A man made construct of a new year does not encompass me. There's rough days when I regress to the old me of the early 2000s. My thoughts and feelings flow and are influenced by memories of 2021. I often circle back to old habits, old ways of being that I dislike. But that's okay. It's part of being human.
Goals make sense for some of my life experiences such as graduating college, or when I started my career. But they don't work for my soul or personal growth. Instead I am strengthening my intuitive muscle, listening to my own inner voice of wisdom--something I started some years ago and then got away from, and recently rediscovered.
It takes away the pressure of having to do "insert healthy change" every day or every week and instead practicing, "what do I need right now?" or "What do I need today?" Usually it's simple and it's not always fun or interesting or what I necessarily even want to do or think I should be doing.
Often, it's that I need to eat something, I need a nap, or I need to get off the simulation of my phone. Or I need to put on a show for the kids so I can just have a moment to close my eyes and rest my mind. When I'm not in the middle of our busy routine and I have more space it might be, "I need to journal" or "I need to go to yoga."
As soon as a "should" enters my mind, it's a red flag that it's not my inner wisdom speaking.
Sometimes my mind will interject and say, "Well, you should do some yoga stretches or journal" or any other sort of healthy behavior, and my deep knowing says, "No, actually you need to rest and it's okay to rest." Learning that came as a shock. I was used to identifying my mind's incessant demands of chores and to-do lists but it was a profound discovery that truly listening to what will benefit me in that moment is more important than forcing some healthy behavior.
I'm still very much practicing but I suspect that listening to that inner voice consistently does lead to the fulfillment of broader goals that will nourish and make me happy. I think it will result in personal satisfaction and joy, some of the tenets that goals often promise.
For a concrete example, if I had a goal of writing every day this year, I would likely have days that I don't feel up to it, I feel too tired, or my toddler wakes up at 4 am and there's no creative energy. I will likely not meet that goal, and not because I'm not capable, but because I went about it the wrong way. It set me up on the wrong path with too much pressure, too much anxiety, and forcing anything on humans rarely results in success.
However, if I follow that inner voice, if I keep becoming more aware of it and learn to differentiate it from the multitude of other thoughts (very hard to do in this busy loud world), I will have some days where it tells me to rest or just soak in the sunrise, which in turn fuels my creativity (for a later date). There will also be days when the inner voice says, "yes, lets write!" with excitement rather than the forced dread of reaching a broader goal.
In the end it does result in what feels right and healthy and satisfying, much like the goal idea we had initially, and yet along the journey of following that voice, we don't always know what the outcome will be. Maybe it will be me writing a lot of poems and stories and blogs. Or maybe it will fuel different creativity that I never imagined but is equally fulfilling.
So that's what I will continue to practice and will likely forget during stressful periods in 2023, but if I come back to it like I have previous years, I know this is the right path for me. What other angles might you take to reach personal fulfillment? My path way is likely one of many.
What a lovely and thoughtful post! I have also been reminding myself that sometimes my "self-care" looks different from what kinds of self-care other people need and trying to honor my intuition in that regard as well. :-)
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