The other day in the middle of Trader Joe’s I overheard a teen
boy say to his father, “If life doesn’t always go the way you plan, why bother
planning at all?”
It took all of my conscious human restraint and grace to not
insert myself randomly to discuss this at length with these strangers, and
instead say, “Stacey, please channel this energy into a blog where it might be
useful, if nothing else, entertaining or enlightening to others.”
I giggled to myself in amusement picturing in my mind how
that question would fly in a room with a bunch of Fortune 500 CEOs, a diverse
group of religious leaders, politicians, and activists, a group of metaphysical
lightworkers and free-spirit tree huggers and several classrooms of innocently
wise and pure Kindergarteners across the globe.
Wouldn’t that be the most fascinating summit meeting?
What do you think would happen? What would they all say and argue? How would they related to that teen boy’s
question to his father?
It’s that time again…
One of the things most people do in this space of quiet
contemplation at this time of year is to look ahead at the New Year.
Where were you this
time last year? Do you know? Can you remember?
What goals and intentions did you set up for yourself?
Did you accomplish them?
Are they still brewing? Did you
forget about them or are they on your list once again this year for you to
focus upon in a new light?
First - there is no
right or wrong answer here. It just is.
THIS is where we begin.
Some people see the New Year with fresh optimism and
anticipation, vibrantly looking at the new slate as an opportunity for new
potential and possibilities.
Some people kick themselves upon reflection for what they
failed to do last year, wondering why it is back on the list again this year.
While others may feel lost wondering how to get themselves
into a space to even connect to a new and overwhelming list of new objectives,
feeling pressured.
There is still a fourth group who carry out the bah-humbug
spirit of the holiday blues comatose state of exhaustion, due to not applying
self-care. This only encourages defeat wondering why they should set New Year
objectives (or resolutions) at all.
Keep in mind, Lovely
Souls – you may fluctuate between all four of these spaces throughout the
remaining days of the old year as you walk into the first month of the new.
This is normal. It is
human and … rest assured, you are going to be okay if you do this.
The key to successful realignment of your human and soul
mission to this ‘list’ – be it in your mind’s eye or on a yellow legal pad on
your nightstand, is to first purge the negative energy that is holding you in a
space of regret.
You cannot reverse time, so there is no use to carry around
negative thoughts creating blockages for forward movement. Yeah… I know you’ve heard this before but let
me provide some deeper insight to this thought to make you more successful in
letting things go…
Have you ever thought that maybe what didn’t happen last
year was not by any human doing or undoing but rather part of your divine plan
all along?
What? You heard me.
We fundamentally understand how one delay or another can
perhaps be for our highest and greatest good, as a series of events that
produce a cause-and-effect action… i.e. If you had not been delayed, you wouldn’t
have had another event happen, which gave you strength, wisdom, insight or even
a connection or moment that would affect the entire bigger picture.
If we realign our link to how we SEE New Year’s goals,
resolutions or objectives, we may understand HOW OR WHY things get derailed OR
REDIRECTED for a greater purpose, beyond the initial goal. Therefore, rather than kicking yourself for
what you didn’t do, let’s look at what you DID DO instead.
Do you need an example?
Let’s say you had a plan to get more organized as part of
your New Year’s resolution last year.
Today you may be looking at your resolution list as a
failure because you see piles of things in your home you have yet to
tackle. STOP!
Now let’s flip this around…
Look at what IS organized in the rest of your life right
now.
Could it be that you did achieve your goal to get more
organized another way?
Perhaps your desk at work or your usually overloaded
unattended Inbox is pristine.
Maybe your family relationships or friendships are in good
shape because you made time to catch up.
Could it be you organized your phone plan, budget, or car
maintenance or even your own health regime and eating schedule or sleep
schedule to be better than it was last year?
Did you use your time being of service to help (your
friends, family, boss, co-workers or fellow-students, neighbors, or even your
community) organize something that was monumental if you hadn’t given some
assistance?
DO NOT DISCOUNT these efforts! Instead realize that you did accomplish
organization.
So in essence, maybe you were so ‘generalized’ with your goal of ‘getting organized’ – that you may
look at getting your home organized as a failure, when what you meant to do was
one thing, but you still succeeded in another.
Taking a step back now, DID YOU FAIL at your New Year's objective?
See how you might have been quick to judge yourself? Do you see how that might have been not-so-self-loving and destructive?
What can you celebrate in other areas where you actually
accomplished the resolution you set in another area where you did not
fail?
Perhaps your ‘intent’ wasn’t specifically targeted to ‘organizing’
yourself at home, but if you can SEE where you may have applied your intention
or energies from your initial goal, you can realign yourself to see that your
human DID NOT FAIL. Instead, you unintentionally realigned the position of your
initial desire of where you wanted to see success or the Universe essentially
did it for you.
Take a step back and see if this was for something bigger
than you realized. Maybe you would have wasted energy or time getting your home
organized when it was the other areas, say like getting your sleep pattern or
health regime organized because if you hadn’t, due to the kind of year you had,
you might have gotten really sick at the pace you were going, and wouldn’t have
accomplished anything at all!
Now this of course is a severe example, but you get the
picture of “divine order” and that everything does have a timing and a purpose.
None of your goals or intentions are failures, lost or even
wasted – because the purity of your energies from where you wanted to go
somehow succeed in other ways we humans do not always see.
Sometimes the greater benefit of our time and energy is
meant to be applied in other compartments or areas of our life we’ve been
neglecting or it may even be to break us free from old habits of putting the
same darn thing on the list every year when the Universe is tapping you on the
shoulder to say “Ahem… hello…. What about
this? Did you forget this, and why isn’t
this on the list?”
Seeing goal-setting in this new light, not only is a
healthier way for you to navigate your human and be gentle with it, but it may
kick your human into a higher gear of breaking a cycle that wouldn’t have been
broken, that wasn’t good for you to have a one-dimensional focus on anyway.
It is here you can see that the timing of what you needed to
do for reasons you don’t have time to sift decipher.
So as you begin to wrap-up your year’s end and look forward
to your New Year’s resolutions, goals, and plans – keep in mind, things will
not always go in the exact direction you plan, but perhaps it is more essential
for your bigger picture outcome.
You can choose to be more specific with your goals, target
intention, or even breakdown the general goal into compartments to help
yourself feel momentum in achievement like a series of tasks.
What is more important for the entire ritual is that you
somehow find all of the good that exists with what you have done, discover what
you learned about yourself in the process, what ways you grew, stretched or
expanded your own consciousness.
Remember, let’s reiterate that nothing is ever wasted, rather
it is more about understanding that you may have many unrealized and
undiscovered territory you did cover that was not part of your initial plan, because it wasn’t even on the list to
recognize.
Sometimes the Universe’s
realignment and redirection is so you can tackle areas to assist you with your
more generalized objective.
Look at it like chipping away at a block. You might
have intended to move the whole boulder, but it might be easier to do so if you
get other things handled first, which essentially is better for you in the long
run, to have the mind-set or organizational abilities in your smaller practice
runs.
Take time to evaluate and celebrate progress, you’ll
discover that what wasn’t there before could be highly useful for where you are
going and what you choose to tackle next, because life is kind of like that
stack of unorganized things sometimes
.
You can try to put things in your own order, but it doesn’t
always mean you can see exactly what is around that corner which may surprise
you with the unexpected thing you weren’t even looking for to help you expand
who you are. Now isn’t THAT something
worth celebrating and recognizing as something masterful that you
accomplished?
Happy planning and wishing you happiness upon your unexpected
routes of realigned goals for the New Year!
Blessings and light.
Namaste.
