Warm Winter Wishes & Happy New Calendar Year! In some parts of the world, the New Year starts at different times, such as in November for Old Celtic countries or in March in Persia. Here in America, we have a big ol’ countdown on December 31, and start all over again at midnight on January 1, so it’s a time that brings about thoughts of a “New year, new you,” and people make resolutions that they truly mean to keep to change their lives. Remember, it takes 21-28 days to create a new habit or pattern? So “Consistency is the key to change,” as we say in Power Pilates.
Resolutions are great! For about a week or so, then at about 2 or 3 weeks, “change-back” situations or attitudes may crop up, life intervenes, & if we’re not consistent enough, before we know it, our resolutions may fly out the window, and its back to the same ol’ stuff. Then we start to mentally beat ourselves up for not sticking it out and making those radical changes. I know people who decided to never do resolutions again because of this recurring issue.
Within the current national & global situations, especially while Mercury is retrograde, things can seem confusingly dark, especially during the winter, or the dark time of year. But this darkness is a natural part of life & our cyclical yearly process, for without the dark, there can be no light. (And visa versa.) I’ve believed for many years that life is about balance: learning to balance the light & dark (or shadow) aspects within ourselves. In these uncertain times, it is important to remember that there is light here. It is our job to go deep within the shadowy dark and release what we need to release, in order to bring the light back.
A spiritual storyteller and Harvard-educated scholar of comparative religion, Vera de Chalambert, wrote recently:
“After all, every seed must go into darkness, must turn inside out, must break open in order to grow.”
So how do we do that? Good question! Well, living with intention is a great way to start. We can make a list of our intentions for the day/week/month/year, which can be anything like: “I intend to drink more water.” “I intend to choose love over fear.” “I intend to take better care of my body.” “I intend to get regular massage therapy.” We can make them as general or specific as we want, and we can start to live with more intention at any time. This gives us more direction, helps us focus on what we truly want in our lives, and what our real values are, instead of just allowing things to happen “to” us. This ties in with the Law of Attraction too: focusing on more of what we want in our lives, instead of what we don’t want.
Intentions don’t have an expiration date and they can be changed or altered as needed. One of my favorite inspirational coaches, Leonie Dawson, has an amazing set of workbooks for life & business, plus a daily planner (They rock!), and she says that
“Research shows undeniable proof that goals are an essential habit for success. When we don’t get clarity around where we’ve been and where we want to go, we get stuck in the same old place & same old pattern. We need to let go of all the old past stuff so we can move onwards.”
This is why taking this time to go within and examine where we’ve been, what worked, what didn’t work, what is still important, what we can let go of, is so necessary before we can forge ahead and create the life we want!
Did you know that research is also showing that people who write down their intentions & goals achieve far more success than those that don’t ever write them down? Its true! Go ahead and grab a journal or create an online journal for free at numerous sites to help you focus your intentions & create goals.
From intentions, we can then move into goals, both short term & long term goals. Short-term goals could be a week, a month, 3 months. Long-term goals can be your 1-, 3-, or 5-year plan. If your intention is to take better care of your body, that can include several other intentions that lead up to a goal: “I intend to go to sleep earlier so I can get more sleep.” “I intend to start stretching for a minimum of 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes at night.” “I intend to try massage therapy to help my stress level/muscle tension.” See how these little intentions can lead to goals? Then you might move into “My goal is to try a yoga class,” or “My goal is to get regular massage therapy because that 1 session I had helped so much!”
Incidentally, one of my goals for the new year is to help you feel more blissful with Massage Therapy, Reiki, Pranic Healing, & soon YOGA, so if you haven’t seen my new Bliss Bundles yet, check them out! I'm completing my 200 hours of Yoga tEacher training this month & can't wait to share it with you!
These are dynamite discounts on multiple-session, treatment-work to focus on problem areas quickly over 5 or 10 weeks to get you to a maintenance level, where you only need to come see me once or twice a month after that.
Moving into a new calendar year is a perfect time to go within, re-evaluate, review, and renew ourselves from the inside out during this dark time of year. So, how will you move into the New Year with more intention? How will you create some intentional goals to direct the ship of your life into the port of your dreams? I’d love to help!
Brightest blissful blessings,
Bhrigha