New Year’s Resolutions
For obvious reasons, there is a lot of chatter right now about New Year's resolutions. Most of the talk, I’m noticing, has to do with resistance to setting resolutions. It feels as though people are waking up to this idea that resolutions very rarely succeed. I love how this is being named, without judgement, and there is consideration of other possibilities beyond the traditional New Year’s resolutions.
This has me reflecting on a few thoughts.
The first is: Why New Year’s resolutions? There is such a build up to a new year, as if some monumental shift is going to come at 12am on January 1. We plan parties, stay up late and literally ring in the New Year with noisemakers and cheer. But why? Time isn’t any different from December 31 to January 1, except a new calendar year, I suppose. But every time I celebrate, I feel this underwhelming sense of deflation, wondering what the build up was all about! Until now. Now, I realize that we are cyclical beings. Just as the seasons change, so do we. And the more I learn about how natural it is to operate in a cyclical, seasonal way, I realize that not only does it exist naturally, but we also create seasons and cycles. Just like the New Year. For many, it’s spring in their minds - a time of rebirth, to shed what is no longer needed to protect us, to begin anew. We seek that refreshing feeling of leaving the past in the past, and looking forward with hope and optimism. Just like spring. New beginnings bring change, and for things to change, things must change. Enter New Year’s resolutions.
Now, why are our resolutions typically unsuccessful? Why are they so dang hard to maintain? Applying the seasonal, cyclical nature of things helps to explain this. In that season of rebirth, energy builds, and hope and optimism abound. Inevitably, spring turns to summer and summer to fall, and then winter, all in the course of a year. And in each of those seasons, our energy and outlook shift, as they must. Life happens. We grow, learn, take steps forward and backward, and maybe even sideways! Growth is not always linear, despite our expectations.
With that in mind this year, I’m also not setting resolutions. I have goals of what I want to achieve, and more importantly, I’m setting intentions of how I want to BE. From those states of being, I will be able to carry out the practices that will help me achieve my goals. Those intentions carry with them the flexibility and compassion to embrace life as it comes, my own built-in shocks, if you will. I’m choosing to test out this focus this year to see how it serves me. My hope is that with this approach, I will be able to ebb and flow with my motivation.
All of these reflections stem from and connect to my learning of the Seasons of Matrescence® model. In this framework, the journey to and through motherhood embraces the ebb and flow of natural cycles, which helps acknowledge the highs and lows of being a mom (and human, really) as a natural occurrence. This framework brings a softness to what otherwise feels like unrealistic expectations, also known as the ‘perfect mother myth’. Just as support for a mother has a cascading impact on those around her, this model of seasons is having a cascading impact on all areas of my life. I am eager to continue to share my reflections as they arise through this blog, my 1:1 coaching and new group offerings coming soon!!!
