Finding the Space of New Year Promises

It’s been a long time since I posted something on here. A long time since l looked deeply at my own path, looked at my family, breathed in our essence and then wrote about how things are. But it’s a new year. It’s time to take stock, time to admit to short comings and no longer hide behind things that Should Be, or pretended to be. New Years isn’t always about making promises, especially those that can’t be kept. Rather it’s about a time to be honest with ourselves. We get a week off of everything, from Christmas to New Years, and although we are trained to think it’s a busy time, it’s actually a time for a different sort of activity: One of self contemplation.

Each year I tell myself I love Christmastime. I decorate, I bake, I shop. The kids and I talk about how we’re going to do it differently this year, plan earlier, do Christmasy things, see the Nutcracker and watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Yet every year by the time I’m planning on packing up the family decorations again, I have a feeling of disappointment. All the work, the planning, the day, the time after, only to pick up where it left off and face extra bills. Why do I love that? : For the spiritual fact that the space in time it provides us with a chance no other time can. In fact it is forced upon us. Everything shuts down, we are faced with a time of ourselves and each other and we are asked what we like, what we don’t and what we want to do about it.

It’s amazing how fast we can run. We are in a society which has us pretty distracted from one thing to another. There’s chores in the house, left over jobs, meals to cook, there’s places to go, things to buy, not talking about money to make, and never enough so things to do to make more looming in the background. We spin and we spin and we spin, convinced that we are trapped with no way out than a lotto or miracle. We convince ourselves of lack; that it would take selling the house and buying smaller to save money, or achieve our dreams after the kids have grown up or the retirement fund kicks in. We hold off on our happiness, looking for excuses of why we can’t have it now. Christmas comes, the world stops and in the quiet whispers when we listen to them we are asked “why can’t you have happiness now?”

Happiness is our inherent right. With every sunrise comes the surreal reminder that the race we run is one of our own creation, like Alice in Wonderland we have our own caucus race, with us all going in circles. When we step outside the circle, the shift in perspective can have us asking why we are convinced Life is so darn hard. When we take that step away each day, we can start believing that it really doesn’t have to be.

There’s always something else to think about while we wash the dishes. There’s always a happy song to choose while we’re stuck in traffic. There’s always thoughts... and feeling better thoughts... and new thoughts.... and new attention to the world, which are like small steps to a great destination.

Science is proving it daily. Take the idea that positive thought has been scientifically proven to change how we see options. People who are optimistic have better peripheral vision, literally. They see more solutions, are better at problem solving, literally.

So Christmas time has passed. New Years is here and promises are being made across the board. Last year in our health business, we watched resolutions be kept for two weeks. It takes two weeks to go from the new habits created in the self contemplation of the holidays to fall back into the old habits that make up our lives. Why? What pieces to the puzzle are we missing? Honestly, it’s simply the feeling space of what change we want. It’s simple.

Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Can you feel the essence of you? Can you see through your mind’s eye and see through the eyes of the same person you’ve always been? The same eyes that as a child would focus on the rays of light that shine from a lightbulb when you squint just so. The same eyes that have gotten lost in staring at the distance, over an ocean, a mountain range, or even flames dancing in the fireplace. When you put yourself in that space, do you feel warmth running over you, from your head to your toes, until your toes tingle? Welcome to the grounding world of yourself.

From this place, introduce the resolution you wish to achieve. Want to lose weight? In the space of yourself, imagine how it feels to be the shape you wish. Play with it, laugh with it. Imagine going for a run, imagine stretching without being stiff, Imagine the lightness of having lots of fruit, vegetables and fresh water in your system, feel thinner. Then throw out the mirrors and the scales and live from that perspective. Suddenly through the feeling you are creating, you won’t feel like eating cookies, it just won’t feel right. So you won’t.

Playing in the space of Who We Really Are is the key to living the life we wish. We can be doing the same things we’ve had to do before, but the story is different.

I’m doing it too. As we speak. My story is changing and I only have a feeling to go by. My playing in inner worlds are hinting at exciting things and one of them is coming back to blogging, introducing myself all over again, relaunching websites and basically clearing the way. I’d like to invite you to join me. I’m also launching my coaching career. After spending a year and a half helping people across the counter, enough people have asked I sit down and do it professionally. So, here I am. I don’t like the term Life coach, it doesn’t fit me, but I can be a Spirit Coach. I’ll stand in the corner cheering your spirit on. That’s what I like to do. I’ll still do Parenting Coaching too, but sometimes we all need to parent ourselves as well.

Welcome to 2015, when it’s time for us to realize we can get off the caucus race, we can stand alone, facing whatever we chose to focus on. We can have fun. We can be happy, creative, fun loving people. We can laugh like we did when we were kids, and smile ourselves to sleep with a sense of satisfying security in ourselves. Happy New Year everyone, and may your year be filled with moments when you pat yourself on the back and say, Yes, last Christmas I reminded myself of Who I Am, and now I remember life’s easy to enjoy.