Finding Your New Year
Straight out of the gate I want to say: this is not a post about how to better create and achieve your goals, or about how massage can support your health resolutions (though it can!), or how to hack your way into optimizing your life. Neither is it a post intended to bash the list-making, gym-rushing, alcohol-eschewing nature of this month. I’m going to wax a little more philosophical here.
The time-keeping aspect of this calendar turn makes the New Year a traditional, if not entirely intuitive, time to reflect, evaluate, and reassess what has been, and to cast out dreams and predictions for the future. This is the moment for making resolutions, goals, and wish lists. “New Year, new you” and its sentimental counterparts are ubiquitous as soon as January 1st hits.
Although I cringe at the commodification of this resolute season, I do find immense value in the process of genuine goal-making: the realistic assessment of one’s life as it is, the ideation of one’s desires and hopes, a statement of intentions, and a plan of action for pursuit. I have engaged in some form of this most years, and I find it to be challenging, revealing, and clarifying.
But what if, in the depths of the dark and increasingly cold winter (for those of us here in the Northern Hemisphere, at least), you’re not exactly feeling a spontaneous burst of motivation to change your life? What if, instead of leaping out of bed to go to the gym at 5 am, your body is begging you to stay warm and take it slow? What if the holidays were brutal, winter sucks all the give-a-damn juice right out of you, you’re just trying to get through the day without snapping at someone in the grocery store, and it’s a little too much to be asked to evolve into a more enlightened and disciplined person right now?
Honestly, I think that is natural too.
On a deep, biological level, this is a somewhat arbitrary time to declare a “new year.” Many modern societies don’t subscribe to our Gregorian take on the passage of time, not to mention the myriad different ways that ancient and pagan societies chose/choose to mark the turning of the clock (or, the Wheel). Whether by the Solstices, the lunar cycles, or other environmental or societal phenomena, humans have been syncing their activities, movements, and celebrations by the rhythms of the natural world for a very long time.
Personally, I have found various points throughout the year to be intuitively transitional; my birthday, which lands in mid-summer, is the time I feel most motivated to broaden my horizons, cast ambitions, and push my own limits. The Winter Solstice also delivers, for me, a natural turning - the outside world is dying, light is waning, and it seems more imperative than ever to turn inwards, assess resources, reach out to those with wisdom and experience, and steel myself for the dark journey ahead. At the turn of the calendar year, I see the opportunity to articulate some of the lessons I’ve learned, tally up my successes and failures, and enumerate my new goals.
Any - or none - of these times might resonate with you. I invite you to reflect on the seasons of your own life, and notice when you feel chapters closing, when you are naturally the most introspective and when you are most enlivened to take on challenges. Aligning with and honoring these transition points within yourself may lead to interesting manifestations and practices.
Ultimately, the thought I am offering is this: I do not believe there is a “right” time or prescribed way to facilitate change in your life. The work it takes to examine your past - recent or distant - and to alchemize this past and its lessons into a transformed you that is more steadily walking the path you’ve chosen is an enormous undertaking. It requires honesty, patience, and a gracious approach to self and others. It does indeed require motivation and diligence. This process cannot simply be switched on with the flip of a calendar page.
Waiting for motivation to spontaneously appear, however, is not what I’m advocating. Instead, finding the rhythms and seasons of your own life may shed light on when your New Year occurs. Paying attention to natural, personal ebbs and flow may signal when a change is needed, and it is important to remember that such change may be accompanied by the pains of growth. When we are shedding one part of ourselves, there is often grief for the Self we’re moving beyond. There may be apprehension about what we’re stepping into, but it is in this uncertain, liminal space that we can discover the power of resolution and renewal.