A New You in the New Year?

 

I used to be a New Year’s Eve lover.  I loved the planning, the excitement, the energy… but I didn’t love the let-down.  Inevitably, I built the evening up with unrealistic expectations and then grieved the loss of a “magical” evening the next day.  Then I would start the motivational self-talk about keeping all of my resolutions THIS year.  I wasn’t going to fail. I was going to achieve them!  For 3 or 4 days I did, and then real life crept back in and I forgot all of that determination to create a new me.  Sound familiar?

Of course it does, because we are built this way.  We are built to behave in ways that keep us safe emotionally.  If I had magically been gifted the new me with perfect eating habits, a competitive athletes body, an always gentle and loving personality that constantly gave back… I would never have been able to handle it.  Have you ever realized that the changes you are wishing for require such an enormous difference in your emotional state, that they would immobilize you?  Remember that our energetic systems don’t differentiate between good and bad emotions… we only recognize the vibration.  Our system’s job is to keep us at vibrations that we know and feel safe with.  So consider your “wish” for the new you is energetically equivalent on the positive end, to say getting fired on the negative end. It isn’t “safe” for you to experience either drastic change on the spectrum of emotions.  We all need to recognize the scope of what we are asking for, and scale it appropriately to what we can handle.

If you really enjoy the process of setting resolutions for yourself, my suggestion is to be gentle with them.  Choose things that are achievable and are stepping stones to the big changes you want in your life.  So please don’t set a New Year’s resolution of going to the gym 5 days per week or deciding to ask for a huge promotion.  Start smaller so you don’t set yourself up for failure.  Work in increments so that your energy system feels safe and allows them to stick and become lifetime habits.

Think of this like climbing a mountain.  Your body will accept the altitude changes if you walk up.  You may experience some discomfort, but you will be able to do it.  If you were simply lifted to the top, your body would be in crisis.  It is the same with your emotions, so please plan to take the steps and walk at your own pace.  The destination is still there, but this way you will not only get there, but you will be able to enjoy it once you are.

To your continued success in 2017,

Deb