Confessions of a Resolution Junkie
Every December 31st since 2009 I have been telling myself "this is going to be the year"... meaning this will be the year it all goes right. This will be the year I make more than enough money to live off of doing the work I KNOW I am meant to do. This will be the year I finally have the relationship I want to have. This will be the year I finally show my indisputable worth.
I'm hooked on results and proof as much as any other American. I've been taught that the process to get there is SUPPOSED to be meteoric. It's supposed to feel destined. If it takes years, if it hurts, if it requires unshakable commitment and sacrifice, than I must doing it wrong. Maybe I'm "just not meant for it".
While 2017 started with the same almost manic need to prove myself the main thing that changed this year is my ability to see and celebrate my progress. Each year since 2009 I've built up just a little more momentum, and this year I started to really feel it... and it gave me motion sickness. 2017 was not a euphoric and magical time when everything fell into place in delicious synchronicity. Instead it hurt like hell. It WAS hell, in a personal underworld of the soul sort of way.
"Sometimes going with the flow will point you straight for a waterfall, especially when that flow is a tributary of the status quo."
There is this kind of metaphysical glossing over of how painful transformation is and how hard it is to hold yourself in that space. That's not to say suffering is ultra-spiritual. Enduring for the sake of enduring is a good way to break your own spirit. Rather, sometimes life's a bitch and thats ok. There doesn't have to be any existential meaning applied to it. Pain doesn't mean you are doing it wrong any more than ease means you are doing it right. Sometimes going with the flow will point you straight for a waterfall, especially when that flow is a tributary of the status quo.
It's about the journey rather than the destination, right? But it's just as easy to become tangled up in how we believe journeying is supposed to feel as we do in our ideals of success. As much as we might want there to a set point in which suddenly everything will feel right, the fact is there's not an obvious finish line. There is only the slow, methodical, sometimes delicious and sometimes challenging revelation of your soul.
I no longer need 2018 to be "The Year". In fact, I really only have two goals for this year and they have nothing to do with ambition. I am going to work on believing that good things are just as real as bad things, and I'm going to stop holding myself responsible for everyone's feelings as well as my own. If there is one thing 2017 has taught me, it's that life can not be controlled with blustery goal setting and hustle. All you can do, as far as I can tell, is show up curious and see what comes next.
Whatever your desires may be for 2018 I hope you find the knowing within yourself that really, truly: you've got this.
Love, Light, and Howls -
Allie LaRoe