New Way to Usher In the New Year! NO Resolutions and 'Manifesting' 2025!

Ok, let's set the stage for another Zen, eight-minute exploration of our thoughts! Put on a pot of water and choose your fave Tisane! Steep a mug, head to your snuggle-spot, dig in and prepare to relax, expand your mind and enjoy... about a different way to usher in the New year!

The end of December is fast approaching and many of us have reels from the past year spinning through our minds! Mia and I have heard from many of our friends and customers that the year two-thousand-and-twenty-four is leaving them them with more questions than answers... questions about all manner of things right from A to Zed! Since picking our lives up and moving clear across the country in 2011, around this time of year, Mia and I get pretty occupied looking back on our lives, both from a personal and from a business perspective. Somewhere between then and now we just stopped making the widely encouraged and popular 'New Year's resolutions'. I want to share why, what we chose to do instead, and how it has affected our lives since! Let's go!

Turning inward to allow reflection and clarity...

I perceive time differently than most others I interact with. Because I've worked for myself for so long, I understand that I'm mostly in charge of my time, I decide what it means to me and I organize it in my own way. It's not uncommon for me to be 'working' from 2-5 am and napping for an hour during the day when I get tired. I organize my own time off, when it happens, for how long, and so on. That's way different than a 'boss' laying out what time means for you. There are many theories as to why the construct of time was created... I'm sure you all have a great imagination and can extrapolate your own conclusions!

Task: Take about thirty seconds and think deeply about how you perceive time! What does it mean to you? How does it affect your daily life? Have you changed your thoughts around time and its implications?

I'm not going to dwell on this, but simply put it out there as a foundation for my discussion... after all, time does control our lives in many profound ways!

How I personally perceive time is irrelevant to you. What's highly relevant is how time factors in your own mind, and subsequently in your own daily lives! Essentially Time is a construct that envelops us entirely and throughout our life-journey here on Earth. How we each personally perceive time and weave that into the fabric of our very daily existence is unique to every one of us... and well within our scope of personal choices! I believe that's quite significant. As I age, I perceive time to somehow be happening more quickly. This is an interesting phenomenon that is not unique to myself. I've had this very conversation with many others young and old. Is this perception real... or is it part of a myriad of environmental and psychological phenomenon that occur in the human mind depending on how the past (anything before exactly now) has shaped and influenced how we perceive the present (right now)! So now what? We're keenly aware of this concept we call 'time'... what's my point? Around December, societal conditioning suggests reflecting back on the past year (time), doing our best to make sense of all that time passed and its implications on our lives. Then we are to compile a solid list of resolutions that will make the coming year oh, so much better... and, right, it's best to put those resolutions on paper where we can refer to, and see them on a daily basis! We are told this is how we change our lives, make them better... right! Ok, now here's the kicker... then we are highly encouraged to go out and party hard right into that New Year (if we choose not to we're labeled, ridiculed, ostracized)... wait! We're going to transition into that same New year that we've been encouraged to make all these intricate preparations to resolve into the best year yet, in a state of altered mind, inebriation, and exhaustion! ...ok, wow! Let's start it all off in a haze of self-induced intoxication... because that will make it so much better, ya!

Get dressed and made-up to the nines and Party Hard into the New Year... that will make everything better... right!

My distant past:

It's January first... early afternoon, not exactly sure where I am, my skull is throbbing, my mouth is so dry, and I wish I were dead. 'Happy New Year!' still vibrates through my brain cells along with the laboured thump... thump of my heartbeat.

If you're still reading this, it may become apparent (or not) that this might be the most ineffective way to manifest a new, better year into ones existence! The beautiful thing about living life is that our own lives are predicated by, and through, choices that we make. Ouch... Ya. Wait! What if we choose something different than we have in past years... choose something with intent, while in a truly sober state of mind, and followed through on it! What then? What might that play-out to look like? What if we replaced setting 'resolutions' followed by that intoxicating all-nite party with intimate reflection, solid goals, a meaningful meditation, breathwork, and full focus with intent! Hmmmmmmm...

Won't know unless you do! Won't know unless you do!! Won't know unless you do!!!

During December of last year (2023), I chose to take the time to reflect hard with intent (no sugar coating, no excuses, just facts) on where I truly was in my life-journey... how far I've come, how I got here, and quite frankly, was I good with it?? That process took a few weeks. It involved many tears, lots of pain, opening old wounds, and quite literally tore my very existence apart. I realized so many things about myself by looking back and forth along the path that my life-journey has carved into my existence. There were several things that clearly stood out, things that were ultimately integral to what my now looked like, things that I've found most simply avoid talking about... the concept of 'choice' was knocking so loudly on my brain that it hurt!

1) Everything is a choice.

2) Not all choices that we make are conscious choices!

3) Choosing, and believing unconditionally in that choice, are not the same thing.

