Intentions for the new year
Scrivener December 31st, 2007
I was talking to a friend the other day and she mentioned coming up with “intentions,” rather than “resolutions,” which as we all know end up mainly being yet another excuse to beat up on ourselves for our supposed shortcomings, and really, I’ve had quite enough on the pointless self-flagellation to last me a life-time, thankyouverymuch. So I’m stealing her idea and using this new beginning as yet another opportunity to make my life more intentional, or one might use New Kid’s term for next year’s goal, mindfulness.
I didn’t write about it at the time, but a few days ago I got to have a meetup with George, who is every bit as thoughtful and cool as those who have read his blogs (back when he was blogging regularly…) would expect him to be. He gave me a preview of his three-word resolution for the new year: “let it go.” Those three words connected with a lot of what I’ve been thinking about, talking about, and writing about for the last weeks and months. Later that day, I talked to my best-friend A (who will hopefully be getting solid news about how her treatment for breast cancer is going in a couple of weeks, so far she’s hanging in there and doing ok), and again a lot of our conversation revolved around letting go. And then two more conversations that day where friends ended up bringing up the idea of letting go finally made me stop and say to myself that all this synchronicity needs to be attended to. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that my A-number-one intention for the coming year is to practice letting go, in all sorts of ways and in all sorts of areas of my life. All those things that don’t affirm life and love, all those things that once may have served a purpose but are no longer working, all those ways of thinking that keep me where I have been, I’m going to do my best to be more aware of them and to take steps toward just letting go of them.
I don’t expect that I’ll perfect the practice this year, but I am hopeful that I can make myself more aware of the deadweight that I hang onto and at least ease my grip on it.
My other intentions for the new year? I am going to keep trying to learn how to be gentle and accepting with myself. I want to learn to hold onto myself–when I can listen to myself and trust myself, I’m capable of amazing things, but too often I have lost sight of my own needs and desires because I was focusing too much of my energy on others. I have gotten some very powerful lessons recently about how dangerous that pitfall can be for me.
And I will continue to work to practice appreciation and gratitude.
What do you think, will those intentions be challenging enough to keep myself occupied for the coming year?