Who Will You Choose to Be In 2023?

 

The great thing about a New Year is we get to make a fresh start. The not-so-great thing about a New Year is we get to make a fresh start. Which we often abandon within a month or so. We then feel guilty or bad about ourselves for not being able to stick with whatever it was.

But what if you took a different tack? What if, instead of – or in addition to – your usual New Year’s resolutions, you took a look at what of yourself you are bringing to this party called 2023? Not focusing so much on what you intend to do, rather on what you intend to do it with?

Namely, you. How about your best self, the best of you? The courageous, forward-thinking, hopeful, enthusiastic you? Instead of the worried, fearful, anxious, doubting you. Which, by the way, is the you that stops you from fully accomplishing those New Year action-oriented intentions, like losing weight, making it to the gym regularly, going for that promotion, saving enough for that new pre-owned car, and so on.

Make a list of your best characteristics. The ones you’d like to bring to your endeavor, such as hopefulness, confidence, curiosity, willingness, eagerness and positivity. Do the very best you can to line yourself up with any one or more of these aspects of yourself before you set out to accomplish your action-oriented intention of the day. Now you can meet whatever you are engaging in with your best self, your heroic self (yes, you have one), the self that will make you proud.

Then, this may very well be the year when you keep those New Year’s resolutions beyond month one, month two – who knows, maybe for the whole of 2023!

Happy New Year!

 

Walk Past The Rabbit Hole Into A Stellar New Year!

 

To say it’s been a strange year is an understatement. Even stranger than last year, because most of us expected that 2021 would see an end to the global pandemic and political unrest. Not! So here we are, still in the worldwide chaos of COVID and politics, wondering what new disaster will befall us in 2022. Yikes!

But here’s the thing: what are we setting ourselves up for? If indeed, like attracts like, if what you think and feel brings more of the same to you, what are we setting ourselves up for? Peering out into 2022 and seeing only more to worry about narrows our focus. Our attention is caught in wretched “what if-s?” and sails right on by positive possibilities. Yet we don’t want to ignore reality and pretend all is well when it surely isn’t.

What to do?

Pay attention to what you are setting yourself up for. When you find yourself catastrophizing, barreling down the gloom-and-doom scenarios, stop. Yes. Just plain old – stop! Ask yourself, “Self, what else might happen here? What good thing just might happen along the way?” Because when you’re looking for it, you’ll always find something valuable, something to be grateful for, happening, in your – our – world.

A couple of months ago, I fell badly during a ballroom dance competition. I couldn’t get up off the dance floor. Literally. I was terrified. What if I’d injured myself so badly I’d never dance again? Walk properly again? How would I take care of my big dogs? And down the rabbit-hole of catastrophizing I went, imagining every dire consequence of this fall. Yet people around me were taking care of me in a myriad of ways, from getting me to the ER, to getting me home safely, to referring me to a great PT, to caring for my dogs, and so much more. Which finally yanked me out of my catastrophizing into “Wait a minute. I’m being helped here. There’s hope. I’m gonna be OK.” Which I was, eventually. I had worried myself needlessly for days. And knowing what I know about how negative thoughts and feelings depress our immune system and ability to heal, you’d think I’d have remembered that and avoided catastrophizing entirely. Sigh . . .

So no, you don’t want to deny the reality of this past year. But there’s no need to dwell on its awfulness either. Instead, set yourself up for a great 2022 by looking to what is going right in your life. To what opportunities for growth, adventure, fun, love and laughter exist, even if only as mere glimmerings, in your life.

2022 will be, to a large extent, what you make of it. So walk right past that rabbit hole and into the very best 2022 you can imagine. Happy New Year!