It’s started.
The niggling of the new year’s approach. The pull to make changes. The yank to improve who we are.
2018, and the past couple of years before that, were very different for me. They brought with them tons of change, not just at the beginning of each year when the world says to get your ass in gear to be a better person, but throughout the whole year.
You will know by now that I believe that trying to make changes simply because it’s a new year is meaningless. True change and therefore growth comes from our own desires and what we feel will make us actually show up as the person we want to be from the inside. It sure as shit isn’t about things on our outside like weight, its about doing what we want to do to get us closer to living the values that we carry in our deep core, our inside.
Nevertheless the calling is there for all or most of us and it’s a calling that can be hard to ignore. Turn your back on it and you feel like you are not stepping up to the plate to help yourself. Jump into the arena for the wrong reasons and you’re still not going to feel right.
This year, after much thought, I won’t be stepping into the arena. I will be staying in the arena. And my word for this coming year, maybe two or three, or likely forever, is acceptance.
The arena is where life happens. It’s where old dreams live and die. It’s where challenges are set at our feet that we want to tell to screw off. It’s where we experience the thrill of success and the deep, cutting loss of letting things and people go. The arena is where I have come to understand that it’s not about waiting for that dream to become real, it’s about dancing in the moment to redesign that dream, again and again.
So here I am, at the cusp of 2019 and this is what my redesign is looking like:
Accepting that we don’t always have a complete say in how the world twists around us.
Accepting that my own changes and that of the Universe require time for thinking, shifting, and reviewing what is truly important to me over what doesn’t tick all the boxes, what brings me utter joy and puts a smile on my face, and what fills my heart with real warmth and love.
Accepting all the feelings that go along with change, planned or unplanned. Grief from deep loss, or happiness from success, have all been part of my humanity and letting them in means I can truly understand and appreciate my experiences.
Accepting what my life is looking like in any given time and figuring out how to go with the flow in ways that work for me. That means allowing myself the flexibility to move my dreams around to better fit my circumstances.
In my arena as I enter the new year, I am accepting that plans I had may never happen and that some people important to me are no longer there in the same way. I am accepting that my family has shifted and grown bringing me even more to love, cherish and be proud of. I am accepting that my design skills live strong and are opening up new exciting avenues for me to express my creativity. And I am accepting the mountain of grief sitting in my gut as the imminent loss of my dear elderly dad looms in front of me.
Doors close, doors open.
If you are being called to change yourself starting January 1st, instead of following the crowd, why not begin in your own arena?
Your redesign waits.
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