Armed with these realizations, I then focused on organizing my thoughts for the upcoming new year. Yikes... I believe that I'm saying life (our now), is predicated on a series of choices that we made/make/are going to make. Let me explain...

2024 proved to be a particularly difficult year for Mia and I with many extreme changes, losses, obstacles and much pain. Despite all that, we did manage to stay focused and true to our own hearts. We practised our ability to make choices along the way. Conscious choices that enabled us to correct, avoid, develop new insights, and generally keep it all together! There were many wins to celebrate as well, and the highs certainly balanced out the lows. We decided at the conclusion of 2023 to go into this year with a different mindset... one where we realized and focused hard on our ongoing choices to make a real differences in eventual outcomes. This was what we introduced to our daily meditations, and for the most part it worked extremely well. To understand that one always has a choice is so empowering, so powerful! What we weren't prepared for was the fact that we didn't have full control of all of our own choices. We had not factored in that our autonomic nervous system sometimes 'unconsciously' induced choices that we were totally unprepared to deal with the real repercussions of. (A simple example: driving along, and a deer jumps out in front of my motorcycle - upon regaining consciousness I realize that although I have absolutely no intimate recall of it, I made millisecond, unconscious choices resulting in actions that saved my life.) I've learned (simplified) that from birth to around eight years of age, our mids are ever evolving, learning, and preparing us with autonomic skills that will serve to keep us out of harms way... a bag of subconscious tools to navigate the extremes that life had to throw our way. The traumas we encounter during this early time shape who we are and how we are equipped (or not equipped) to safely navigate our life-journeys. So, ya, being unable to consciously account for some life-altering decisions presented a bit of a challenge when it came to pursuing 'goals' that depended on the outcomes of all choices made! This realization encouraged me to view the current archaic model of 'recapping the prior year in an attempt to resolve a better year' (resolutions) in an entirely different way! If making resolutions works for you, go for it. If not, or if you have any doubts about the practice of 'New-years Resolutions' keep reading!

Changing ones path is a choice...

So what to do with that realization? I chose to do the research to enable me to move forward, to choose and to create a different paradigm for my life. I bought all the decent books I could on healing childhood traumas and read them... knowledge is power, right! Wrong. Employing knowledge is power. I also chose to do the hard work of ripping apart the very fabric of my being and re-weaving it into a flow that served my current life. I've spent a difficult year ripping, healing, nurturing, weaving and learning to surf this new flowing energy wave I've generated! I have managed to begin to identify subconscious thoughts when I have them... thoughts that lead to decisions and behaviours that no longer serve me. What's so cool is that now, when my autonomic nervous system kicks in and prepares to make a 'subconscious' choice for me, I can often intercept that very process before it becomes reality, consciously... and decide if that's what I truly want or not (this is a millisecond process)! That's HUGE! It has made a profound difference in my life path, my journey, my very existence. We can make a conscious choice to move forward. That choice alone will not result in movement, but sets our mind and body systems up for the process that's involved in moving forward. We still have to do the work to make that choice to 'move forward' happen. IF our minds are subconsciously countering the conscious choice to move forward, it's just not going to happen... savvy? I believe that a resolution ("A decision to do something or behave in a certain manner") is simply a thought. I believe that choice or choosing ("The act of choosing, the act of picking or deciding") involves thought based on predicted or desired outcomes and involves commitment to action.

Maybe it's all semantics?

The cold, hard fact is that in just over three days the current year, 2024 draws to a close and we will be faced with a new year, 2025 (time in action). If our life-path involves striving to be the very best humans that we can be, we will make choices to alter that path... to continue to correct, compensate, change, evolve, be better, whatever we choose to call it! Unless of course we are already the ultimately perfect human! Right...

Look back. Take notes. Explore. Examine. Ask questions. Dig deep. Identify issues. Dig deeper. Create solutions. Meditate on those. Do breathwork. Do the hard work. Make the hard choices. Allow those choices to flow into action. Manifest. there, I said it... 'Manifest'! What does that mean? ("Thoughts readily perceived by the senses"). Manifesting ones own reality is not a new concept. This very concept has been employed by many very successful people dating back thousands of years. I believe that this concept is vastly misunderstood, glorified, commercialized, misrepresented and misused... that's for another article though! For our purposes, 'to manifest' , is to focus our entire being (conscious and subconscious) on a choice or series of choices. In order to do this we have to be able to intercept subconscious thought and re-define that thought to align with our conscious choice(s). In order to do that, we first have to do the hard work and learn to know ourselves. To choices... right!

Mia and I wish everyone a fantastic transition from the current year into the next! Be conscious of your choices. Be good with the consequences of those choices (every choice has a consequence)... if you're not, make another choice to correct and maintain direction on your life's path! Happy New Year!

We look forward to meeting you and connecting in whatever ways present themselves in 2025! Much love from Mia, the pups and I!

Please 'like' if you enjoyed and leave a comment. I'd love to know your thoughts on all this!