Why not create a self-loving, positive & productive New Year´s ritual? One that is more in tune with yourself and that you can keep close to your heart along the year with the possibility to evolve with you and your circumstances?
New Year´s Resolutions are often demands we impose on ourselves, steming from self-criticism. They too often quickly get abandonned producing a feeling of inadequacy.
My proposition is to look at ways to start the new year embracing ourselves, look for ways to feel better about our bodies and soul, and visualise a beautiful rotation around the sun ahead of us. You could also use this ritual for a fresh start in life...
1- Create the Right Atmosphere for your New Year´s Ritual
This is your own ritual and you need to create the right atmosphere for you to investigate within yourself lovingly.
Ensure you have enough time to get lost in the moment. A full day or half a day would be perfect (you could even make it a weekend or a 3 hours slot). You might want to go somewhere peaceful where you are disconnected from everyday chores.
Beautiful pieces that will create a ritual element:
Gems: look for mineral stones that will promote the right energy such as peace, abundance, stability, sacred feminine... It can also be an amuletor a japa mala.
Candles: lighting candles is magic and very intimate. It is part of rituals everywhere around the globe. Scents are also very powerful on our state of mind. You might want to look for a scented candle or essential oils.
Music: playing classical music, mantras, gentle music bring peace and calm.
Journal and pen: why not choose a journal and pen dear to you to serve the purpose?
Ways for you to enter into ritual mode:
You can start the ritual with a gentle yoga session (one aimed at loving yourself) or mantra chanting.
Alternatively, you could take a warm bath using epsom salts (I have been doing this weekly for a year now and could not recommend it more).
2- Recognise your Emotions
Get connected to yourself. Let yourself smile, cry or get angry. You might be fearing the future? Be true to yourself and feel it.
Once connected to your emotions, jot down all that comes to your mind (good or bad). If you do not have anything to write yet, just be with yourself in the moment. Not the writing type? then dance or draw or find any other way to express how you feel.
3- Surrender
Rather than setting clear objectives with timelines that make you suffocate, look at ways to feel good. The more you get into states of flow along the year, the more you will be able to be productive in the good sense of things and achieve more in less time.
Not long ago, I heard Gabor Maté talk about how to be a good parent and he said something along that line: "if you want your kids to be happy, be happy first". I truly believe that if we want to build a happy thriving life, we need to make our happiness our priority. We need to stop trying to control it all.
Be grateful for all that you have and all that is coming your way. Feel good about who you are, the beautiful soul that gives life to your body.
I heard Rebecca Campbell this morning talk about the way a rose does not try and blossom early in the year or try actively to attract bees to get polinisated. It simply is and trust its nature. It knows that the right time will come to open and be beautiful in a perfect world
4- Create Time to Enjoy Life
Before even thinking about adding work on your agenda, let´s free some time! Create a virtuous circle by making more time to do more things you enjoy.
Does that Serve me?
Look at all the things you do weekly and ask the question "Does that serve me?".
There are different answers to the question: yes because it is vital (work, food shopping, cooking, showering etc), yes because it makes me happy (putting make up on, gym, time with family etc) but then the answer might be "no, it does not serve me". In that last instance, try and see where you can remove such things (extra work hours, house 100% clean and tidy all the time, cooking every day etc).
Simplify your Life
From these answers, see how you can simplify your life thereby liberating time: easy healthy recipes, a mopping robot, food shopping home delivery, less activities ... Also remove things and become minimalist. Decluttering removes weight from our shoulders.
Evaluate the time spent on social media daily and make it a compromise to spend as little as possible (you can look at installing an app to control the time spent). Apart from "stealing" crucial time, social media tends to make us feel bad (we compare to "more beautiful", "happier people" we do not know anything about).
Unsubscribe from mailing lists; a constant flow of emails creates mental noise. We do not read 90% of these emails. Let´s just focus on 1 or 2 insteresting ones that will cheer us daily (and that we have time for).
5- Set New Year´s Objectives & Visualise
Now that you have connected to your soul, established what will benefit you and created extra time in your life, take your journal and start writing "goals" to nourrish your "authentic"self. Remember to set small yet achievable objectives.
As stated earlier, here are the areas you might want to consider:
- Family / friends: Create quality time with your loved ones (you might want to reduce to a minimum the time spent with familly members who do not resonate with you). Dreaming of moving to a new house, improving your current home? Time to let your imagination work.
- Career: take a course, focus on improving your productivity to get more free time, change your job.
- Learning / creativity: Get inspired by great people, coaches (Inner engineering course by Sadhguru, Ananda.org courses, A course in miracles - Marianne Williamson has a daily course podcast that sounds great, robin sharma´s coaching daily courses etc).
- Physical form: breathe (look at breathing excercises to let go and calm down), do yoga, walk, walk in nature, eat well, take baths etc...
- Soul calling / spirituality: things that make you smile, laugh, be happy, feel in tune: sing, cry, listen to music, be in nature, read poetry, sing .You might want to write down what on the contrary hinders you and you want to let go.
Of course, you might want to add a few objectives that are SMART (speciifc, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound). That could be: Taking an exam, a course, registering to a dance class, saving X amount to take a trip / renovate...
Once your plan done, visualise yourself doing / being in the life you created in your head.
Here is are 2 beautiful mantras for you by Many Om: