Your Intentions are Not Finite: A Reflection on Resolutions in the New Year
The Author in Contemplation and Awe at Sunset in Moab, Utah
Hallelujah! It’s a new year. I resolve to replace my stretched-out bras, holey socks, and unraveling elastic underwear I’ve neglected to toss for years. You know, because finally, I’m worth it. Age 49 is the year I’m putting myself first. With loving kindness, I vow to wear hole-free, sweat-stain-free undergarments that properly fit my body. Gross and awesome.
January. It's a curious month in western culture. In the primal month of winter, Mother Nature takes her cue to excuse herself to rest and reflect, quietly nurturing herself for budding into spring. In contrast, we humans are barraged by celebratory moments and messages of consumerism urging us to put the old year to rest and welcome in the new year with an exhausting flurry of resolving and creating action right now, this very month.
The barrage of messages received in January is overwhelming. The intake of information piques our unique tropisms towards western cultural beliefs on resolutions in the new year. Wherever your mind stands on resolutions, let your intuition offer insight into the intentions of your soul.
⸺
Time to Pretend
We tend to lean into the conventional wisdom of creating resolutions and lofty goals: taking up the gym, adopting new diets, practicing abstinence from vices, raising the stakes in our professional world, doing and buying more to create our perfect selves, etc. As if January 1st will be an entirely new landscape of ourselves from the day before.
At times, the cultural banality of perfecting yourself through a freshly minted set of resolutions each new year can feel a bit shameful. The timing feels off, especially after embracing a long holiday season of celebrations where we let go of inhibitions, balancing feelings of joy and sorrow.
There are a myriad of holiday social gatherings, rituals, and indulgences deluged in opening to perfect moments and expectations. Sometimes observing perfect moments leads to self-judgment in January–especially when we begin to drop resolutions later in the month.
⸺
We’re Not Fated to Pretend
Have you observed how you take in the new year? Are you in the camp of never looking back, opening the throttle, setting goals, and resolutions, and getting to work on something new for yourself? Or is it a month of gentle reflection, transition, and rest? Maybe it’s something in between. Anyway you take it, make it authentic for you.
Do you feel ashamed if you lose motivation for your resolutions? What happens to your self-worth if you don’t accomplish your goals in the new year? What other thoughts and feelings do you notice?
No matter how you take in the new year, I’d wager your resolutions, ideas, thoughts, dreams, and goals–whether conscious or unconscious–set your intentions. I’d further wager your intentions need a closer look.
Take a moment and sit in quiet, mindful observation of how your body feels when you speak or think about your ideas, thoughts, goals, and intentions. Take three deep breaths. Now, move from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, then move in reverse. Where do you feel sensations or emotions? Those sensations and emotions are speaking to you. Let yourself feel them freely rather than holding back feeling tongue-tied.
⸺
Oh, Elusive, Tongue-Tied Time
Our underlying thoughts, feelings, or sensations in our bodies are really about finding–or rediscovering–our authenticity and our feelings of worth. Worth translates to time, space, and ultimately to effort.
Ready for some radical thinking? Those intentions don’t necessarily need to be set exclusively for accomplishment this year, right now.
Allow yourself the space to get curious and investigate your intentions. Give your mind and body permission to take as long as they each need for you to feel, discover, and grow into your intentions.
Getting curious will create time–time you thought was elusive to you. Fill yourself with the loving kindness and worth that your soul is waiting for you to embrace. Believe in yourself. You are meant to grow slowly and thoughtfully, like Mother Nature in the primal months of winter.
Your time is not elusive. Nor is it tongue-tied to your obligations, or your time and place in your stage of life.
⸺
Let the Light Seep In
This fall I had a shocking gift of time for inner discovery unwittingly bestowed upon me which was opened through grief, inauthenticity of worth, and sensing myself aging along with my children, spouse, and parents. Major life transitions.
While unbearable at times, the opportunity was a light seeping through the cracks of my wilted soul. Letting the light in turned my heart beaming outwards revealing my intentions:
Root | Reveal | Become
These words have deep meaning to me from my past, present, and future. There is no timeline. There are no explanations necessary for anyone but me.
It’s freeing to let go of the notion that I’m not worth the same deep loving kindness and compassion I give others. I can extend those graces to my own heart and soul. And I can take all the time I need.
⸺
Speak Up for Your Worth
How do you start listening to yourself? In my observation, making drastic changes quickly and spouting positivity without authenticity breeds shame and guilt. It ultimately demotivates a worthy soul waiting to be embraced.
When I look back on photos from past Januaries, I don’t have many captured memories. Until I embraced the month of January as a month of reflection rather than transition for myself in my 40s, I often felt ashamed when I stopped working towards my resolutions. I thought January was a time to reinvent myself–new clothes, a new haircut, a healthier body, new hobbies, new attitude. Great intentions, but not authentic. The generalized intention was focused on the outside world, not what my soul needed.
Speak up for yourself. Find your voice and your unique, authentic intentions.
⸺
Discover Your Authentic Intentions
Give these mindful practices a try: Journal, write yourself or others love notes from your heart, draw, paint, take photos of beautiful things, listen to music that moves you, read, spend time in nature, allow yourself a moment of spontaneous fun, dance, move your body, meditate, sleep, volunteer, invite someone new to coffee, treat yourself to your favorite meal and eat it mindfully, talk with a friend or counselor–whatever you need to finally hear your authentic self’s needs.
Most of these activities only take 10-30 minutes to open your heart and mind. Find what feels good for yourself throughout your mind and body. Check-in from head to toe again. That’s how you know you’re onto your soul’s needs. Time and space to properly care for yourself will follow.
⸺
Hello, Beautiful!
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in my 49 years, it’s that you are a work-in-progress your entire life! You’ve got time. Meet yourself with loving kindness, grace, and compassion. Your intentions will change as you grow into them. Let them come and go when it feels right. Your intentions are not finite.
A call towards personal growth is always a welcome opening to offer yourself grace, loving-kindness, and compassion. Open yourself to awareness of what your body, mind, and spirit are seeking.
This new year, I wish you the grace and compassion of curiosity and self-discovery. Take your time to become your authentic self. There is nothing more beautiful than authenticity and loving-kindness.
“ A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose, and a crooked mouth, and a double chin, and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams, and you will always look lovely.”