Hello and happy new year! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season - and just like that, we’re one week into 2019! Now that we are back into the swing of things with work, school, and life, I thought I’d start the year off with a post about my personal rituals for the new year.
I’ve never really been one to believe in new year’s resolutions. I typically don’t see people following through with them and I have always hated going to the gym in January because it’s crowded with the well-intentioned resolutioners who end up falling off the band wagon after a few short weeks. I’ve never loved new year’s eve either - even in my prime partying years I didn’t really care for all the hoopla that goes around watching the clock strike midnight as if it’s different from any other night (sorry to my friends who had to deal with my misery this year between 10pm and midnight. 10pm is bedtime and it was painful to force myself to stay up til 12. Why did I even do that anyway? Oh well, new year, new me amirite?).
However I do love the start of a new year for all of its potential and possibility. We never know what’s to come and if we start it off with authentic and healthful habits then we might be able to make the year spectacular. I’ve realized over the years that I do appreciate some rituals around the start of the new year and I’ve slowly been adding to them to craft a set of actions that really set me up for the year to come. Of course, I don’t do them all in one shot, they’re more of a toolbox of things I start thinking of in mid-December and complete in the beginning of January.
Budget: Every year, Manuel and I sit down and revise our budget. We decide if we are putting enough away for groceries; we go through all of our variable bills over the year, add them up and average them so we can ensure we are putting aside the right amounts. In the past we have used this time to seek new service providers or negotiate contracts to have reduced rates. I always look at my savings accounts, TFSAs, RRSPs and see if there is any wiggle room to add more. We look at our debt and come up with a plan to reduce it. This year, we’ve agreed on a no-spend month for the month of January to really re-set ourselves after a bit of a care-free spending time over the holidays (I always go over my Christmas budget :( ).
Minimize & Organize: With Marie Kondo’s new Netflix series, I know this has been on many people’s minds in 2019. Every year after putting away the Christmas decorations, I’ve found an area to work on that needs to be purged and then organized. For me it’s therapeutic and symbolic. While our house does not necessarily look minimalistic, I am very drawn to the principles of minimalism and continue over time to reduce my consumerism, reduce waste and let go of things already in the home. While minimizing is always a standing item on my list of things to do, I find at the time of the new year, it’s a guarantee that I will always purge something. We are typically consuming more than we usually would, and receiving more gifts than any other time of the year. This means we tend to bring much more into our home in the month of December, so it’s good to take a look at what items are being replaced (one in, one out is a great mantra), what items are no longer serving us or in the words of Marie Kondo, what things no longer “spark joy.”
Releasing: When we look back on our past year, there are typically two themes - last year was amazing, or good riddance to the most difficult year ever. Whether good or bad, it’s important to acknowledge the experiences that occurred in the past year, find gratitude for them and release them, in order to be fully present in this moment and to move forward with the next year. This year, I ran two meditations which had a large releasing component in them. I also worked on my Year Compass workbook (link at end of post) which reviews all of 2018 week by week, acknowledges the happenings, and sets up a plan for 2019. And, during my new moon ritual, I practiced a meditation including gratitude for all of the hardships over the past year, releasing any attachment to difficult times, illness, injury, and any other thing I could think of that needed to be let go of. It’s amazing how light you feel when you wash away all that you’re carrying with you from your past. In one of my meditations, I had a 95-year old participant who told me that I took him through 90 years of his life in that one hour meditation, and he remembered things he did not even knew he was holding on to. He stated he saw them on a scale between resentment and gratitude and when he was working through them, he was able to release them and be grateful for what they taught him. How amazing is that? It’s never too late to learn something new! :)
Gratitude Jar: The gratitude jar was a new ritual we started last year. Every week, we would write down one thing we were grateful for during the past week, put it in the jar, and on new year’s day, review all of our items. Now if you’ve been following along with my blog, you’ll know I faced some challenges over the past year (which I am intending not to focus on so much in 2019) so it might come as no surprirse that the gratitude jar took a back burner and kind of fizzled out. However, we did still review the first 4 months’ worth of entries. It was a little bit surprising to me. Some items really sparked a gut-reaction, and others were kind of on the depressing side. All I can say is, in those moments of darkness, if I was still able to find something, anything to be grateful for, then I was on the right track! So we emptied the jar and started anew for 2019.
Word of the Year: This one is a new one for me, but I thought it was a great addition to my arsenal of new year’s rituals. Choosing a word of the year is a great place to start to set up our new year’s intentions. Or for those who aren’t into intentions, a word is a simple way to live authentically and better ourselves. I knew what my word was immediately although it took me a week or two to actually believe in it. Intuition is funny like that. Anyway, I ordered myself a stainless steel bangle before Christmas, which has my word on it, and I plan on wearing it everyday so I don’t forget about what I need to do to live out my year honouring my word (hence the extra spending in the month of December and need for a no-spend January).
Intention Setting: For the past 3 years I’ve set new year’s intentions. I write them in my journal, add them to my desktop background and review them every time I meditate, so I don’t forget them. This year, I linked my intention to my personal philosophy as well as my word of the year, and how I really envision seeing them play out for me. I find setting intentions really keeps me accountable for my own personal wellness. At the end of the year when I review my intentions from the previous year and reflect upon whether I’ve met them, need to continue working on them, or need to release them, I always find that I have made great progress compared to where I was one year before. I also like to really sit with my intentions in meditations and visualize what my life would look like, how I would feel and what I would do when those intentions come to fruition. Visualization is such a powerful tool. We experience exactly how we want to feel and we see ourselves doing exactly what we want to be doing, and it motivates us to actually start living that way day to day. In my new moon meditation over the weekend, I did a visualization exercise of my own intentions and it left me feeling recharged and powerful!
12-Month Spread: This is my favourite new year’s ritual. Every year around new year’s day, I bring out my tarot cards and do a 12-month reading. This year, I also chose 3 cards from 3 different decks to be my representation for the year. Now I have three cards to refer to throughout the entire year, and a new card every month. Last year, I loved going back to my notes and pictures and reading what card I had pulled for that month, then seeing how, or if it would play out. My reading this year was quite powerful, having 6 months straight of powerful major arcana cards and only two months with cards that looked challenging.
So there you have it: my rituals to get me set up in 2019. I’d love if you gave some of them a try and let me know what you think!
And so it is.
If you feel you need some help with any of the strategies above, please contact me to see how we can work together to help you get organized for 2019.
Because together, we rise.