Could You Benefit From a Mini-Correction?

          In his press conference before Christmas, President Obama said he was looking to 2014 as a breakthrough year after a rocky 2013.  While the assessment of his 2013 year may have been an understatement, what with his troubled health care rollout and plummeting approval ratings, it has been a less than jubilant year for many folks. But that’s not what I want to focus on in this short post. I’m shining a light on the possibilities of the New Year.

          Like spring, the New Year signals new beginnings. Because I am bored with meaningless resolutions (see How to Escape the New Year's Resolution Rut), I whole heartedly celebrate a repositioning of my attention. I’m waking up, tossing back the blanket of “it’s a lot of bad out there” and jumping into a life of uplifting and meaningful possibilities.  I’m making a mini-correction of my approach to life.

          What are the best ways to make that mini-correction? For me, it’s to get quiet, be open and make a spiritual connection that supports and uplifts. I get quiet by meditating and open myself by listening rather than talking. I maintain a strong spiritual connection with a supportive community of like-minded people. In these ways I move back into the most nurturing and joyous space. From this place I can tackle anything that plummets.

          The negative things will always be there. The doom and gloom of hardships and bad behaving weather are a part of life. If we focus on them and talk about them incessantly they will be a significant part of our lives. Where is your focus in 2014? Do you need a mini-correction? If so, what does it look like?


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How to Escape the New Year's Resolution Rut

An Alternate Approach

          Are you busy today, between getting ready for tonight’s festivities and making the ritual list of resolutions – you know, those things you’re either going to start or stop doing tomorrow? Is this year going to be like all the others when, after a week into it, those resolutions start to get lost in old patterns and habits?

Christine Paintner

          This alternate approach to the New Year is excerpted from Christine Paintner’s “Crossing the Threshold: New Year, New Beginnings” article in her Reflective Art Journal from the Abbey of the Arts in 2009. I found her method for creating a meaningful New Year ritual refreshing and certainly worth considering.

          "January 1st brings out our fervent desires for the future and our commitments to change, whatever that change entails. Our inclination is usually a set of “resolutions” aimed at working harder for whatever it is we want or fixing our self-perceived flaws. There is nothing wrong with making resolutions. However they often aim so high without first cultivating the change of heart necessary to prepare space for these new possibilities to take root.

          More and more often now people are taking the celebration of New Year’s as a time for reflection on what has gone before and to listen to their longing for what lies ahead. Each year I see retreat centers and other groups offering options for meaningful ritual and practice. While celebrating with friends can be a very joyful thing, the late night party on December 31st with its endless supply of alcohol has become far less satisfying for many. People are hungering for more depth to this time of transition. We are recognizing the opportunity of a threshold.

Suggestions for Ways to Celebrate the New Year in Meaningful Ways:
          Practice: Preparing
           We begin the year full of resolutions and promises to ourselves to perhaps eat better, exercise more, work less, find more time for friends or for ourselves. But these resolutions often rise up out of our sense of scarcity and the busyness and immediate desires we feel at the surface of our lives. Consider taking some time to prepare – even if only for an hour or two – to really listen for the deeper longings pulsing within you. What emerges from that place of stillness and grounding in your holiness and goodness, rather than from a list of your shortcomings? What new doors are waiting within you to be opened?

          Practice: Reconciliation
          In Jewish tradition, the New Year begins with the ten Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in autumn. During this time, Jews reflect on those relationships during the past year that need reconciliation, recognizing that the way to move forward in more fullness, is by acknowledging those places where we have failed another person in the past and then making amends. Is there someone you have hurt this past year through your words or actions? Is it possible to ask for their forgiveness? Is there someone who has hurt you this past year through their words or actions? Can you offer them forgiveness?

          Practice: Dream-Tending
          In Christian tradition, the New Year begins with the season of Advent four weeks before Christmas. There is wisdom in beginning the year during this darkest season, offering us the image of being in the dark and fertile womb of creation anticipating new birth. In the days leading up to your celebration of the New Year, honor the language of nighttime and darkness by recording your dreams. Keep paper and a pen by your bed and before going to sleep ask to receive dreams with wisdom for the year ahead. When you awaken, try to jot down some notes about images and feelings you notice before you get up and lose those threads that connect you to the dream’s story. Honor the way dreams speak in non-linear and intuitive language. As a part of your New Year ritual, consider spending time with your dreams, perhaps making a collage of images that have appeared to you and reflect on what these have to say to you about what lies ahead. Dreams often reveal the hidden rooms of our soul and invite us inside for exploration.

          Practice: Walking into the New Year          On New Year's Day take a contemplative walk at a labyrinth if you have one near you, or in a peaceful, wooded place. As you take each step ask yourself how you want to walk in the year ahead. Pay attention to what responses rise up in you and embody this in the pace and movement of your body. As you continue to walk imagine yourself stepping across the threshold of something new and notice how your body feels.

          Practice: Doing What You Love
          Consider spending New Year’s Day doing all of the things with which you want your year ahead to be filled. Make a list of the five most important and soul-nourishing activities of your life and spend a day savoring these experiences.

          May you make friends with newness and know deep within that the God who keeps revealing new things to us, also fills us with hope for a future of peace.”

          What are your suggestions for a meaningful New Year practice?        

You may find out more about Christine and her work here.

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New Year: Fresh Starts

          It’s not so much about making resolutions, resolutions which I’ve historically only been able to keep for about a week at the most. It’s not about sincere yet vaporous agreements with myself to eat better and exercise more. Okay, it used to be, but, now that I’m officially a senior citizen, I’ve cut way back on being naïve about such promises.

          It’s about new beginnings. Today is the first day of a new year and the first day of the rest of my life (gag). In spite of the saccharine nature of the latter part of that statement, I take a moment and wonder what the New Year will bring. During the last month, many of my friends have repeatedly said something like, “The new year has got be better. It can’t be any worse than this last one.” Doesn't it seem we’ve been saying that for several New Years?

         While that’s a fairly negative stance on 2012, the sentiment is borne out of many years of publicized and/or personally experienced economic turmoil, joblessness, foreclosures, rollercoaster gas prices and general uncertainty.

          And we have a new president. Not a new, new president, but a new term for President Obama. Hope springs eternal, in spite of the fiscal cliff fiasco! I promised myself, however, I’d never talk politics per se in this blog, so I divert away from any of that prickliness right now.

          January 1 is similar to the first day of spring:  it’s a fresh start. To me, having a fresh start, be it big or small, is always a good thing. It’s that moment when I take stock, about a single issue or about life in general. (If I had a dollar for every Monday morning fresh start I attempted!) In this way, fresh starts are a gift. They are always there giving us hope and not slapping us in the face if we’re not entirely successful in incorporating new and better things into our lives.

          New beginnings are age blind and economically resistant, and there are an unlimited number available to each and every one of us. What we do with them is our choice.