What would you like to bring into your life in the New Year? Are there events or patterns from the past year you would like to clear?
“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.” – Helen Keller
As the earth tilts towards longer days, and the Gregorian calendar closes on another year, it is a good time to pause and reflect. Having spent many moons in countries that were on another calendar system altogether, I know how arbitrary the concept of the New Year (and when we celebrate it) is. And yet I find value in ritually acknowledging closings and new beginnings. It is all too easy to get caught up in the cogs of daily life and lose sight of the bigger picture of our soul’s desire for this lifetime.
The following are 6 suggestions for what I find to be a powerful ritual to greet in the New Year. You may want to bring out a few sheets of butcher paper, paints, crayons, magazine cutouts etc. to get creative. Doing this celebration with friends is fun as well. Although the following suggestions are tailored to welcoming in the New Year, you can tweak them for any ritual celebration of a new beginning.
1. What you are grateful for
Our minds are conditioned to focus on the negative for survival reasons. Gratitude practices are one way to start shifting our perspective so that what goes well in our life carries as much weight as what doesn’t. On one sheet of paper, write all the things you are grateful for in the past year. You might write down different areas in your life that are relevant, such as friends and family, health, work/education, home, creativity and inspiration, nature and outdoor activities, and so on. Or you can divide your year by month or quarter, if each one had a different flavor for you. Be as specific as possible.
2. What you are letting go of
Scan the different events of the past year and your reactions to them. Is there anything from the past year that is still having an impact on your thoughts and your nervous system that you feel ready to clear? Did some of your habitual patterns show up (such as blaming others, feeling overwhelmed, overriding your own boundaries etc.)? On a separate sheet of paper, write a list of what you want to let go of. You can keep this list as a reference point, or you can have a letting go ritual where you acknowledge the patterns for how they may have served you at some point, and then release them. You may burn (if you can do that safely) or tear up the list. Or you may brush the patterns off your body and imagine you are cutting any energetic cords that are still tying you to them.
3. What you learned
Now imagine that you are taking a bird’s eye view of your year, or that you are looking back on this year 5-10 years from now. Feeling into the challenges you faced, ask yourself what were you learning (whether you were aware of it or not) from those struggles? For example, were you learning to let go of control, to be patient, to trust, to know yourself better, to meet your own needs, to let go of a sense of victimhood? This exploration can give perspective to the letting go list, so that instead of seeing the challenges as unwanted events – or looking at your patterns as parts of yourself you want to get rid of – you can start feeling into the bigger picture of your soul’s journey.
4. What you are bringing in
Feel into what you would like to bring in for the next year. This can be qualities, such as equanimity, grounded-ness, trust, levity. Oftentimes what we are bringing in is closely link to the lessons we are learning. Write down the list on a separate piece of paper. Pause with each one, and really feel each quality in your body. What would it feel like to live your life from this place?
5. Specific goals/intentions
You can stay with the previous list of qualities, or if you wish you can refine it to include specific goals/intentions for the next year in your professional and personal life. What are you wanting to manifest more of in your life? I recommend being specific with your goal, and also keeping the list fairly short (for example, 3 for each category). In my experience, if I have too many goals they actually get diluted in my ability to create them. In an earlier blog post (“From Intention to Reality,” including a manifestation audio meditation), I wrote about how to identify and clear some of the blocks that might be getting in the way of realizing your dreams.
6. Asking for support
Many of us start the year with great intentions, and then quickly lose motivation. I find it helpful to have my goals somewhere visible, where I can see them every day. Asking for support from a friend to check in with you can also bolster accountability and a sense that somebody else cares if we complete our goal. If you work with any form of inner guidance, ask your guides/higher self/higher power to make this a reality. We often vacillate between a sense of needing to control and manage everything, and a feeling of overwhelm and collapse. In my experience, I am best able to create what I want with ease when I imagine I’m co-piloting my life with the universe – this continual dance of setting the course and then letting go and trusting.
