I hope you're enjoying the holidays! Josh and I have been rejuvenating and reconnecting on a Caribbean cruise, and though I'm
sad for it to end, I'm excited to be home to start the New Year.
We can start fresh 365 days a year, but New Year's offers a unique opportunity to be super intentional… intentional about what's working in your life, what isn't, what you want in the year to come, and what actions you're willing to take to get there.
So what is working for you? What isn't? What do you want in the upcoming year? What might hold you back? And how might you overcome those obstacles?
I'm hoping for a lot in 2017 – empowering 1 million women, getting a book deal, speaking on a LOT more stages, giving birth to a healthy baby, and taking you on incredible retreats around the world!
But I can't bring in the new until I clear out the old. It's like your t-shirt drawer – you can't fit new ones in if it's already overstuffed. You can't bring in new hopes if you haven't released the old grudges and pain.
You have to intentionally release the old shit. And intentionally call in the new. That's why I do an annual New Year's ritual.
Amazing things can happen in one year – but you have to be intentional with your time, your energy, your money, your love, and your life to manifest them.
Intention makes the difference between life running you or you running life.
Intention is OWNING your POWER.
Intention sets you on PURPOSE.
Intention will make you HAPPIER.
So I wanted to share my annual New Year's ritual with you in the hopes that it brings you the same clarity, peace, hope, and energy it brings me. Now that I'm home from the cruise and have written to you, I'm about to curl up by the fire with a cup of tea to do this ritual myself, so we'll be doing it together! Enjoy!
- Carve out 1 hour for this exercise where you can have quiet time to reflect.
- Begin your quiet time taking 3 deep belly breaths – inhaling through your nostrils to a count of 5 and then exhaling slowly out of your mouth to 5. Let your body relax.
- With your eyes closed, reflect on all that was REALLY GOOD in 2016. Begin with January, then February and March, etc. Be sure to write every moment of joy, good health, accolade, tenderness, and inspiration, with gratitude for the moment. Feel that goodness in your heart, your smile, and your body.
- Now close your eyes again, and think about the LESSONS you have learned this year. These lessons may have occurred through trial, trauma, or triumph. The cause isn’t as important to this exercise as the lesson itself. Write these down in your journal. Remember to have GRATITUDE for the lesson so that you remember it going forward.
- Then, on a separate piece of paper, write every OLD PATTERN that held you back in 2016. The ones you are READY TO LEAVE BEHIND. For instance, I realize that I've been holding on to some old grudges this year and it's taken so much energy that would have been better spent on you, my clients, my community, my family, my life. So good riddance to those grudges. That victim mentality is not helping me any more. Now take the paper outside and light a match to it! Yep, good riddance!
- Now, in your journal, write your intentions and desires for 2017. Don't write a typical “resolution” like, Lose weight, or, Go to the gym every day. Unfortunately 90% of those fail. Be clear and specific about what you really, really, really,
really want – and why. For instance – to be so healthy that you can run easily with your children, to love your work so much that you feel alive and excited when you wake up, or to love with such abandon that you want to scream it from a rooftop.
SEE it. Visualize what you want, even act it out. (I act out picking up my baby and rocking her every single day.)
FEEL it. Feel the joy, love, or peace in every cell as if it's already happening.
BELIEVE it. Make a mantra of it in the present like, “I'm a healthy runner.”
ACT. Agree to one small step this weekend, knowing that every step toward the right dream matters.
And listen, love, you may fall down 100 times in 2017 working toward these goals. The key is to get back up one more time than you fall. That's why most resolutions fail. You go off your diet and say “See, I knew I couldn't do it” and then you give up. Burn that belief up tonight!
I fall down, cry, scream, regress, take 2 steps back, stay in bed because of self-doubt, scare myself out of even trying, and downright fail ALL THE TIME. It's a struggle, but when I remember why I'm doing this, and then allow myself support to get back on track, everything is possible. That's why we have each other. That's why we have this community.
THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THIS SISTERHOOD in 2016. Here's to an amazing 2017 for each of us separately, and TOGETHER!
With so much love,
Carin
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