At the beginning of every new year I like to find some quiet time to plan what I would like from my year ahead. I believe that we need to have intentions in order to attract and manifest these ‘things’ in our lives. It’s about being aware of what our needs and desires are and asking for these to come about while we also stepping and putting in some action towards achieving these goals. However, I have to be very careful as I am a great planner and achiever and love setting copious goals and striving for amazing things. There is a definite downside to this.
In my past life BC (before children!) I often did manage to achieve many of my goals yet sometimes at the expense of my health and wellbeing. I have now learned to prioritise. Do I really need to learn how to speak Xhosa this year – will it help me talk my threenager through her latest emotional breakdown? Do I really need to play squash, do yoga and find a dancing class to attend when I can dance in my lounge with my children shrieking in delight? Amazingly, I have even become more relaxed about work goals – how often I need to blog, how much money I would like to manifest from my practice by the end of the year etc. While important they are just not as important to me now as my family. Right now my children need A LOT of me and it can irritate me at times but at the same time in a few years they will not really want to know me and I will have loads of time to put more goals in place and achieve more in general. So I have found it easier to cut back on the number of items on my resolution list regarding things I want to DO.
Where I have battled and always battle is the work I do on myself. As a self-professed perfectionist I always tend to want to better myself in some way or another. While having children has curbed that in some ways i.e I just don’t have the energy to put too much into me….there is this other side where I want to be the best person I can be for them. That damn mom-guilt can be so driving at times!
So as usual, I started off my resolution list this year with I am going to learn to go with the flow more and allow myself to choose the easy way; I am going to be more present; I am going to be more conscious of making choices from the heart and not head….wadda wadda. Until I had a LOONG list of how I needed to improve this year. I then looked at this list and, as noble and inspiring as these ideas are, I realised that I want to have only one goal for this year for me and that is I AM GOING TO ACCEPT WHO I AM AND WHERE I AM RIGHT NOW. In a weird kind of way that will probably lead itself to many of my others goals like presence and ease but I am not aiming for being present or inviting ease in my life. All this one goal requires is that when I find myself thinking “I should….” I will remind myself I really don’t need to. I am actually doing and being just fine! Me and that little voice in my head are going to be doing a lot of arguing this year!
Resolutions by nature are loaded with the idea that improvement is needed. We spend so much time and energy on that improvement that we forget to live right now and we forget to honour ourselves in this very moment. As someone once said to me… “Where exactly are you aiming to be with all this work you are doing on yourself?” At some point we have to say enough is enough. I like this person I am and this place I am at right now and I want to enjoy it. This is what I wish for myself in 2016. If it’s what you want then I wish it for you too!
