New Year's Love Note
Hopefully, you received my note yesterday about my practice of reading back to my old journals each January. I shared some initial reflections and promised that I'd send additional reflections, learnings, and strategies throughout the week to support you as we enter a new year during a time of so much uncertainty. I'm calling them my New Year's Love Notes! They're love notes to all of us and to the year ahead and I hope they bring you a spark of joy or some inspiration. I hope that together we can cultivate more joy, community, and healing and find a deeper sense of presence in 2022!
Yesterday I shared this note that I found in my journal on January 3, 2021:
"I am brave enough to go anywhere and soft enough to be there. This is me."
I am still awed by myself as I write this. Wow!
And I'm reflecting on how proud I am of all of the places that I have been brave enough to go to since January 3, 2021.
I'm also reflecting on how difficult it can be to stay soft enough to really be there sometimes, especially at first.
New places - physical or emotional! - can be so scary! And when I'm scared it can be hard to soften. Rather, I want to control and anticipate. I want to know what comes next! But that's not the point. Imagine how silly it is to think that I can control and know everything about a place that I've never been?! Where's the spirit of adventure in that? The potential for surprises and joy??
We can't expand and fully experience new places and spaces without staying soft and open.
The softness is where the joy exists.
It's where the adventure lies.
The utter delight that comes when something is even better than you imagined it could be.
As we roll into a new year, I'm noticing my own reluctance to embrace it with softness.
This morning I found myself feeling so deeply excited about 2022 and all of the incredible potential that she has in store for us. I was giddy just thinking about it!
But then, almost immediately, fear set in.
I tensed right up.
It was too vulnerable!
The last time I felt excited about the new year was 2020 and we all remember what a shitshow that turned out to be! It makes sense that we may be scared to feel excited again. It's vulnerable to hold hope and softness in the midst of so much uncertainty, fear, and grief.
But I also know it's possible.
We can find softness and ease and hope and excitement and an openness to being utterly delighted by life with a little work and commitment!
Here's a strategy that is serving me well this week...
First, we have to make friends with our fears. Not push them away, but embrace them a bit. Get closer. Understand the fear and really listen to it.
Fear is often present for a reason. It often has the best of intentions for keeping us safe and trying to protect us!
But it's also often rooted in a trauma response or false belief that vulnerability means we're unsafe and that's not true. Emotional vulnerability can feel really scary because it leaves us wide open to disappointment, but it doesn't actually put us in danger!
Once we can appreciate and understand our fear, we can find a way forward. The next best step to take, moving with our fear and not against it.
We can find empathy for the part of us that's scared. Meeting it with tenderness, curiosity, and compassion. This is how we cultivate more internal trust.
So today I invite you to consider what you're feeling fear, worry, or anxiety about as we enter the new year. Can you get closer to it and understand why it's there? How is it trying to help or protect you? Can you meet it with tenderness, reminding yourself of your own capacity for navigating uncertainty and hard things? Hello, the last 2 years are PERFECT evidence that you can do just that! And then can you maybe find some softness?
I wonder if maybe together we can be brave enough to go anywhere that 2022 takes us and soft enough to actually be there? To allow ourselves to anticipate delight and joy this year, even in the moments when we least expect it?
I'm in if you are!
I'd love to hear your reflections, questions, or hesitations about this. I'd love to support you in embracing your fear and finding more softness. And I'd especially love to celebrate you as you practice!
With love,
Victoria
