"My goals may seem impossibly far-fetched when really they're not. Break them down into steps and see how I accomplish great things. I can easily reach from A to B.
I can manage from B to C. I can then make it from C to D. And so eventually, I will find my way from A to Z.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich
It’s the “New Year, New You” time again and it is always good to have a fresh starts,
Humans love fresh starts where we get to wash everything clean and start again.
If only that was actually the way life was, but we know it isn’t.
We still carry all the things we experienced inside of us, no matter where we go or how much we want to escape.
Underneath this sense of purging the old, becoming anew is often an underlying knowledge that it won’t last. Our internal sense knows that by overriding, pushing and using willpower alone we will never reach these goals.
They tend to be unrealistic, harsh and based on a need to be something, someone or somewhere other than we are in this moment.
So how do we change that?
We look at where we currently are. Accept it and notice how it feels.
We decide how we would like to feel in the future. What we would like to experience and to offer.
We take steps. One at a time and head towards that feeling.
But we also have to understand that to get to that place, we can’t live the life we have lived. We may have to face challenges, we may have to go without some of the things we usually enjoy. We may need to change the environment or the people we currently surround ourselves with, we may have to change behaviours and patterns. In short we may have to get uncomfortable and face ourselves.
As much as I hate the expression. We have to “do the work” required to get us to that place. Described in this magical quote
“So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?” - Elizabeth Gilbert
Because underneath the pain and sacrifice of pushing and purging is simply who we are. Our essence.
When we stop the fight of attempting to be skinny, rich, funny and cool and just be what we are, we might become all of those things and more.
The pushing creates this conflict within us. We can’t possibly be anyone else than who we are, so why do we keep trying?
To avoid the work, to avoid the pain, to avoid the discomfort.
We have a belief that it will all come crashing down if we stop pushing, controlling and forcing. But simply by bringing awareness to the “stuff” we carry, the experiences that helped mould us into the person we are and perhaps the pain connected to that, then we simply become more us.
I so often felt like I had to face it all at once, or I had to do practices to help me become more of who I was or to “heal”. There was a sense that I wasn’t whole and I certainly didn’t feel it.
The magic came when I started to notice, I didn’t need to add anything, I just needed to let go of all the things that stopped me being my true self.
The awareness comes slowly and when you are ready to let go.
It can be scary. It can be uncomfortable. But it can have softness, glimmers and lightness.
So please in 2024, don’t become a new you.
Just become more you. Step by step by step.
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson