You really think a New Year is gonna fix you?

We’ve heard it every year since the beginning of time: NEW YEAR, NEW ME.

It has a nice ring, but what does it even mean?

I sat in an incredible workshop for setting intentions on New Year’s Day, taught by Meghan Charles at Peace Yoga, and I heard something that really stuck with me. It was along the lines of this idea of “New Year, New Me” expression being B U L L S H I T. And it hit me...

Why is it that on the first day of every year we brood over who we are, and look to change virtually everything? It’s as if this one day has the power to make it happen.

I’m sorry but if on the last day of 2019 you had freckles, they’re still there January 1st, 2020.

The same goes for all of our worldly experiences that make up who we are.

Instead of looking at who we are and setting intentions that empower our uniqueness, we discredit all that and tell ourselves that there’s someone else we’d rather be. Maybe this issue is happening year-round, and I don’t doubt that it is, but it’s magnified on New Year’s Day.

“I need to lose weight.”

“I’ll get a better job.”

“I won’t text my ex back ever again.”

These are just a few of mine from past New Years of my life, and writing them now made me laugh. These are all "reasonable wishes" (maybe except the last one for some), but just making it a resolution doesn’t mean it’ll happen.

Can we switch our focus from the goal of the resolution, or the thing we think will make us happier, and instead look at who we are and what we can do to move towards a stronger, healthier and happier version of that?

I started to reflect on the past year, my mind automatically went to the dark place. But how would remembering the bad help me in the new year? If anything, it’d set me up to repeat them. So I shifted my thoughts to the good, the growth, the lessons learned. It ultimately created this picture of who I am, the me that's going into this new decade.

By realistically looking at where I am now, I can look at what my internal desires (not physical desires) are and what ways to go after them. There’s more grounding in setting an intention rather than a resolution because now you have something to work with. The end goal isn’t even the focus. It makes sense that we have to do something to change, so why would it be any different when trying to evolve ourselves?

Who are you? What is important to you? How can you get it?

This is what sets us up for the New Year to be actually different. We’re acknowledging past experiences, we’re noting old habits and issues, we’re stating what is important to us now. That’s how we set up our intention and how we can set a mantra(s) to come back to throughout the year.

For the first time in a while, I’m not dreading a New Year. I’m not thinking about how all the bad things that have happened may happen again, instead, I’m looking forward to the things I can do. I’m keeping my mantras close that I’ve created from my intentions I’ve set for the year:

I am the crystal that energizes my life.

I hold the power of my life and reserve the right to let go of that which doesn’t serve me.

Just because I am, doesn’t mean I will always be.