The trap of New Year's resolutions and lists
The trap of New Year's resolutions and lists and goals and plans is the promise of the ideal they bring you. We imagine what it would be like to better, different, rescued, more together, more mature, more fun, more free. We create for ourselves an image of the ideal person, who we want to be, and we aim for that.
There is a difference between who you want to be and who you are. We so easily get caught up in wanting to be someone else, in big and small ways, whether it be something about our looks, our nature, our personality, our situation; New Year's resolutions, more often than not, become an indictment on who we are and a false sense of hope about how it would feel if we worked hard and became something and someone else.
There is a difference between unrealistic expectations about who you are and what you can do and where your life will lead and having a compassionate curiosity about all that could, might, may be possible for you.
Everything is possible for you, but not everything is possible for you. We’ve become greedy on possibilities - we want them all, rather than the ones that would be miraculous for you and your life and your situation.
Possibility is the energetic flow of grace.
When we think of possiblities, we tend to lean towards things like healings and full bank accounts - grand and momentous miracles that change things in an instant.
But the more groundbreaking possibilities are the ones that happen on the inside of you. The possibility of forgiving and being forgiven. The possiblity of openness and mercy. The possibility of finding love again, and again, and again. The possibility of joy and excitement, pleasure and laughter. The possibility of tears releasing grief once held so tightly deep in the bones. The possibility of a sunrise, the ocean tide, the moolight and birdsong.
When possibility becomes something that happens internally, within your ligaments and practices, your blood and breathe, it supports the body as it flows through the twists and turns that come your way. Instead of resolutions and lists and thoughts of the ideal you, of who you think you should be, and the elusive striving towards those impossible goals, sink down deep into who you are, the stories that hold you together, the narratives that make the shape of your life. Do they open you to possibilities? To wellbeing and wholeheartedness? Or do they keep you in a holding pattern of shame and disappointment, rigidity and self abandonment, hatred and biases towards others and the earth?
Faith is for all your possibilities, the miracles waiting to be received by you, the knock at the door in anticipation of your openness, the way things want to unfold towards you in the coming year. Let it unfold, allow it to flow, bend and flex and surrender your way through it.
Rilke said:
“May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children.”
You are always becoming more and more you, closer and more intimate with your essential self, with the Divine, with the heartbeat of life dancing through all that is. Trade being better with being true. It is the truth that sets you free, not betterment. Trade unrealistic expectations for compassionate curiosity, for that is the pathway to possibility.
Affrimation: I leave behind unrealistic expectations for compassion and curiosity. I release myself from the pressure of being better, and surrender to be being true. Nothing held back, nothing held onto.
From my upcoming New Year’s series, "Held Together" this week with a subscription in the App.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
