Do You Have a Theme?

I had an experience at the beginning of this new year that motivated me to decide on a personal theme for the year. Without boring you with all the details, let’s just say there was an event and as I reacted to the event, it became obvious that said event had evoked emotions and defensiveness way beyond what was to be expected. So I had to take a look at myself and see if I could figure out why I responded so strongly. (Don’t ya hate when that happens?!)

What I learned was that instead of accepting what had occurred and moving on to be present to the next moment in my life, I had created a story in my head about what the event meant, what other people were thinking, and what it all said about me. Whew! What a lot of meaning I was putting into one little event.

Luckily I realized what I was doing pretty quickly and made the choice to do something different. And in the process I understood that, while it’s human nature to create stories to give meaning to life’s events, it doesn’t always serve us well to do so.

I decided to work on letting go of creating stories. So my theme for 2010 is to accept the events that occur in my life simply as events that occurred. Sure I’ll have emotional responses to them, but I can stop there, process the feelings, and move on to the next moment in my life.

What Will You Do With Your New Year?

I know that everywhere you turn this time of year, you’re reading or hearing about ‘a brand new decade’ or ‘how to make this the best year of your life’ or other resolution-oriented themes. And there’s nothing wrong with taking time at the beginning of the year to look at where you’ve been and where you want to go.

But what if we also took some time to appreciate ourselves just the way we are? What if decided that we would begin 2010 in glorious love with ourselves? It sounds paradoxical, but it’s true that to make lasting changes in our selves, our bodies, our lives, we have to start from a place of acceptance. We have to accept every inch, every wrinkle, every personality quirk, every thing that we think makes us imperfect and unloveable. The truth is that when we love ourselves exactly as we are, accepting the good with the flaws, we create the energy necessary to understand which changes we want to make, while still allowing for our imperfections.

So take some time this week to think about 2010 in terms of how you can show yourself a little love - nice hot baths with music and aromatherapy? Long walks with the pooch? Positive self-talk? A phone call to an old friend you haven’t heard from in a while? Keeping to an eight-hour work day?

This kind of self love is not narcissism. It’s a recognition that you have a Calling on this Earth, and to fulfill it, you have to start with being your best self, which means loving YOU just the way you are.