It is the New Year.
It is 2020 – also the beginning of a new decade!
Many of us are tempted to make New Year’s resolutions around this time and have at least attempted to execute some of them by this time.
In mulling over our desire for change, I began to reflect on many of the profound conversations I’ve fortunately partaken in my practice. Though diverse and unique, one common theme in all of these dialogues is our communal struggles to be the best version of our selves. We desire to be the best in all of our endeavors and we believe that we are most worthy when we are able to accomplish the most in our lives. I, too, have been conditioned to think and espouse this notion as truth. Through many stories of feat, however, I have come to challenge this truth more and more.
In reality, life is hard and continues to be so.
In spite of this reality, we haven’t given up and are still showing up for our selves day in and day out. There’s something greater in all of us as survivors of our own unique ordeals and tribulations of life. In the face of continual obstacles, we somehow know how to overcome and move past them.. There’s something magically powerful in all of us that’s stronger than any challenges or adversities in life.
This, to me, is our true Authentic Self that we’re often forgetting to recognize and reclaim.
Perhaps the more important agenda is not about achieving more or better but learning how to see and celebrate the magic we keep creating despite the many uphill battles we had to fight along the way. Because of the non-stop pressure to keep moving forward and upward, we hardly take the time to pause and look back on how far we have come and how hard we already fought.
For the New Year’s resolution, I propose that we stop trying to be more and better but instead, simply be proud of the life we’ve created to date. We might still be struggling and enduring a lot but we also have what it takes to keep creating the magic in our own stories of personal victories.
This year and in this new decade, what if we stopped beating our selves up and instead start patting our own shoulders in full acknowledgment of the good job we are doing every day? What if we paused for a moment in each of our long days and take a good look at all the things we are doing for others and for our own selves with resolve? What if we made regular time to appreciate and validate our own individual strengths and talents we’re incessantly offering to the world?
Let us stop wasting our time trying to better our False Self but rather invest more time in nurturing more of our True Self that we already are.
