Listening for the Year You’re Meant to Have

An intuitive alternative to new year resolutions

Almost two weeks into the new year, I’m guessing you may be wrestling to keep up with the resolutions you set at the year’s start.  You may be crushing them… or you may be cursing them, discouraged that you’ve already fallen short.  If the former, congrats.  Press on!  If the latter, let’s chat.

Even though I’ve likely enjoyed an above-average track record with them, I don’t set new year’s resolutions anymore.  Not directly anyway.  Instead I simply choose a theme or personal attribute I’d like to exemplify more of during the new calendar year.

I’ve found it doesn’t help to force a decision about a theme to line up with January 1st.  For a few days in a row, just start asking yourself what you would like to manifest more of (or like to have manifested more through you) this year.  Do this every morning when things around you (and inside you) are relatively still and quiet.  And if that just isn’t what mornings ever offer you, pose the question to yourself at night before you drift off to sleep, letting your subconscious mull this over while you sleep.

Don’t set a deadline.  Without pressure from you, and likely in some random moment, you’ll receive the idea you need.  Life wants you to thrive.  Trust that the Universe will nudge you in a healthier happier direction if you simply hold some listening space for Her.

It might surprise you what comes.  And especially what flows out of the core theme.  For example, what came to me this year was: “El año de coraje” - the year of courage.  

I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t really like this theme at first.  It didn’t feel like it would generate any fresh changes.  It smelled like just another guise to get me to push myself, which is my usual default.  But then when I sat down to write about courage in my sparsely populated journal, the question arose “The courage for what?”  And while, yes, some of the typical challenge-class items showed up, a whole different style of elements did too.  Ones that surprised and even agitated me.  That’s when I knew this wasn’t just my ego talking, but perhaps some whisperings from Source.

Here are some examples of that latter genre:

The courage to:

• Listen longer and more intently

• Ask questions that are more personal

• Be more honest when expressing feelings

• Increase and lengthen the duration of eye contact when interacting with people

• Spend money more freely and generously (yikes!)

• Drive more slowly & courteously (do I have too?)

I suppose whenever we ask for help to change in positive ways we may not really want to hear the answers.  Certainly none of these would have come to my mind if you’d asked me to list six resolutions for the new year - especially the last two.  Perhaps that’s the advantage we offer the Divine (and thus ourselves) when we choose a theme for the year rather than goals - letting inspiration sneak through the back door past our vigilant egoic defenses.

Give it a try!