magically transform into our ego ideal so we will be loved by our families. It uses shame and guilt to try and whip us into a shape that isn’t natural, isn’t really us. I really would need a fairy Godmother with a magic wand to get me there.
Personally, I always wanted Prince Charming to meet Cinderella first in her true form and love her for that rather then falling for the wand-enhanced temporary version of her. What a set up for both of them! I am not quite sure how they got to happily ever after from there.
The other kind of change is the energy of the SOUL, which also wants movement, growth and transformation. One of our deepest desires is to express ourselves at the soul level in the world. But the big difference is that your soul wants you to be more you, not less you. And it wants it bad.
You can tell the difference between the two because one makes you feel BAD and the other allows you to feel the JOY that is always waiting for you, just under the surface of self-acceptance.
The soul never punishes. It never sets cruel or mean resolutions. It feels joy and love in the expression of itself in the world.
So for example- I SHOULD go on a diet. I should get my sorry ass over to the gym because no one will love me if I am a size 10. Better be a size 6. I could diet and eat under 1000 cals a day and do workouts that actually hurt my body. But maybe someday, I’ll look like Barbie??? (Sheesh…) And of course it won’t last since I am actually going against MYSELF to do it.
OR…
I love myself. Therefore I only eat foods that nourish me. I notice that eating sugar makes me feel horrible, so I stop. Then I start taking dancing classes, because dancing makes me happy. Zumba. Nia. Ballroom. I feel joy when I moving my body, walking my dog and weight lifting makes me happy. I sleep better. I am in a better mood when I do fun exercise on a regular basis. So I do it, pretty much without effort. I want to and it’s easy because it’s fun and feels good.
The joy that I feel when I am dancing overflows into other areas of my life. When I come home from dancing or walking the dog, I am happy. I feel like writing, so I blog and then coolly knock off a gnarly chapter in my book- one that I have been stuck on for ages.
I drink some coffee cuz I LOVE it!
And then while I was in the tub, (because the tubby makes me happy….) I thought of new class that I want to teach, one that I have never done before. I am JUICED about it. I can’t wait to sit down and write up the agenda for this class. And I can’t wait to teach it. (Watch for it in Feb 2015!)
And then I joyfully want to play with my friends, my kids and my colleagues. I am teaching this weekend in the Rhys Thomas Institute of Energy Medicine. I can’t wait to get there. I adore it, even though it’s hard sometimes. Even though it frequently pushes me waaaay out of my comfort zone, until my personality squirms and complains, I still can’t wait to get there. It’s a soul thing.
The doorway to this soulgasm way of living is radical self-acceptance. If I find some corner of myself that I am still judging, I lean into it. I pick up the rock and look under it. I accept all the squirmy things that live under the rock with a lot of love because it’s part of ME. I will hopefully choose to not act out all the shadow parts of myself, but I am not going to hate them. And if I do act out, fall off the wagon, behave badly and make mistakes, I am going to forgive myself and learn from that experience.
Hey, it’s all research, right? The best ways that I learn is by making mistakes, taking risks, falling off the wagon and doing things the hard way sometimes.
So I am wishing you the best 2015. I hope you head into the New Year with a lot of love for yourself. It’s best resolution and holiday gift that you can give yourself!
