It can be easy to want a fresh start, to set all manner of New Years resolutions, determining to do better this year. But I want to remind you to not forget how you survived 2023. YOU MADE IT! Celebrate how far you came in the last 365 days. Give yourself some love and don't be too hard on yourself.
When only focusing on how far you WISH you had come, or how better you had done, this can just create more dysregulation in our nervous systems. It feels unsafe to be where we are, it makes us feel constantly not enough. This in turn can cause anxiety or depression (to name a few) to only be heightened.
What if you brought gentleness into the equation? You did enough in 2023. You tried your best. What if where you are at is where you are meant to be? The progress you made in 2023 is enough for 2023. Healing takes time. Life has bumps and curves. When we are so focused on how much better it should have been or on how our goals didn’t get met, we bury the good that was there all along. Sometimes it takes a bit to see the good, other times the good is a blinking sign that makes us all fuzzy inside. You have a choice in what you focus on.
Now you might be thinking about how you would like 2024 to be different. Start small. Small consistent changes add up to big results. It is so common to go all or nothing with goals. We start off January strong only to be at 0 by February. What if instead you decided it was all or something? Instead of trying a 360-January, lets try a Something-January. What is 1 thing you want to do different in 2024? Just 1, maybe it’s a 5-minute walk. Something you can do every day. By February, 5 minute walks should be very familiar, maybe you have even gone up to 10 minutes. Now for February, you might add one more thing, waking up a few minutes earlier to sit in candlelight as you watch the sun rise. March, 10-minute walks and sunrise watching will be familiar to the point you look forward to them. Add in 1 more simple, small thing. It might be as small as deliberately laughing every time you get in your car to go somewhere. (Laughter heals btw.) By the end of the year, you have made 12 simple changes to better your life. It is unnatural to try to change our whole life at one time. This often leads to burnout and overwhelm. It isn’t natural so we can’t seem to stick to it. It turns into all or nothing in no time. Start small and work your way up instead of big and work your way to nothing.
Try it. What simple shift towards better well-being can you do this month that you can stick to consistently? Consistency is key to lasting change.
You are doing amazing!
hp
