We’re always excited for the new year. A new year means new adventures, new changes, a new me…
Right?
Yes… and also, no. The new year is always invigorating. It’s like reading a new book or flipping to the next chapter, and watching a much-anticipated movie of the year. We get to ‘restart’ our lives like in a video game where we get to make new choices from the old checkpoint and try again.
But we have to be careful. It’s easy to get caught up in the newness of it all. The freshness, the novelty, the initial motivation of making changes in our lives and wearing the skin of a ‘new me’.
We’d jot down all our goals for the year, the things we want to change about ourselves (physically, mentally, spiritually) and in our lives, the improvements we want to make, and the dreams we want to achieve. But that ongoing list of our fantastical desires gets forgotten as quickly as a week. For some, maybe after a couple of months. For most of us, in a couple of days. And before we know it, we’re living our lives just as we did the year before and the year before and… you know where I’m going with this. We’ve become Dorys in our lives.
We slip back into our old ways subconsciously.
Why is that?
The answer is simple. Because we’re comfortable. Making changes takes effort and hard work. Don’t we all wish it’s like magic and we can change with a snap of a finger? I know I do. Beats suffering mentally for growth. But life just isn’t made that way.
It takes being conscious of what we’re doing, the actions we’re taking, the thoughts we’re thinking, and actively stopping ourselves from returning to our old habits. Implementing new habits is easy. For a day, or two, or a week, or a month.
Alas, maintaining them isn’t.
And so, I ask myself why we tend to wait till the new year. Why can’t we just make the changes within the year? It’s like celebrating love on Valentine’s Day when it’s something we should be celebrating every moment in our lives, not limiting to only romantic relationships; it’s like only being thankful on Thanksgiving Day when practicing gratitude should be a daily habit.
And it always comes back to the same excuses. Besides life throwing us curve balls now and then, we’re so consumed by work and other unnecessary things in our lives. We’d always tell ourselves ‘not now, maybe later when I have the time’. Yet, we would have time to scroll through our phones for hours, binge on shows and movies, or play our video or app games instead of exercising, meditating, reflecting, investing our time in our hobbies, etc. It’s just simply easier to indulge in what’s not good for us instead of the good.
‘There’s no such thing as being too busy. If you really want something, you’ll make time for it.’
As the saying goes. And that goes for relationships as well.
If we want to make changes, we will make them without having to wait for the New Year. If we’re not willing or ready for change, no amount of New Year(s) and New Year resolutions can help us.
We have to consciously not get sucked into the rat race and work on ourselves daily. Sure we have work and family and friends to take care of. But if we don’t care for ourselves, we can get easily spent and we’d be in a state of mental survival every day instead of mental freedom. We take care of ourselves so that we can take care of our loved ones. Sacrificing our physical bodies and our mental health in exchange for cash and fleeting comfort may work for a while but it’ll start chipping away at our soul.
With all that said, staying focused on our goals today isn’t the simplest task either.
The ever-growing multitude of distractions especially in our society today scream for our attention and they don’t help our human cause as well. Career, social media, popularity contests, some needless social issues, cancel culture, focusing on other people’s mistakes instead of our own, our social lives, trolling, commenting, complaining, engaging in and reading meaningless arguments and comments online, pleasing strangers all over the world, catching up on movies and shows on streaming services, etc.
A never-ending abyss of stuff that demands our attention and we, like being hypnotized, are pulled in all directions except towards ourselves. We overconsume so that we don’t have to sit with ourselves, process the information we’ve absorbed, and somehow output it in effective ways for ourselves and/or the world.
Work becomes our priority over relationships in the name of earning money for a better future when what we crave is the luxury we see from social media influencers and the awe we feel from them.
Nothing is ever enough for most of us anymore. We have forgotten how to be content. And this is beside the people who are struggling to make ends meet. The definition of our basic human needs has changed.
Materialism has been drilled into our subconscious mind and happiness is commercialized and capitalized. We’re so busy chasing after transient things that we think would make us happy or bring us comfort.
…
It’s time to declutter our minds and our lives. We need to start asking different questions and making different statements.
Instead of ‘What do I want to achieve this year?’, ask ‘What fulfills me in life?’.
Instead of ‘What is the meaning of life?’, ask ‘What or who gives me meaning and purpose?’
Instead of ‘Why am I doing this in my job?’, ask ‘Is this worth it?’
Instead of ‘I need to do this’, ask ‘How important is this? Can I let this go? Is this worth my time and effort?’
Instead of ‘I feel crappy about myself’ and staying moppy, ask ‘Why do I feel this way? What’s making me feel this way? Do I want to stay in this hole? What can I do to get out of it?’
Instead of ‘I need to stay in this job for the money. The money is good.’ but it sucks the life out of you, ask ‘What is my passion? What was the dream before the manipulation of money?’
Instead of being afraid to chase after your dreams and passion because that means compromising comfort and money, take a leap of faith and trust yourself and the universe that things will somehow fall into place.
Instead of ‘What if…’, ask ‘What happens next?’
Change can be quick for some and slow for others. Inner work sometimes takes a lifetime to figure out and for many of us, we probably never will. But it’s not about the results or outcome.
As cliché as it sounds, it is about the journey.
So what kind of journey do you want to embark on this year?
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P.S. Here’s wishing everyone a fruitful new year filled with adventurous journeys! 🎊🎉
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Instagram: @casswildcat, @justwildcass
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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