How not making a New Year’s Resolution will give you your life back !
It’s the start of 2024 and how is everyone feeling? Hopefully positive and ready to tackle the new year. We have so many expectations of ourselves at the start of the new year don’t we? From a laundry list of manifestations, life purpose and things we promise ourselves we’ll stay disciplined on. And then a month or so in, we start lagging and then the guilt sets in..and that guilt turns to stress and that stress turns into self loathing because e didn’t do hat we said e would do. And the cycle repeats itself over and over again throughout the year.
So what if we did it differently this year? What if we didn’t commit to achieving any one thing – losing an X amount of weight, or achieving that next level in our career or that we eat better and so on. But instead, we start to ask how we want to feel?
So hear me out on why your feelings are important. You’ve probably often heard of the saying by Lao-Tzu (also known as Laozi or Lao-Tze) who was a Chinese philosopher credited with founding the philosophical system of Taoism.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
So where do feelings come into play in the above teachings. I would like to believe for someone like myself who ‘feels’ her way through life, often relying on intuition to guide her..I think feelings come even before your thoughts. Happiness, anger, love, admiration etc. and peace, which is a signature of my Human Design as a Manifestor (you can click here to see a quick summary on this from Goop). According to this system, when I am doing all the things that align with me ,my signature ‘feeling’ is peace. Alternately hen things are not aligned for me, my feeling is anger. So following this logic, if I am feeling angry, my thoughts may go to ones of revenge or hate which produces negative words which in turn makes me act out in aggressive ways. This may then lead to habitually take on a defensive stance and before you know it, I am known as a cold unapproachable person no one wants to come near. Over time I personally believe I can only be a cold person no one wants to be around and the vicious cycle starts again.
So mind your feelings. Work on setting up the right environment, getting the right tools, being around the right people, setting up your schedule in such a way that produces the feeling you most value. In my case, feeling peaceful is something I highly value. Getting there requires my home to be de-cluttered and organized, my finances in order, having a supportive husband who supports our family unit, ensuring my evenings and weekends are committed to little if no activities BECAUSE I value my down time and need it to feel peaceful.
So as you go forward into 2024, give your feelings a priority and stop with the laundry list of to do’s and to be’s. You’ll learn to identify some of the most important parts of you and your thoughts, actions and habits will unfold to support that state of feeling you are after.